Campus in the Snow

My favorite building on campus - a colonial-style building that houses the history department.

The Library

Side view of the Library

Main Building

Alice's Wonderland

Year of the Cow

Today is Lunar New Year in many Asian countries, and 2009 is the year of the ox or the cow. So in celebration, I decided to post some images of cows and oxen. The first is my own picture, a hanging calendar I got for free in a Chinese/Thai/Vietnamese restaurant in Italy, and the other images are from Flickr.

Gung Hay Fat Choy! Xin Nian Kuai Le!

Making Crêpes

Last night I made an International Dinner with several friends who also just came back from studying abroad. We started out with an Italian red wine (Montepulciano d'Abruzzo), French brie cheese and crackers, then moved on to Yorkshire Pudding and Chicken Tikka Masala from England (while the chicken is certainly an Indian dish, it's very much a part of the British cuisine), and an Italian arugula/pear/walnut/Pecorino cheese salad. Although we were quite stuffed at that point, we then had ragù (a northern Italian meat sauce) with ziti pasta with a Spanish red wine. Even though none of us studied in Spain, several of us visited Barcelona, so we made an exception.

After watching the animated version of Anastasia, in honor of our friend who studied in St. Petersburg, we ended the meal with fabulous strawberry nutella crêpes from France. It was my first time making crêpes, and they were so good and so easy that I now want to experiment with different versions, both sweet and savory.

One of our beautiful crêpes

While this picture is from Flickr, I think it accurately represents the scrumptiousness of our crêpes. We were too busy inhaling them to photograph them!

Here's the very simple recipe we used:
1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. milk
1/4 c. lukewarm water
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 pinch salt
Mix and let stand at least 30 minutes. Cook over medium heat. Makes about 6 in a large pan.


I'll leave you with a quote I just came across in a reading for one of my classes, about language acquisition and the relationship non-native speakers have to languages that they study. The quote is from Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, spoken by a German character speaking in his non-native language of French:

Avec toi je préfère cette langue à la mienne, car pour moi, parler français, c'est parler sans parler, en quelque manière - sans responsabilité, ou comme nous parlons en rêve. Tu comprends?

With you, I prefer this language to mine, because for me, to speak in French is to speak without speaking, in a sense - without responsibility, as we speak in a dream. Do you understand?

At least for me, it does a good job of epitomizing what experiences using a foreign language can be - almost unreal. And I think that we all experienced a bit of that dreamlike, intangible entrance into another world during our months studying abroad.

Inauguration Day

Watching the screening of the inauguration coverage at my college, the charged atmosphere was infectious. People cheered, people laughed out loud, some people even cried. And President Obama, the fabulous orator that he is, got a standing ovation after his speech.

These pictures aren't quite worthy of being posted, but they're the best I could do.




It's a good day in the US of A.

Paris/New York exhibit

Over winter break, I visited the Museum of the City of New York for the first time since a fourth grade class trip. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to go back, because I love New York City history, and I’m glad I finally did. Located on 103rd and 5th Ave, right across from Central Park, the museum is actually New York mansion from 1930, with an large entrance receded from the sidewalk. The museum’s permanent collection includes historical New York art, photographs, trade artifacts and models, theater collections, toys, clothing, and models of rooms in New York homes throughout four centuries.

I went to the museum specifically to see a special exhibition on view through February 22nd called “Paris/New York: Design Fashion Culture 1925-1940.” The professor of an art history seminar I’m taking this semester recommended that we go see the exhibit if we got a chance, because of its relevance to the course. This is the course description:
Designs for Living: Modernity in Hollywood Movies. This seminar investigates how American films of the 1920s and 1930s used stylish costumes, hairstyles, body language and settings to embody the theme of modernity. The films of Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, among other stars, are examined, along with the work of art directors like Cedric Gibbons and Hans Dreier. We focus on issues of gender, consumerism, class mobility and other social transformations of early twentieth-century America.

Also basing itself on the theme of modernity, the Paris/New York exhibit explores the relationship and cultural exchange between the cities in the years between the two world wars. Paris was renowned for its elegance and cultural refinement, while New York was modern, cutting-edge, and daring. The exhibit begins with the 1925 World Exposition in Paris and ends with the 1939 World Exposition in New York. It features photographs, original clothing (read: dresses from the ‘20s and ‘30s that you just want to steal off the mannequins) and art deco furniture designs, and explored concepts of modern architecture and living spaces. It presents the rivalry and mutual admiration that Paris and New York developed in the years between 1925 and 1940, which had a great influence on each society’s artistic tastes and ideas of modernism.

If you get a chance to go to the exhibit, you can download a free podcast of the audio tour and listen it on an mp3 player while visiting the show – it adds a lot to the experience, for free.