So I arrived at my internship last week, about thirty minutes early, dressed in my finest business looking attire, and I waited in the lobby of the first floor trying to figure out what to do… looking sad and lost and confused I am sure. I wasn’t sure if Mme Finakly was going to come down and find me, or if I should go upstairs I just didn’t know. Finally the security guard who is very friendly asked me what on earth I was doing… and I told him. He sent me up to get a visitor’s badge and then up to the 8th floor which is home to the Centre pour langue et civilization, which is where I am working. I met Mme Findalky in her office and we set out getting administrative stuff out of the way… I have my own badge and I have my own key and everything… very official. Then, when all of that was settled, there came the question of… What to do? Mme Findakly was very busy getting things in order for the visit from the Iraqi ambassador (March 25 so look for an entry about it !) and I sat at my desk making lists… of everything I could think of to make a list of.
As lunch approached I was getting kind of nervous, was I going to have to eat alone on my first day? But around noon, another intern who is franco-american came down to Mme Findakly’s office and asked me to go to lunch! I was ecstatic, absolutely thrilled! Her name is Audrey, and her mother is American and she lived in the states for seven years and when to college there. She is working here for 9 months before starting a master’s program at Science Po. She is very nice, and it is very obvious to me that she has some American culture in her… because she behaves a lot like an American a lot of the time… she is very open and welcoming, where French people are often more reserved, and it could take up to two months to begin to break through some harder exteriors to begin to make friends. I can also always hear her coming down the hall, walking quickly like a New Yorker, and making a little more noise than anyone else… she is lovely. She is very interesting and enthusiastic, and she was nothing but friendly to me all week long, and I am so grateful to her for inviting me out to lunch every day, and introducing me to everyone, and giving me the lay of the land… So Audrey has really been great!
The rest of my first day continued to be slow… in the afternoon Mme Findakly and I developed a program for me for these next twelve weeks… but that didn’t take too long… and I went home, trying not to worry that I was going to be bored out of my mind for the next twelve weeks… The rest of the week was also kind of slow… I did a few translations which I really enjoyed doing, and I really like the puzzle of trying to find the right word, and capture the meaning of the sentence. It is also really good for my French since I have been looking up words I don’t know in a French dictionary, I often find myself reading entire pages of the dictionary… strange as that may be. I also helped with some other small things, and I started a research project that I am not exactly sure what I am going to do with just yet. I am reading through all of the magazines that the IMA has put out in the last ten years, and trying to find themes, or figure things out that could possibly turn into a memoire du stage or something. Ifound one that has an entire section on Saladin, and I have been slowly reading that section, learning each word to understand it all, since I have an idea of how I could work him and his re-emergence in the 20th century into a research paper about how the east and the west represent themselves and the other. We shall just have to see…
Tuesday was the first day of my new class with IFE, which I have once a week on Tuesday nights… but I will write about it in the next entry about the fun things I did last week outside of my internship. Wednesday went much about the same as Tuesday, but I went to a really yummy Japanese restaurant for lunch with Audrey and another woman named Aisha, and it was thoroughly enjoyable.
Thursday I got to work and Madame Findakly told me something was going on upstairs, but I wasn’t exactly sure what until Audrey texted me to come upstairs and check it out. It turned out to be a two day long conference about Jerusalem and its people and the challenges it is currently facing. Madame Findakly said I could go up and listed for the afternoon so I did. It was nice to have a break from my research project that doesn’t have a goal yet… and it was just really interesting in general. First of all I am grateful for a program like IFE that helped me find an internship at a place like the IMA because I am going to have opportunities like this one for the next 12 weeks. I got to listen to some of the leading scholars talk about what is going on in Israel… and it was simply because I was there, in the place trying to be open to learning as much as I can, and that really is what I am there to do. One of the talks I listed to was in English, and one was in French. But what was really interesting was that one of the talks was given completely from the Palestinian point of view. I feel like in the states it is often hard to hear this point of view, even though more recently people have become more critical of Israeli politics, it was still fascinating (and disturbing) to hear an Arab/ Palestinian perspective on the entire thing. I feel like this is why I am here, what I want to learn about, the other perspective. I want to have my mind opened and to try and learn as much as I can about everything. I was thrilled to have this opportunity for and afternoon, and I can only imagine how many more like it will come up in the next 11 weeks. Starting in 2 weeks there is a new exhibit coming in place of Arts of Islam, and I translated the brochure for it into English. It is going to be so cool, and hopefully I will get to meet the artist who sounds awesome.
Also speaking of things that I am going to be learning… it is official I am going to learn some Arabic while I am at the institute. I am going to take a 30 hour intensive course (that is 6 hours a day for 5 days) in April, after I help to organize everything. I am looking forward to it, and I am nervous about it since it will be intense, but this is what I am here to do! I can’t wait to learn it, and maybe take some when I get back to DPU in the fall as well.
The other thing I did this week was to make up some ideas for a memoire du stage… and I am going to post them here, just to see what anyone thinks… maybe just two of them and they are sort just musings and ideas, and some of them relate to some of the issues I talked about in the last post, so I would love to hear what anyone thinks. Also, the pics posted here are of the IMA and of the views I have on the bus on the way to work. I will stick the website up too if anyone wants to check out what it is all about, I think it can be translated into English… if not I will work on it!
http://www.imarabe.org/
Memoir du stage Ideas:
1) In the debate over the “French national identity” which revolves around issues that have come up since the end of colonialism, particularly after WWII when lots of north African (arab) immigrants began to come to france… but their culture was very different. Now today second and third generation French citizens (the children and grand children of these immigrants) continue to struggle with this cultural clash, personally and on a political level as well. Debates in France rage over things like headscarves, le voile integral, laicite and identity in general… all these debates seem to revolve around cultural differences which have entered into the political sector. What role can/should a cultural institution like the IMA play in finding solutions to these socio-political struggles which many Franco-arab citizens face in France and all over the world?
This is kind of rough… and I get to meet with my prof/tutor this week to talk it out so I will keep you all updated as the ideas evolve, progress and begin to take more solid shape.
Bisous!
Salut, copine! sounds like you're making fantastic strides, as is your custom! loved your piece on Paris being home, too - will have Mac read it! i can hardly believe all of the great goings-on that go on in the Institut du Monde Arabe - i just found out that I'll be going with prof. Schindler to Israel next winter term (you will appreciate how _huge_ this is - ground zero (in all sorts of ways) of the crusades - yaaaa! i still have to pinch myself). all this to say, i will be taking you out for lots of coffees and be staying glued to your blog to find out about things like the 2-day Jerusalem conference you attended. i'd be doing that anyway. :-) idea #1 sounds good - you could even go policy with it: make recommendations - maybe the IMA should be on Facebook and other social networking sites which are a bit more color/culture blind; maybe the IMA could host more social events (but they already do, don't they?). your comments about American friendliness are really interesting - wonder if we could mesh some of that with French institutional culture!
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