Last Night in the States (2012)

It's summertime and I'm leaving Ithaca, New York, in order to travel to Tours, France.  Sounds familiar?  Unlike last year, when I first began this blog in order to communicate with friends and family, I won't be separated from my beloved Ithaca for five long months, but only 10 long weeks.  I'm flying out of JFK airport tomorrow morning at 9:00 am, and arriving in Tel-Aviv Airport.  I will spend until June 18th in Tzfat with Rabbi Eli and a few other students, visiting historical sites in Israel, and participating in some Yeshiva-style learning.  I am extremely excited, and can't wait for the opportunity to really immerse myself in this for a few weeks.

Following this, I'm leaving for Tours, France, the hardest city in the world to search for on Google.  I will be spending eight weeks there making a regional study of the deportations of Jews in the 1940s (see my entry "Jews of Tourraine Proposal" for details).  If necessary, I may also travel to Paris, home of the Mémorial du Shoah, and its extensive archives.

I'm keeping this short so that I can get to bed tonight.  Expect more from me, soon.  Peace out, everyone: I love you all, whether you're French, Israeli, Malay, American, Chinese, Costa-Rican, Russian, Jamaican, or reject national labels.

~JD

"Slave labor virtually required single-crop farming that left the ground bare and vulnerable to erosion for much of the year.  Reliance on a single crop precluded both crop rotation and developing a stable source of manure... Once established, slavery made monoculture an economic necessity -- and vice-versa" (David Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, p. 136).

Last Night in the States

Ready to leave tomorrow for France, I decided to succinctly describe itinerary of my trip, and explain the creation of this blog. I have enrolled in two dovetailing educational programs, both in France, that will together last until wintertime, around five months from now.

The first is at the Institut de Touraine, in Tours, France. There, I will study the French language, live with a French family (les Avertin), and, I hope, explore castles on the weekends. The program will begin on Monday morning, and will end at the end of August.

The second is at the Univeristy of Paris VII (maybe also I and IV), in Paris, where I will arrive on the fourth of September. I hope to study French history and francophone literature. I will neither know where I am living nor what classes I will take, before my arrival. I will not even know when I will returning, although I will probably fly back between mid-December and early January.

If I am lucky, I will arrive back in time to turn to go on the Birthright Israel program with Sam Moss. I can only hope that the program will accept both of us, and that I will have enough turnaround time between the two trips.

In this blog, I will communicate my French experience to my friends and family in a way less exhausting than individual e-mails, and less intrusive than mass-emails. I will probably update the blog no more than once a day, and no less than once a week. I might also end up discussing politics, books, etc.

I have a bookish personality, and, as I do in my personal journal, will addend to each entry a line from a book that I have read since I last posted an entry. I do not necessarily agree with the opinions expressed in these quotations: I may record because I happen to find them pithy, interesting, true, false, or just amusing.

I hope to keep you all amused with my misadventures!

~JD

"To bring up children is perilous; success is full of trouble and care, failure is unsurpassed by any other pain." ~Democritus