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Wednesday,
May 30 2001
After a quiet weekend
with beautiful and hot summer weather, we resumed classes on Monday.
We continue to have classes every weekday morning, changing the
rythm with twice-weekly conversation classes to supplement the
French 315 Culture course.
After classes on Tuesday,
a number of the students picnicked in the park behind the town
hall. The picture at lower right shows Chris assembling a tiny
"Kinder Surprise" toy, a strange little unassembled
animated plastic toy that one has to assemble from very brief
picture instructions. These toys, which are nestled inside chocolate
eggs, are not available in the US, as American children are apparently
unable to refrain from swallowing the tiny plastic parts. European
children, on the other hand, seem not to have this problem, and
our students have as yet not had any problems either.
 
Tuesday afternoon,
after the picnic (and a spirited session of frisbee), we took
advantage of the excellent weather to go up into the mountains,
taking our chartered bus to the city of Thônes and the nearby
Col des Aravis mountain pass.
 
Our first stop was at the Glières
National Cemetery, where the students learned of the 1944 battle
that preceded the D-Day invasion by some months. They examined
the names and dates on the graves of 105 young men killed by the
German Army in March 1944, noting that many were of essentially
the same age as themselves.
Our next stop was at one of the three
"Roman" bridges near Thônes. Actually medieval
structures, these bridges spanned the numerous torrents that criss-cross
the Alps, and were built so well that many still survive today.
As we walked to the bridge, a donkey started braying loudly, much
to the surprise and delight of the students who had never heard
one "for real". ("Wow, they really sound like that!")
As the donkey insistently went "hi han" (with the pronunciation
of a French donkey) Prof. Jeantet took advantage of the opportunity
to remind the students that the melodious song of the donkey can
be used as a mnemonic device to recall the correct order of French
indirect object pronouns y and en. The pictures
below show (at left) that the 800-year-old bridge, recently restored,
is plenty strong enough to support the weight of twelve UA students;
at right, one can see Kendra and the aforementioned donkey "having
a moment."
 
From the bridge, we took the bus and
started to go higher into the mountains, crossing through the
ski resort of La Clusaz, and finally all the way up to the Aravis
mountain pass, nearly one mile up.
 
We spent time walking about, admiring
the imposing mass of Mt Blanc whose peak was another two miles
higher than the spot where we stood. The cows chewed their cud
as they watched us wander around. The arythmic ringing of the
cowbells is  familiar
sound to anyone who has traveled to the French or Swiss Alps,
and will be part of our memories of that beautiful day.
We ended our visit of the Aravis pass
with a stop at a restaurant, where some students reasonably ordered
mineral water, others a banana split or Chantilly-filled crêpe...
All in all, a very good outing, marred
only by the unseasonably warm weather, with temperatures soaring
into the mid-nineties (the hottest temperatures ever recorded
locally for the month of May.)
Wednesday, pretty much the same schedule;
classes in the morning, picnic lunch, and an excursion in the
afternoon.
We started in Verthier, where we saw
an old mill race and medieval toll bridge, as well as tradtional
Savoy architecture (left, above). From Verthier, we went to the
 hermitage
at St Germain, a hole-in-the-wall which was inhabited for many
years by the monk who founded the Talloires abbey. The "grotto"
is now the site of a shrine which has been visited by two popes
as well as the local celebrity, St Francis of Sales, and the students
learned about the local practice of invoking a specific saint's
help for given problems. St Germain, who apparently served as
a spiritual form of Ritalin, is still invoked, and apparently
"comes through" quite often, if one can believe the
gifts and "thank you" plaques and notes left in the
grotto.
Going still higher, we went to the
Forclaz mountain pass, from which one can see the entire lake.
We had some refreshments and sat in the breeze at the top of the
take-off ramp used by hang-gliders.
Lake Annecy shows off an amazing
green color,
the result of minerals dissolved
in the water. The students
can be seen at the top of the green ramp at right
 From
the Forclaz mountain pass, we went to Montmin's "Seven
Fountains" shrine. Built in its present form early in the
Middle Ages (it is mentioned in a XIIth Century document), it
may well be much older: the Gauls, in the first millenium B.C.E.,
worshipped water goddesses and venerated springs. It is quite
possible that this shrine was christianized, as were many popular
pagan shrines.
 In
any case, the water of the shrine is reputed to heal dermatological
afflictions. Several of the students, judging that heat rash
and acne should be helped by the posology of the shrine's water,
applied the soothing cold liquid to their problem areas. This
was done with enthusiasm and good humor, much to the delight
of our guide and other people present.
 The
excursion closed with the visit of yet another church, in the
village of St Ferreol. The church, which is dedicated to the saint
after whom the village is named, was built in the 1840s in the
"neoclassical Sardinian" style. The interior decoration,
which consists almost entirely of trompe-l'oeil frescoes, passes
for "subdued" in comparison with the baroque churches
of the XVIIIth Century. Most of the students had never been in
such an elaborately decorated church and wondered what Baroque
churches must look like!
The tour ended about four hours after
it has started, and students went home to prepare for the Paris
trip, which is next on our agenda.
One little problem has cropped up;
Tony Rett, during an enthusiastic rollerblading session Monday,
fell and hurt his arm. A visit to the doctor today confirmed that
Tony, who previously thought of himself as unbreakable, has sustained
a hairline fracture of the right arm, which should not cripple
him too much, since he's left-handed in any case. The doctor has
ordered Tony to carry his arm in a sling for the next three weeks;
if he behaves, he won't need a cast.
Thursday morning we are taking the
high-speed TGV train in Annecy at 9:40AM, arriving in Paris at
1:52PM. We will settle into our hotel rooms that afternoon and
will start touring the city immediately afterwards.
The weather forecast for the next few
days is quite good: sunny weather in the mid-seventies, which
should allow us to cover a lot of ground without getting excessively
tired. On the schedule: Thursday afternoon and evening: learning
to use the métro; visit of the Latin Quarter, and sunset
views on the Seine. Friday, Notre Dame cathedral, the Sainte Chapelle,
the Louvre and Tuileries, Champs Elysées, Arc de Triomphe,
Eiffel Tower, as well as a sunset boat ride on the Seine. Saturday,
the Marais district in the morning; lunch with French university
students; afternoon, free time for shopping or museum visits.
Sunday, free day; recommended visits: Versailles and / or the
Orsay museum. Monday, return to the Alps. A busy few days ahead,
after which there will be just over two weeks left in the Program...
Next report
to be posted Saturday, June 2 2001 (if
the Paris phone connection works!)
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