Month: April 2019

Welp, my last post was supposed to happen mid-April, but WordPress was having issues. As a result, two posts in one day! thumbs up emoji

Adding on to this idea of errors, this post will be a bit short because I should have been more specific about my trip to Cinque Terre. Rather, about what came before that.

We had gone to Pisa in the morning as well as Lucca where we got to take your typical photos:

So that was pretty cute in my opinion. As one can see, these perspective photos really creeped into my creative style (the cute sandwich picture from the last post is evident of that).

Just this past weekend, I got a taste of the good life and tried a wine tasting for the first time here in Italy!

It was quite the interesting tour, and I got to learn a little bit about wine. However, I still sort of felt a bit lost when it came to tasting the subtle flavors and hints of oak and whatnot.

That being said, I can certainly tastes the differences between olive oil flavors. Who has the best? Certainly this restaurant called Dietro Le Quinte which is super close to the Annex and has a fantastic salad of mackerel, salmon, and about a million other super fresh ingredients. The main focus, however, is the delicious (unsalted!) bread dipped in their slightly spicy olive oil.

Yum.

I won’t lie and say that depression has been something that I struggled with during my time here in Italy, because it certainly has. It is the voice that whispers in my ear to just give up when something does not work the first time, and questions the validity in trying to really do anything at all. There were a few points during the semester when I would lie in bed, not thinking that there was really anything for me to do.

I miss a few things more than others, but the most important so far has been my individual freedom to do whatever I please as a mature adult. There is not really a kitchen here for me to cook nor a true private place that I can go escape to because at any given moment my intimate alone time could be intruded on. That has kind of set me on edge.

However, I have found ways to cope: creative outlets, specific periods of time for being alone, exercise, and plenty of water.

And while being social can be incredibly draining, it can be very fulfilling when done right.

At the beginning of this month, OU in Arezzo had it’s Big Event Celebration. The leader of the community and outreach committee approached me one night after having seen my doodles on the CA desk during my boring shift and asked if I’d like to help paint a mural. I know little to nothing about paints, but I agreed. Days of coordination with my new dear friend Elena and 8 hours of painting later, we now pride ourselves in the mural we left in Arezzo.

Just after that, I ran my first official 5K which was also incredibly fulfilling. The joy of hearing people shout my name at the finish line was just enough to help me push through at the end like the champion I am. I began to really develop a sense of belonging to this community, and that second wind of energy brought me out of my depressive state. It lasted for quite a long time.

Riding this wave of enthusiasm for life, we took to the hills and enjoyed a weekend in Cinque Terre!

We hiked over 13 miles that day and went up and down 290 flights of stairs. Needless to say, my feet were really aching after that (and my knee was not that happy either…)

I’ll be hard-pressed to find a town filled with more beauty, for sure.

 

Il y a plusieurs mois, j’ai écrit un article de blog que j’ai nommé « Le Commencement d’une petite histoire de la cuisine française » (si vous voulez le lire, voici le lien : http://jaboyd.oucreate.com/ uncategorized/le-commencement-dune-petite-histoire-de-la-cuisine-francaise/). J’ai écrit deux articles avant d’être distraite par d’autres sujets, donc je n’ai jamais achevé ma tentative de faire la chronique de la cuisine française. (Désolée si vous l’attendiez avec impatience – peut-être un jour je le finirai !) Mais récemment, j’avais la chance de connaitre quelque chose de mieux que la recherche sur Internet : j’ai aidé à préparer (et consommer !) un vrai repas français. Je peux vous avouer que l’expérience vaut mieux que tout connaissance cérébrale.

Cet événement était organisé par une professeure d’échange française appelée Louise. Elle vient de Clermont-Ferrand, la ville où je vise à étudier dans le printemps de 2020, et elle enseigne le français ici à OU pendant cette année scolaire. Elle a voulu faire un grand repas français pour ses amis, et j’avais l’honneur d’être invitée et de pouvoir aider avec la préparation. Je ne savais pas combien j’allais apprendre pendant cette soirée !

Je suis arrivée à la cuisine où se préparait le repas vers 17h30. Louise et un ami avaient commencé à cuisiner vers 16h, et ils avaient déjà fait une mousse au chocolat et du pâte pour des crêpes salés et sucrés. Ils étaient en train de préparer des champignons à la grecque, une tarte aux fruits, et de la béchamel. Quand j’ai entendu la description des autres plats qu’ils visaient à préparer, j’étais étonnée par l’ambition des projets de Louise, et j’ai commencé à aider avec gaieté. Louise était une superbe chef de cuisine. Elle nous a instruit quoi faire, et nous l’avons obéit, tout en apprenant beaucoup sur la cuisine. Voici une liste des plats qu’on avait fait :

1)      Une mousse au chocolat – Le nom s’explique. Une délicieuse mélange d’œufs et du chocolat. Voici une recette si ça vous intéresse : https://www.marmiton.org/recettes/recette_mousse-au-chocolat-facile_13585.aspx

2)      Des crêpes salés – Ce sont comme les crêpes sucrés, mais au lieu d’ajouter les fruits ou du chocolat, on a ajouté un œuf, de la crème, du bacon, et des champignons. Vraiment trop bon ! Voici une recette (non pas celle que nous avons utilisés, puisque Louise la connait par cœur, mais quand même une bonne recette : https://www.marmiton.org/recettes/recette_idees-de-garnitures-pour-crepes-salees_33107.aspx)

3)      Des crêpes sucrés – On les a mangés avec des myrtilles, des mûres, des fraises, du Nutella, et de la beurre à cacahuètes. (Voir https://www.marmiton.org/recettes/recette_crepes-sucrees_85005.aspx)

4)      Du tapenade – Une spécialité du sud de la France, fait des olives et des anchois et mangé avec du pain. Je l’ai mangé souvent quand j’étais en Provence, donc j’étais heureuse quand j’ai vu Louise la préparer. Voici la recette qu’on a utilisé : https://www.marmiton.org/recettes/recette_tapenade-noire_21786.aspx

5)      Une quiche aux poireaux – Délicieuse ! Voici la recette : https://www.marmiton.org/recettes/recette_quiche-aux-poireaux_24393.aspx

6)      Une tarte aux pommes – On était inventif avec cette tarte en mélangeant de la rhubarbe avec les pommes dans la compote. C’était trop bon ! Voici une recette la tarte aux pommes, et soyez inventif aussi en mélangeant d’autres fruits dans la compote si vous voulez : https://www.marmiton.org/recettes/recette_tarte-aux-pommes_18588.aspx

7)      Des croissants au jambon – Faire ces croissants étaient ma tâche, et ils étaient tellement intéressant à faire. Être juste, on avait acheté les croissants eux-mêmes du supermarché, donc ils n’étaient pas vraiment authentiques. Mais on avait fait une béchamel délicieuse (avec du muscade, ce que je n’aurais jamais pensé à ajouter !), puis on a assemblé les croissants avec du jambon, plein de béchamel, plein de fromage, et du sel et poivre. On les a mis dans le four (pendant un peu trop longtemps, mais ca allait), et ils étaient délicieux. Voici une recette sans la béchamel : https://www.marmiton.org/recettes/recette_croissants-au-jambon-express_20209.aspx. Et voici la recette pour la béchamel : https://www.marmiton.org/recettes/recette_bechamel_23880.aspx

8)      Des champignons à la grecque – Trop bon ! Voici la recette : https://www.marmiton.org/recettes/recette_champignons-a-la-grecque-facile-et-rapide_82781.aspx

(Je crois que c’était tout. On avait fait tellement beaucoup de plats que c’est possible que j’ai oublié un, mais si je m’en souviens, je l’ajouterai à la liste.)

La cuisine a duré jusqu’à tard dans la nuit. Beaucoup d’amis sont venus pour nous aider à tout mangé, et on s’amusait beaucoup. On a bavardé, joué des jeux de société, et profité de toute la nourriture délicieuse. C’était vraiment une soirée qui restera dans ma mémoire, et j’espère un jour (bientôt peut-être !) de refaire certains de ces recettes pour mes amis américains.

(Crédit de photo: https://www.groupon.fr/deals/las-de-la-crepe-1)

This semester I decided to do as much travelling as possible before I have to leave for good. So this post is an accumulation of all my adventures from the last three months.

In the second weekend of February, I went on my first grand adventure. There is a place called Conisbrough Castle about a two hour’s bus ride away from me, so I hopped on the bus on a Saturday to go see it. It turns out that it’s actually used as a sort of park for kids now. I arrived and found several families picnicking in the old castle grounds within the walls, and kids running around playing knights and princesses and dragons. Technically though, Conisbrough was never actually a castle. It was actually a hunting borough, hence the name: Conisbrough means king’s borough. The place is quite small,  and only the keep (inner tower typically built for defensive purposes) and parts of the outer wall remain.

My next adventure was the next weekend. I told a friend at church about my travel to Conisbrough, and she said she was actually planning a trip for the next weekend. So I went with her and her French flatmate to Whitby, which is a town on the eastern coast. There is an old abbey there, at the top of a cliff on the coast. It was absolutely beautiful there.

In March, I joined a friend from physics to go hiking in the Peak District with a couple of her friends. The Peak District is a huge national park with tons of hills and gorgeous views. It’s an extremely popular place for hikers of all abilities, as well as rock climbers is some areas. It was extremely windy and cold, but still lots of fun.

The following weekend, I went on a university-sponsored trip to Llandudno, Wales, and it turned out that my friend’s two friends were on the trip too, so I got to spend the whole time with them instead of on my own. Our bus broke down for an hour half-way there, it ended up pouring raining pretty much the entire time, and all the locals said it was too dangerous to hike up to the famous mine, but we had fun getting miserably wet anyway.

A weekend or two after after that, I met up with my physics friend and her friends to go to this volunteer dog-walking place and an alpaca farm (two different places). You can see my physics friend with the dog in the background of the first picture. It was a beautiful day out, so the dog-walking place was quite busy. Apparently the dog we walked had already been out twice that day, and we passed him off to someone else when we left. The alpaca farm was a small volunteer place. I guess they really only have the alpacas for the fun of having alpacas. They don’t get enough wool to sell, but they have a group of people who spin it into yarn each year and make hats for the regular volunteers.

Three weeks of March were designated for Easter break. I spent the first half-week in Paris with a missionary friend of mine who lives there. We went to the Louvre and Musée d’Orsay. I saw the Mona Lisa (albeit from across the room), and I discovered that I can actually appreciate van Gogh’s work. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of myself there, but I did get a picture of a giant hazelnut macaroon I ate. It was quite delicious. The second photo is the skyline from the famous Musée d’Orsay clock.

I flew home from Paris to finally see my family again (I didn’t get home over Christmas because I was busy travelling with my sister). It was quite amusing when I first arrived in the airport. The first thing I thought was that everyone sounded weird and had very unsophisticated accents. I guess I’ve been in England too long. Then again, my first layover was in Chicago, so maybe it was just the Chicago accent that was bothering me.

My one requirement for while was home was that I wanted to see a good Kansas thunderstorm (it might rain a lot in England, but apparently thunder just doesn’t exist). Annoyingly, the weather seemed to be taunting me the whole time. I traveled back and forth between Topeka, Wichita, and Norman during the two weeks, and it seemed that each city would get a giant thunder storm as soon as I left it. I actually joked that there was a weather conspiracy against me. I saw the rainbow when travelling from Wichita to Topeka. My grandma said that it started pouring rain and thundering and lightning literally five minutes after I left. All I got was a little rain on the drive up, but the rainbow was nice at least. But finally, two nights before I left, the weather decided to be nice to me. I woke up at about 2 in the morning because my room was literally shaking from the thunder. Now that’s what I call a good storm. The lightning was probably at least 4 miles away, yet is still managed to produce thunder loud enough to make my mom think we were having an earthquake.

I returned to the UK via Scotland (Edinburgh to be specific) so I do just a little more travelling before returning to school. I did all the typical tourist-y things in Edinburgh, but my favorite part was actually travelling out to see some old, underappreciated castles. They were all huge, and filled with tons of history. It was so cool to be wandering around such ancient, surprisingly well-preserved, remains. I spent hours just wandering around, trying to find all the nooks and crannies. Scotland is now definitely on the top of my list of places I want to revisit.

              Les poèmes, les langues étrangères, les hors d’œuvres—une combination attirante, n’est-ce pas ? Je pense que oui. La semaine dernière, je suis allée à un événement du département de langues modernes ici à OU qui s’est vanté d’une telle combination. Cet événement annuel vise à honorer les réussites des étudiants sous-gradués et gradués dans le département. Parfois, une telle sorte d’événement peut sentir longue et inintéressante, mais non pas celui-ci, grâce au M.C. exceptionnel, Dr. Robert Lemon. Dr. Lemon est plein d’esprit et béni d’une imagination active et un don pour écrire les poèmes. Pour introduire chaque professeur, Dr. Lemon a récité un poème comique qu’il a écrit à propos du prof. Les poèmes, couplés avec son accent anglais et son sens d’humour auto-dérisoire, ont fait rigoler l’audience pendant toute la nuit.

              De plus que l’humour de Dr. Lemon, j’ai apprécié cet événement pour plusieurs autres raisons. J’ai été émerveillée en entendant les réussites des autres étudiants, et leur passion pour les langues et les cultures étrangères m’ont inspirée. Puisque j’étudie le français, je ne vois régulièrement que les autres étudiants de français. J’ai donc chéri cette soirée où des étudiants de toutes les langues enseignées ici à OU s’étaient réunis. Il y avait des étudiants de russe, d’allemand, d’espagnol, de chinois, de japonais, d’hébreu, d’arabique, de linguistique, et plus. Quelques étudiants étudient quatre ou même cinq langues par une combination de majeurs et mineurs. De plus, la solidarité entre les profs et les étudiants, malgré toutes les différences de langue maternelle, de pays d’origine, et d’études scolaires, m’a encouragée.

              Ma partie préférée de la nuit, c’était l’annoncement du gagnant du « Cecil W. Woods Memorial Award ». Ce prix est donné chaque année à un/e prof dans le département pour honorer l’excellence dans l’enseignement. Les délibérations sont faites en secret, donc personne sauf le comité ne sait qui va le recevoir. J’ai pu apercevoir que c’était un grand honneur, un qui est désiré par chaque prof dans le département. J’ai réjoui avec ceux qui m’entouraient quand Dr. Dylan Herrick, prof de linguistique, l’a reçu. Son étonnement et sa joie humble étaient évidents sur son visage. Je ne le connais pas, mais j’étais assise à côté d’une amie qui étudie la linguistique, et elle m’affirmait qu’il est un prof remarquable. C’était un moyen idéal pour terminer une soirée charmante.

(Crédit de photo : https://www.planitplus.net/JobProfileImages/448.jpg)

I know it’s been forever since my last post, but don’t worry–my GEF requirements mean that the next week or so will be full of all of the updates I didn’t post earlier this semester. This spring has been crazy busy for me; with a full workload in my classes, my job in the Honors College writing center, and all of the time that goes into being president of a club, I feel like I haven’t stopped moving since Christmas. But in the little bit of free time I have had I’ve actually been able to attend quite a few events here on campus.

One of the events I went to in March was a talk given by chef Rick Bayless titled “A Path of Passion”. Bayless is a renowned chef who specializes in Mexican cuisine and has various restaurants in the Chicago area. He grew up in his family’s tiny barbecue restaurant in middle-of-nowhere, Oklahoma where, after tasting barbeque from restaurants in other states and determining that we DEFINITELY have the best barbecue in the country, Bayless was taught a respect for regional cuisine. He was first introduced to the world of authentic Mexican food during a family vacation to Mexico City. After seeing the country come alive through the dishes he tasted, Bayless returned to the U.S. and started his bachelor’s in Spanish at OU. He viewed the language as an entrance into the culture, and from there he further developed his passion for Mexico.

After he graduated, Bayless decided to pursue cooking rather than continue with Spanish. He returned to Mexico and, through the experience of eating with the people of the pueblos, began to shift his ideas on how to enter into a culture. He started to see food and flavors as the ultimate doors to another culture, connecting people through the visceral experience of eating. Once he became famous and began opening his own restaurants, Bayless used this perspective to confront the stereotypes that came with his attempts to start a restaurant of gourmet Mexican food rather than a cheap taco stand. It was difficult to have patrons come in used to Mexican food that didn’t cost more than $10 or so and expecting it to taste like the Americanized food that they were familiar with. But Bayless stuck to his values and continues to make authentic dishes that, as he explained it, taste exactly like what an abuela in one of the pueblos would make in her kitchen, just with a modern twist.

One of the final thoughts that Bayless left the group with was an idea that for me was the most important moral-of-sorts that he brought up during his hour with us. Cooking is a way of communicating, and if one wishes to do either well–cooking or communicating–they must go into the experience open and without preconceptions. Even when it comes down to something as seemingly simple as food, our preconceptions can block us from trying something new or enjoying something that may not fit with our initial expectations. More importantly, the idea of openness and eschewing preconceptions of other people, places, or groups is something that I think is severely lacking in many cross-cultural experiences today. But even though it is a serious and widespread problem, it’s really an easy fix; putting in a little effort to set aside stereotypes and step out of our comfort zone can have really positive results for both us and for the people we are able to connect with because of our decision to be open-minded. As my mom always said when I was younger and didn’t want to eat a new meal she had made, “Just try it, you’ll probably like it!”

I had the opportunity this year once again to attend a session during Global Engagement Day. This is of the days within the semester that I really look forward since I always have gotten some valuable information from past Global Engagement Days. While there were many session with interesting topics to choose from, I ultimately chose to go with the session that seemed the most helpful for me as a graduating senior. The session I attended focused on two programs offered with an international emphasis. These two programs are the Critical Languages Scholarship (CLS) Program and the Fulbright Student Program.

The Critical Languages Scholarship Program is one that I have considered applying for in the past. Its emphasis is to send students on a summer-long intensive language program. There are several reasons why this is an interesting program for me personally. I have always had a passion for learning languages which was instilled upon me by my mother. In fact, when I studied abroad in Europe I was always excited to be in a country where I had the opportunity to be completely surrounded by a language that I did not entirely understand. Also, I believe that the fastest way to learn a language is to be completely immersed as much as possible. The whole point of the program is that there is total immersion as well as intense language courses throughout the course of a summer.

The second program discussed during the session was the Fulbright Student Program. While I will not be applying for the CLS Program since I am about to graduate, I am currently planning on applying for the Fulbright Student Program. I was therefore even more engaged during this part of the session. Fulbright overs an even wider range of countries to choose from when compared to the CLS Program. Since the CLS Program is restricted to the languages that are deemed by the US government to be critical, it does not have as many countries in the program. The Fulbright program offers two different opportunities: the English Teaching award and the study/research award. I personally will be applying for the study/research award.

I was once again able to gather some valuable information during the session I chose this year for Global Engagement Day. While I had previously heard a lot of the information presented, it was really valuable to hear from current Fulbright and CLS Program recipients regarding how they approached their individuals applications for the respective program. I believe that is it always good to get an insider look into how a successful application is structured.