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O Toulouse
- --Anna Cumbie, editor
Improved Transportation will make Toulouse more charming
- The future students of Dickinson in France are going to enjoy a downtown Toulouse completely different from what we know now and what past students have known. The inhabitants of Toulouse and its tourists have always flocked downtown on sunny days, but with all of the comings and goings around the cafés at Esquirol and at the Capitol, the streets and sidewalks are often hard to deal with on bike or on foot.
- After the opening of the second metro line, however, these troublesome roads will be extensively re-assessed. Having recognized the convenience of the soon-to-be Line B of Toulouse’s metro system, the city’s mayor has asked for urbanization proposals that would change the layout of Toulouse’s major roads in order to make pedestrian life easier. Due to several timing issues with the work being done on the metro and the delayed choice of a winning proposal, however, the winner won’t be chosen until 2008. As a result, Alsace Lorraine will have to change temporarily before the winner is announced.
- In charge of the changes that will be made to one of Toulouse’s most well known roads is Pierre Roca d’Huyteza. A Toulousan himself, d’Huyteza must certainly be aware of the lack of sidewalk space in such a crowded city. Thanks to his vision, Alsace Lorraine will soon boast a sidewalk width of 9 meters and will no longer be crammed with buses, cars, scooters and strollers. The new Alsace Lorraine will be a one-way street, and what’s more, Toulouse’s buses will all be detoured towards Toulouse’s bigger boulevards.
- For those who are already familiar with Toulouse, it’s difficult to imagine Alsace Lorraine and Rue de Metz without the annoying noise of honking buses. Even more difficult to picture is that these chaotic roads might be more welcoming of pedestrians. That’s not to say, however, that we won’t be jealous of the next wave of Dickinson students who’ll have the chance to take advantage of these improvements.
- --Candace Casey
KKK outfits and drunk frogs : a Spanish religious procession
- I left for my host mother’s house in L’Escala, Spain, with a plan to waste my days there under the Spanish sun, strolling on the village’s gorgeous beaches. I didn’t want to see anything educational. All I wanted to do was order a sangria and look at the ocean.
- So on Wednesday, the 4th of April, Candace Casey,’08, and I joined my host mother in her tired and extremely noisy car and we left for vacation. It rained during the whole trip, and when we arrived in L’Escala the sun was hiding a wall of grey. No question, then, of tanning on the beach.
- Robbed of my chance to learn nothing, I learned very quickly that the Catalan region in which we were staying offered a rich and unique variety of things to do and see, with or without the sun.
- Since it was almost Easter—and Spain is still a very devout Catholic nation—the Saints’ Week processions were to take place during our time in the area. We made the trip to Verges, a small nearby village that is the last in all of Spain to include in its Saints’ Week processions a Dance of the Dead.
- After spending an hour searching the crowded central square of Verges for a good spot from which to view the procession, I began to hear a faint drumming sound that seemed to be approaching, though I couldn’t see anything through the crowd that had gathered to watch the procession. A few minutes went by, and suddenly soldiers began marching into the square, wearing old costumes in red and gold and carrying spears. They marched slowly, following the cadence of the drummers. Next came Jesus, carrying his cross, and the group re-enacted a Bible scene in Catalan, a regional language that is completely apart from Spanish, despite many similarities in the sounds of the two languages. Aside from the word “sangria,” I don’t know any Catalan or Spanish, and thus understood nothing of the re-enactment. I wondered to myself whether it would be a good idea to study the Bible a little bit. At least that way I would have gotten the sense of what I was seeing, instead of constantly having to ask Candace what was happening.
- Once Jesus and the soldiers had passed by, I saw costumes that I hoped never to see outside of library books on the cruelty of man. Roughly thirty children arrived in front of us, all dressed in white costumes exactly like those worn by the KKK in the United States. Among the “oohs” and “ahs” of the proud parents and happy crowd around us, Candace and I were sure that we had fallen into another dimension. The children—seeming a little tired by the hours of marching and waiting that the procession entailed—advanced little by little, holding candles in their hands and looking dazed. Through the eye holes in their terrifying costumes, they seemed cute enough.
- After the…interesting children came the Dancers of the Dead. They wore black costumes on which skeletons had been painted, and skulls over their heads. Oddly enough, after what we had just seen, Candace and I found these skeletons kind of cute and much less intimidating. :They danced along in front of us, following a much slower and more haunting rhythm than that of the soldiers. Consisting of a series of leaps from one spot to another and a kind of hesitating bounce on one leg before the next jump, the Dance of the Dead made its dancers look like a large group of drunk frogs.
- Having seen tipsy frogs and several little members of the Spanish KKK, I can say without hesitation that nothing compares to religious processions in Spain. The children, of course, had no affiliation with the KKK, and the costumes they wore pre-date the supremacist group’s existence by many years. But the fact that Candace and I were the only ones to be shocked at all by the children’s costumes made me feel, at first, like an American too far from home. A few days later, however, the idea that parts of the world don’t attach any kind of terrible significance to a pointed white hat that hides the face started to reassure me—maybe I’m not too far from home.
- --Kitt Squire
Birthdays in May
- 8 : Kacy
- 13 : Julia
- 20 : Heidi
Birthdays in June
- 25 : Meredith
- 27 : Torie
Birthdays in July
- 1 : Nora
- 4 : Kitt
- 6 : Anna
- 15 : Candace
- 25 : Nicholas
Birthdays in August
- 22 : Kate
Cliquez ici pour retourner à la version française.
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Sunny Days : Jardin Royal
L’Ecole de Commerce de Toulouse : A Potential Partner
- --Moustapha Minte
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