#louis vincent

[elarafritzenwalden]

Apartment building at Avenue Théodore-Weber, 5-7 Les Eaux-Vives - Geneva, Switzerland; 1931

Louis Vincent, Jean-Jacques Honegger (photography by Frédéric Boissonnas)

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via "Das Werk" 20 (1933)

[panesandcasements]

6

The number of classes that I will be attending this week, my final week of teaching in the lycée.

[panesandcasements]

Notes from the past week

Lesson plans from last week: introduction to Jackson Pollock and theory of his work; speaking about your internship; intonation practice; sharing memories with foreign pen pals; a David Sedaris text.

Lessons learned from lesson plans: if I am terribly excited about a presentation topic (namely, theory behind Pollock's work), the lesson will not go over terribly well, because I like overly conceptual things that do not interest normal people.

Somewhat more obscure Christian holidays marked: Epiphany. I had a meal with M.'s family and J. to mark the occasion. The meal consisted of raclette (which is itself a type of cheese, which is then melted and placed on top of potatoes and eaten along with charcuterie) and une Galette des Rois (literally "wafer or cake of kings" or better known as French king cake), made from puff pastry and frangipane, an almond filling. La fève, a small trinket, is baked into the galette. Whoever finds the trinket is then crowned "king." 

via

As per tradition, the youngest individual in attendance hides beneath the table and, the cake having been divided into a number of shares equal to the number of guests, decides in what order the guests are to receive their portions. M.'s younger sister had the honor and was nice enough to have me served third of six.

It was quite surreal to hear an unusually high-pitched voice sounding from the beyond, as it seemed.

M.'s mother found la fève and was then crowned "king." I found my consolation in having had the opportunity to eat French pastry.

Today's classes: all three were cancelled, one due to the prof using my absence as a punishment to the students, another simply being a no-show, and a third cancelling due to an administrative meeting.

Reshuffled afternoon activities: I went and bought two books, one a theory of art by Wassily Kandinsky, the other a work by Claude Lévi-Strauss on so-called "savage thought."

Tomorrow's classes: something about stereotypes plus another go at the "explaining Pollock in English to 18 year-old Francophones."