Interviews in Lille

My week in Lille is already almost over.  I cannot believe how quickly it has flown by.  I put in a full day’s work yesterday on interviews and between them, some I got here on Tuesday and those I got in Paris I have hours of really interesting footage to work with for my project.  I have so enjoyed meeting all of the people I have interviewed and am lucky to have a reason to ask people to sit and talk with me.  It was interesting to hear the things that were mentioned by nearly everyone, some I would have guessed and others that were surprises, like the French Revolution being important to what France is today as well as paid holidays and the European Union.  And as the fellowship makes clear, I just love to hear people’s stories.

The reason I chose Lille is because one of my fellow teachers at Lane has a brother who teaches at the University of Lille who volunteered to help me out.  I have been incredibly lucky to have Chad involved with my project.  He took the time to arrange all of the interviews I have done here, which wasn’t easy since I have been interviewing many of his colleagues and students who are coming in on their summer break to meet with me.  He also invited us to stay in his home and has been organizing all of our non-interview time with discussions on culture and visits to historical locations.  Chad and his housemate, Kathleen, are both Americans who have each lived in France for nearly a decade and have had great insights from the insider/outsider perspective to add to the interviews.  My third host, Olivier, has also been incredibly gracious.  He is French and works as the head of a project to reopen an art museum here that had to be closed for expansion to house a new collection.  Olivier gave us a private tour of the empty museum and it was fascinating to hear all the explanations for and reasoning behind various aspects of the building’s design.  I love architecture’s scale and the need to be both beautiful and functional.  I hope to come back when the museum has reopened, but as great as it will be with the art I am glad to have seen it empty.

My four weeks in France end on Sunday and I have really fallen in love with it.