Ramadan in Marseille

As my friend Andrew astutely pointed out, Ramadan began a few days ago. This explains the sudden uptick in frenzy and sweet-selling at the markets in Noailles, the heavily-concentrated Arab section of Marseille. One fasts until sundown, which happens here at about 9:30 during the summer. But in addition to all the regular fruit/vegetable/olive/nut/fig/bean/battery/watch/cigarette stands that are open every day, everyone had a table full of heaping trays of honey-saturated pastries. What was interesting was that they were out already at 6:30 or so, when I was walking home from work, and thus long before sundown.

Every little store had one of these stands selling several different types of incredibly sticky, honey-covered snacks.

Dates and figs by the kilo.

I went around taking pictures, all for you, dear readers, and at first I tried to sneak around and be as surreptitious with the camera as possible. It helped that there was tons of activity on all sides, so enough people were always not looking at me that I could walk around relatively unremarkably. But after a while, standing around staring right at vendors while taking their pictures gets them to look up, so the incognito approach didn’t work for too long. What was amazing, though, is that they’d invariably be absolutely thrilled to have their picture taken. A bunch of people asked me where I was from – I said I was an American student – and everyone I talked to was more than happy to pose and make it into the annals of American photography. The guy below even gave me a piece of the cake-thing he was dishing out as a thanks for taking his picture: it had the consistency of extraordinarily granular and sticky cornbread, and tasted as though it were made entirely of honey with a token almond stuck on the top.

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See those black things? They're not chocolate chips...

Whenever I walk around Noailles (which is often, because it’s the best place to buy produce, is right near my apartment, and always has something interesting to see), there’s this tiny voice in my head that chants on repeat, “If only they knew you were American and Jewish…” Some days I look more American than others; not sure if I ever look particularly Jewish. I do unconsciously check that my star necklace is under my shirt, though, or turned around so it’s in the back and so under my hair. Honestly, it’s probably not necessary, if the American sentiment here (and in the city in general) is any indication: I have never once gotten an anti-American response, and only rarely even gotten neural, as opposed to positive, ones. People here really do seem quite accepting, especially when you’re friendly and speak French and are happy to talk. So I really do wonder about the Jewish thing and whether it would be at all an issue. The habit of hiding my star comes from my first month here the first time around, when I went to Rosh Hashana services and got adopted by a Jewish yente, who told me the city was quite anti-Semitic and so to be aware. I think (hope?) her view was perhaps a hold-over from shortly post-war times. In any case, Marseille is segregated in the sense that there are definitely distinct neighborhoods but I’ve not experienced any outright on-the-street racial conflicts.

Friends, Frenchmen, and Countrymen, lend me your eyes

Dear devoted fans, I most sincerely beg your pardon for being such a delinquent at posting. Diligent updates are officially recommencing. (By the way, I’m happily back in Marseille after 3 weeks home. It was wonderful to see as many of you as I did.)

In the elapsed time since my last writing, I have stimuli-ed, subject-ed, and analyzed an entire experiment. (More on specifics in future, more technical posts. Though is it bad form to write about un-official, un-solidified, and un-published but potentially publishable results on a forum such as this?)

I ran my subjects in Aix-en-Provence, a nearby city that wrote the definition of “quaint French town”. It’s small. It’s bursting with cafes. Three halves of three universities are located there, so it’s overflowing with hip, young Frenchmen and women. It’s upscale and slightly pretentious, with a completely effortless air of doing so. There are fountains and roundabouts and lots of sunshine, and it’s of course significantly more expensive than Marseille.

I was testing subjects in Aix because, even though the sciences part of the Université de Provence is in Marseille, the intro psych classes happen in Aix. Unsurprisingly, running French subjects is just like running American subjects, except that discussions about microphone calibration and how they’re doing the task wrong are a bit more difficult. Some subjects arrive bored to pieces, making it clear beyond all doubt that they’re only there because it’s a class requirement and the faster the experiment is over the better, good data be damned. Others actually, ya know, care, which is nice since they want to be psychologists, and are brimming over with enthusiasm and want to know all about the research and what it’s testing and my hypotheses.

Getting the subjects set up involved explaining to them what to do, in French. (Though a lot of them trotted out one solid English phrase, a favorite being “Nice to meet you.”)

Most introductory conversations ran exactly like this:
Me: Bonjour, bienvenue a l’éxperience! Ici est le microphone. Je suis presque prête.
Subject: Ah! Vous n’êtes pas française, non? (Most phrased the question this way, though one girl asked me “Tu est quoi?” = “What are you?” My response was “humaine”, which I don’t think she got.)
Me: Je suis Americaine.
Subject: Ooh, chouette! J’ai un ami/cousin/voisin qui a voyagé/etudié/habité à Miami/New York/San Franciso.

After the obligatory mention of their connection to the US, most of them proceeded to tell me I have a cool accent. What do you know? Apparently my verbal maceration of French is exotic and interesting. My favorite quote came from a guy selling calendars in the hallway of my apartment (I have no idea what he was doing there) who informed me “Vous avez un accent très, très joli!” (NB: This linguistic flattery did not convince me to buy a calendar.)

It seems obvious, but it’s something that never occurred to me before living here. In the US, I felt rather trite. Everyone is American. I felt like there wasn’t much interesting character or history behind it. But here, amazingly enough, everyone is French, and now I’m the odd one out. Suddenly being American got a lot more intriguing and patriotism-inducing.

Chouette!

Inexplicable (and some explicable) European/American Differences

Today I went to the secretary’s office to borrow a stapler, and she gave me one for my own personal use!

This was very exciting until I realized (a) I had to put the stapler together, and (b) it was unlike any stapler I’d ever seen before. There were two separate parts: the stapler-thingie (which you wield like a nutcracker, squeezing it between your fingers and the palm of your hand, instead of just whacking the top down like those good ol’ American Swingline ones) and a plunger, which was an extermely springy spring wrapped around a metal rod. It was clear this plunger was to be inserted into the stapler and was used to jam the staples themselves in. What was unclear was how exactly to make this happen, because I couldn’t get the rod to fit into any of the stapler’s crevices.

I struggled with this for a while until finally a (French) grad student came in (to inform me that there was another American in the building, a guy who had just graduated from MIT) and saved me from my misery by showing me how the thing worked. It was not my finest moment, being defeated by a stapler like that. However, it got me thinking of several quotidian differences I’ve encountered here – nothing life-shattering (tune in later once my French has improved for insightful discussions on French views of things that matter, like global warming, health care, and abortion) but still things I’ve encountered every day.

Computer paper.
At first I was annoyed at this. A4 paper is slightly longer and minutely narrower than 8.5×11″ paper, which means it hangs out the top of my folders and looks awkward. Also, since journal articles (which is all I’m printing) are scaled for 8.5×11, you get these extra margins at the bottom that just waste trees. However, I checked wikipedia (the font of all knowledge), and learned that the A-series of papers are all scaled so that (a) the ratio of the short to the long side is 1:√2 and (b) each successive size is scaled such that its short side is half that of the larger size’s long side, which makes folding and scaling up and down images much easier. This impressed me, and I realized that A4 paper is in fact logical and mathematical, and makes total sense. In fact, it is 8.5×11 paper that’s just randomly proportioned and silly. Sure enough, (again according to wikipedia), every single country in the world except for the US and Canada has adopted this standard of paper size. Wow, are we stubborn.

Stick shifts.
Everyone drives manual transmissions here, much like everyone drives not-obnoxiously-huge cars, because it’s more efficient. This is a well-known fact. However, it’s still pretty cool, walking up the hill from the lab to my apartment, to see all the cars behave a little differently. As the light turns red, it sounds like a chorus of bullfrogs has descended on the street as every car puts on its parking brake. Then when the light changes to green, and all the parking brakes go down, the entire line rolls back a few inches as they all shift into first gear.

Euros per kilogram vs. Dollars per pound.
I have simply given up bothering to attempt the conversion. Whatever peaches cost here is what they cost here, regardless of what they cost at home. Look at that mathematical prowess I claim to possess.