Échange avec la Latin School de Chicago - Octobre 2017

JOURNAL DE VOYAGE / STUDENTS’ LOG BOOK

Saturday October 14th

This saturday, after a quiet journey and some some nice surprises including flying over Greenland and its amazing scenery, we could finally see the top of some of the highest skyscrapers of downtown Chicago, embedded in a sea of clouds. We quickly managed to understand why Chicago is called "the windy city" : we were only able to land thanks to a short lull in the storm- the airport was actually closed an hour after we landed because of the strong winds and heavy rain.
Everyone of us finally met his/her partner and quickly left the airport. As the local ’Cubs’ baseball team was selected for the final series and supposed to meet the Los Angeles ’Dodgers’ the same night, some of the students were ready to spend a very lively evening with their host families...

Sunday October 15th

A to short night and a nice long day with host families

Monday October 16th (by Gabriel)

After a weird night (mainly due to jetlag), the students and faculty of Ecole Alsacienne met up at Latin School of Chicago.
Coffees drunk and ID photos taken, the French and German exchange students were warmly welcomed by the US Director Monica Rodriguez and a couple of high school students who organized a visit of the school in small groups.
The pupils of Ecole Alsacienne then went to the History Museum across the street to learn about the major time periods of Chicago’s history (Movie + Exhibit).
The French group then had lunch at the school cafeteria which is, I hope you won’t mind me saying, simply stunning.
Following this heavenly meal came an hour of class : the French pupils attended different classes including Algebra for Adèle and I. The fact that classes include no more than 15 students (or so) definitely facilitates learning…
The group then headed to the Hancock building : 343 meters of pure steel in the heart of downtown Chicago.
From the 94th floor, the view over the Windy City and Lake Michigan was just bewildering, especially on a clear day like today.
The class then walked back to school along the lake…
The exhausted (I know I was) students were then picked up by their host families and headed home, awaiting the 2nd day of their Chicago adventure…

Tuesday October 17th

The classes that we attended today :

Today, I attended two classes. I selected a lot of science classes when I filled the Google Survey so, it had to happen, and I ended up alone in some classes, although those were so great that I cannot complain.
I went to :
Honors Advanced Biology : ‘Honors’ basically means that it is the highest level of said class, and well, advanced biology means advanced biology. No need to say I was afraid of not being up to the standard and to have one hour and a half wondering what they were talking about. In fact, it went super well. The teacher gave us all the papers for today’s laboratory : “plant pigments and photosynthesis”. The other students were very nice and invited me to join one of their groups so I was able to see what was happening. I was just watching, but it didn’t prevent me from learning new vocab and a lot of stuff, like what DPIP is. The others were willing to explain to me everything I couldn’t understand because I didn’t know any of the English words and I was used to the French ones. At the end I helped them with the chronometers and the cuvettes (it might not be what your are thinking of). The way they were doing this class was very interactive and interesting. The plus ? I even made myself a new friend that I met again in my second class.
Human Anatomy and Physiology : It was my favorite class so far ! In France, we don’t have such a specified class, and as I am really into it, it was pure joy ! They were working on Melignant Melanoma. The subject itself was already super interesting, and the way the teacher was organizing his class made the whole class even more addictive ! There, I met up again with Katie, a student from the Advanced Biology class. She told me I could sit next to her and work with her. She explained to me what they did before. I’m still surprised by how welcoming Latin’s students are even if you are not in the same grade as them. We finished a bit early, but I just can’t wait to go back to this class Thursday morning ! (Alexandra)

Latin American Litterature :

The class started by listening to Game of Love by Santana. The teacher introduced the day’s agenda : a discussion. After 5 minutes of preparation, the pupils discussed their opinions (for 20 Minutes) using examples and references from the studied text. The fact that the entire class was interested significantly added to the liveliness of the class... (Gabriel)

French class :
I was in a french conversation class this morning, we were thirteen in the class and me and my friend Leonard Clay had to introduce ourselves. That was very interesting because it was so different from France, Latin’s students don’t know how to speak French after twelve years of learning… But that was really cool, students are very nice and they looove french accent.

Medical Chemistry :
In this class we were fifteen, I was with Nathan and Ariane, we studied the different forms of addiction to cafeine, heroine, cocaine,codeine, every thing in -ine). I liked this class for two reasons, first is that we don’t have this in Ecole Alsacienne so it’s new and second we learnt more about the human body. (Jules)

Modern languages :

Today, I went to a Spanish and Chinese class. I saw that in Spanish, everybody was using laptops to work and also to do the exams on a website (like Quizlet).
The Shinese level was higher than mine so I didn’t understand anything but I saw that the class was more dynamic that mine in France. There were two teams and they played games to revise words. (Hadrien)

AP Psychology :

What is stereotype threat ? It’s The risk of conforming to negative stereotypes of your own group which will impact your performances. (Gabriel)

This course is the most interesting class that I have been to since Monday.
The professor was very kind. In this course we have spoken about the stress and the various stereotypes which have an impact on our performances.
But at first we all introduced ourselves in each group that the professor formed before starting class and we talked about positive aspects of the Ecole Alsacienne.
I really enjoyed this class and how you can interact and was able to confront my points of view with different people who have a different culture from mine.
And I met very kind people and one of them had done this exchange last year.
I hope to retry this class because it was really interesting and different from those in France. (Ariane)

Today, I went to three classes, the first was an option. I was with my correspondent and it was like a big quiz about a lot of subjects ( biology, American history, literature…). After I went to psychology class, I met a lot of students and they explained to me some technical words about psychology. And my last class was modern American literature, we talked about sexuality in general and especially in a book. I like going to class in this school because it’s freer than in France and it’s easier to participate. (Valentine)

Medical chemistry

Today, I’m going to talk about the second period of my day : I attended medical chemistry. We talked about how coffee has an impact on your body and how is it composed (chemistry elements).
First we learned that when you drink alcohol and after you drink coffee, you pass out the alcohol effects but you’re still drunk. I said to the processor that drinking alcohol and then coffee is really dangerous for health care. The alcohol makes your heart be slower like vodka for example, and coffee makes your heart beat faster. So if you drink both liquids in a short amount of time it he can have a really bad impact on your body. Then we talked about addiction of coffee, the students and I presented the downsides of coffee :
Drinking too much have an impact on your teeth they become yellow and it’s harder to watch them.
When you drink coffee to wake you up, you become more tired in the afternoon because of what’s in the coffee.
You become dependent of the coffee and you need your caffeine dose every morning to wake up otherwise you have a really bad day. (Nathan)

Today I went to two classes. The first one was the “Painting Studio”. I was with Ernestine and we painted the scenery for the next theatre scene.
My second class was “Modern American Literature” they talked about the book they read and after we talked about the main character and his sexuality. The teacher was really funny. I really enjoyed this class ! (Lena)

This evening, some of the students and our teachers attended a conference at Parker school (another independent school in downtown Chicago) : journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, the famous author of the Best-seller “Between The world and Me”, was invited to talk about his last book “ We were Eight years in Power”. talked about Barack Obama’s presidency but more precisely about the african-american society’s heritage… It surprised me because, in the end, he only said the name of ‘Obama’ once to say he was a symbol of black people finally being able to access the highest spheres of the power. The real subject of the forty minutes conference was racism and how black people were in the society. What we can remember of this evening is that we are talking a lot about “White Supremacy” but that if it had been the other way around, the same thing would still have happened.
What shocked us, which wasn’t part of the conference, was at the entrance of the school, a woman handing out flyers to take down the Trump/Pence presidency...
(We also appreciated to receive a copy of Coates’s book, offered to us by the Parker School).

(Gabriel, Alexandra and Tristan)

Wednesday October 18th

Today we went to the Art Institute of Chicago and were guided by docent Julie Freidman. That was very interesting because we learnt a lot of things about American history through American art. We saw a lot of great paintings.

"My favorite painting was the Bar-room Scene, on which there are few men in a room, a man (possibly drunk) is in the middle of a tavern and tries to follow a straight line. A lonesome black man can be seen in another part of the painting. I liked this painting very much because I liked the artist and he drew the characters very well."

"My favorite painting was American Gothic by Grant Wood painted in 1930. This painting is very famous and allowed a lot of very funny reenactements. The two farmers look like very serious people but the guide told us that we can see a little wick of the woman’s hair going out of her strict style so we can imagine that she is not totally serious and sinister."

"We saw Nighthawks, it’s a painting that was made in 1942 by Edward Hopper. I love this painting because I think it is very mysterious. We don’t know what time it is, we don’t know if the light outside comes from inside of the diner or if it’s the sunlight. The characters are very interesting, we can imagine their stories, and why they are in this diner. We can see a couple, a man and a woman sitting behind the bar, they wear fancy clothes as if they were going to a party or if this was after the party. And we can see a man turning his back on us, so we can’t see his face and the painter leaves space for the imagination."

"We learnt a lot of things about American history, and some paintings were painted during the second world war like the painting I prefered which was Nighthawk by Edward Hopper. It is a very nice picture representing a bar in the night with three customers and a barman. I really like this painting because I like that painter. It was a great class where we had a lot of fun."

"My favorite painting was the famous “American Gothic” by Grant Wood. This painting is one of the most familiar images in the 20th century american art. It shows a couple of old farmers. It’s a satire of modern American culture.
We had lunch at the art institute Cafe. Then we returned to school and had class for one hour, I had art, painting studio with Lena which was very nice, then we played soccer in Lincoln park."

"My favorite painting was “Nightlife” by Archibald Moltey. In this painting, they are people who dancing and drinking, they are at a party. It’s a painting happy because they are lot of colors very cheerfuls and. There seems to have a good atmosphere. The pictures are joyful, I like them."
"Nightlife : This painting is bold and colorful. At first glance we can see warm colors like pink and red. People dance to the rhythm of the radio, drink and laugh. This artwork was painted during the Second World War.
When we learned more about the history of this painting we realized that despite the war, people always managed to have fun certainly to forget the hell that war was. I love this work because it is not sad like all the others about the war. It gives hope, the opportunity to enjoy life and to be happy. And we also like the body movements of the characters."
"“Nighlife” by Archibald Motley : This painting is bold and colorful.
At first glance we can see warm colors like pink and red. People dance to the rhythm of the radio, drink and laugh.
This artwork was painted during the Second World War.
When we learned more about the history of this painting we realized that despite the war, people always managed to have fun certainly to forget the hell that war was. I love this work because it is not sad like all the others about the war. It gives hope, the opportunity to enjoy life and to be happy. And we also like the body movements of the characters."

Some classes that we attended today :

Psychology :

Today I went to the Psychology class. I really love that class in that we went outside the school for an experiment. We had to ask strangers to take selfies with us. We also dropped our phones when we were walking near to people and a lot of people said that we dropped our phone. This project was about observing people’s reactions when they are in a situation when they have to help somebody. I think it was very interesting to see a different way to work about psychology in going outside and work with strangers.

(Angelica)

American Civilization :

Today, I went to the same class as yesterday. Last time the students were just listening the lesson but this time they would say what they think about Thomas Jefferson. They made up two big groups of students. The first had the whole hour to talk together while the others were listening. This is what the students think :
Jefferson is someone that they thought was the best president or a really good one but after hearing more about him they changed opinion.
They realised that at the end of his career he was more open minded.
Jefferson is compared with Napoleon because they like both to conquer big territory
They asked themselves if what Jefferson did with the Constitution was illegal or not. Answer : “ It wasn’t legal or not. The American didn’t really knew what they had to do. Then they said that it was ok because it was “ good for the country ”. Today the teenagers still consider this act normal but it shouldn’t be. If every president would break the constitution and then say : “ IT’S OK ! ”, well the world wouldn’t be as good as today.

(Nathan)

Thursday, October 19th (by Alexandra)

8:15 : Meeting for all the students of Ecole Alsacienne in room 411. A little talk with Ms. Pellerin to be sure we know how our day is going to be.
Then, we all headed for our class : I went to Human Anatomy again. As usual the class was great, but I was surprised by the fact that students have a ten minute break if the class is lasting one hour and a half. Maybe it was just for Anatomy students ?
Anyway, then we met in the hallway and turned left to discover a typical American school bus waiting for us ! I think I can say that were all very excited by the thought of travelling inside.
The bus let us go in front of the Science and Industry Museum. We were given maps (the building is huge and is three different levels). We split into groups and started to wander around in the different expositions. I won’t be able to talk about a lot of them, but I surely can tell you how amazing the exhibit on Storms was ! I think it was one of the biggest exposition rooms of the whole museum with its two levels, all talking about storms, high speed winds, tsunamis, electricity and others. We had fun with some experiments with fire and temperature, and some of us did have fun with the plasma experience too (you had to put your hand on the glass and the plasma would come into its direction, attracted by the fact the hand is a better conductor than the surrounding air). Victor also was the unbeaten winner of a mind game where, to win, you had to slow down the Alpha and Theta waves of your brain (I didn’t beat him, but well, I won a few times and understood how it worked so I’m happy with it.). This museum is very similar to the ‘Cite des Sciences’ in Paris and very interactive.
Around 12:15, we had lunch in the restaurant of the museum and then got closer to our next destination : the U-505. Because we were early, we had time to wander around the space exhibition. It was pretty cool, and super interesting (my favorite part was the interviews of actual commanders and travelers on the Apollo 8,11 and 13 that you could find on some screens).
Then we headed to the famous U-505. It is a U-boat from World War 2 and, actually, the only survivor of its kind since the others were all destroyed in the war or after. The U-boats were submarines developed by the Nazis that were destroying merchant ships to make pressure on their enemies and stop war. The Americans developed a secret force to prevent them from destroying ships : their Commander was a Chicago native. The U-boats were just an incredible piece of technology : they could go from the surface to underwater in less than a minute.
The Americans managed, in 1944, to capture one of those u-boats instead of destroying it. They succeeded in capturing the submarine and then preventing it from sinking (what the germans had done on purpose to prevent their secrets from falling into the Americans hands) and with it collecting 900 pounds of secret technology that they hadn’t developed yet.
The submarine itself was impressive, even if everyone had to be careful of their surroundings as the inside was pretty confined). I still can’t believe they were living in that place for a long time in what we can call ‘bad’ conditions.
A little anecdote : the room in which you now have the submarine was built around it in 2004. The exhibition began in 2005.
At 4pm, we took again our yellow school bus to get back to Latin. There a last debrief to end the day and we are free to go.
To finish the day, some of us watched with their hosts a volleyball match between Latin and another school. Too bad Latin lost !
But still, we are all excited and waiting for our next day in Chicago.

Friday, October 20th (by Valentine)

Today, it was the Hindi’s New Year (Diwali).

After an intense sports session, our players went to eat to the school’s cafeteria. The cafeteria’s food is just awesome !
At the beginning of the afternoon, all exchange students (German and French) took a bus and finally arrived at the Hindi temple : BAPS Shiri Swaminarayan Mandi. The temple was in two parts : in the first part there was a room to take off shoes and after we could go to the temple, all built in white marble. There was food everywhere, of all colors, it was like a mountain of food, like an offering to the gods. We also learned a lot of things about the Guru, he’s like the spiritual guide. After the visit we were able to eat Indian food, spicy or sweet food.
After all these activities, we took the bus and returned to school.

Saturday, October 21st (by Gabriel)

Great game tonight at the United Center of Chicago where we saw the home team, the Chicago Bulls vs the San Antonio Spurs… There was an amazing atmosphere and I was surprised by the size of the stadium.
Even though the main event is the basketball match, there are many time outs which permit many other attractions such as concerts, dance routines and a lot of product placements…
Overall it was a once in a lifetime experience and some of us even got to see the players’ locker room !

Sunday, October 22nd (by Ines and Angelica)

Tonight we went to see a play at the Goodman Theatre. We were with the sister of Angelica’s host student, German, American and French teachers and the playwright Rohina Malik, who is a former student of the Latin school. Before the play we had dinner at Petterino’s, a very good Italian restaurant right next to the theatre.
The play started at 7:30 and finished at 9:30 PM. It was about two families in Chicago. One was a family of refugees from Iraq and the other was a Muslim family with an Iraqi father, a Puerto Rican mother and a recently divorced son who wants to change first name to find a job ont he US. The play dealt with the question of multiculturalism and how to integrate to a new country while remaining faithful to your family background and origin.

Monday, October 23rd (by Lena)

Today we all started the day at 9:30. It was our first oversleep. We’ve all been to the advisory with our exchange students. Advisory is an informal class meant to enable Latin students to talk about the problems they might be facing at or outside school. Since they all attend different classes, advisory offers American students a moment apart from academic pressure where they share their feelings over coffee and pastries. The teacher in charge of advisory follows the same group of students for 4 years.
After that original class where we were all split into different groups, students from EA all met for a short debriefing session.

Then we met an author and teacher from the Latin school. His name was Billy Lombardo. He talked about his books which are mainly collections of short stories but also poems and he read one of his short stories taken from The Logic of a Rose to us. His text are all deeply rooted in Chicago and particularly in his childhood neighborhood called Bridgeport which used to be the Italian neighborhood of the city. He explained to us that race relations were very difficult in the 60s and 70s and that as a child he witnessed terrible racist scenes, even within his own family. Since he and “Polyphony” it’s an international poetry magazine which gathers texts written by high school students from all over the world.

After having at the cafeteria, we took the metro to visit Chinatown guided by one of the Chinese teachers of the Latin school named : Bing Wang. We went both to the historical Chinatown, which is now left away by part of the Chinese community as a consequence of gentrification, and to the more recent Chinatown where we had yet another meal(!).

Finally we went back to school for pick up time.

Tuesday, October 24th (by Hadrien)

Today, considering the rather poor weather conditions (it is now cold and rainy), we spent the whole day at school. EA students attended different classes in the morning then we had lunch at the cafeteria before meeting up for a hard-working session dedicated to our Humans of Chicago project. The Latin School kindly allows us to work in one of their conference rooms with a cask of laptops at our disposal !
‘Mens sana in corpore sano’ being part of the Latin experience, we went to the school pool for an hour in the afternoon before returning to our conference room for some more hard-work.

Here is an account of some of the classes students attended today :

Today Ines, Nathan and I went to a photography class. We did a photogram. We used toys and objects such as strings. We put these objects on a sheet of paper into a machine (in a darkroom) that made like a flash. Out of the machine came a black and white paper where the white represents the shape of the objects and the black is where there was nothing. We discovered that this system enabled us to make little stories or poetic things. You can find our photograms on the flickr gallery just below.

In the meantime...
This 24th of October, a part of the group went to M. Close’s French class where American and French students introduced themselves and talked about the cultural differences between France and the United States.
Some of us then went to Spice : Food, Trade and Culture class which is a new and very interesting subject… In today’s class, the students were divided into several groups, each group representing the different regions of Spain during the Middle Ages (Castille, Aragon, Catalonia, Grenada…). During this class, the different regions had to make alliances, sign treaties and most of all fight for survival considering the political and religious tensions of the time.

Wednesday, October 25th (by Leonard)

This Wednesday we all met at 8:30 in the gallery 2, our first activity of the day was to visit the « Jurassic Park exhibit ». So we took the red line during a few minutes and then the bus to see this exhibit which takes place in the Field Museum.
The exhibit took us about an hour, the beginning was a video of a woman who’s supposed to be in the control room of all the park, then we passed through the doors that we can see in the movie « Jurassic World ». We were then able to see fake dinosaurs, to create our owns, to see the DNA of dinosaurs,...
It was a great exhibit which was very fun for all of us.
After that we took the bus again, to go to the shopping center close to the Water Tower where we all had an hour to have lunch.
Then we took the red line again to do our last activity of the day : watch a movie called « Marshall » which was presented on the opening night of the Chicago film festival last week. The movie is based on the true story of the first African-American lawyer to become Chief of Justice within the Supreme Court and who, before that, as a member of the NAACP, defended innocent people who were accused only because of their skin color. The Spell vs Connecticut trial took place in the 40s, it was the case of an African-American man who was charged for raping a white woman, and for attempting murder. All the movie is about the trial of that person.
It was a great and very exciting movie, which is based on a true story.
After that we went back to the Latin School and our exchange students came back to meet us.

Thursday October 26th (by Victor)

Today the meeting was at a quarter past eight at Latin and when we arrived that first thing that we did was to sign a birthday card for Mrs. Dorer who made so much things for us and for the trip. After that we took the typical American yellow school bus. The bus drove us to Hyde Park in front of the Rockfeller chapel and we met our guide for the day who has lived in Hyde Park for a long time, so she knows a lot about this neighborhood. We visited the inside of this chapel and there was an unusual organ because some pipes were horizontals. Then we walked in the campus of the University of Chicago and we saw very modern buildings like the library. We walked in the streets and we saw the Obama’s house and Mohamed Ali’s house. This is a very nice neighbourhood with single houses with a lot of gardens and no big buildings like in downtown Chicago.
After that we went to Robbie House and we had a guided visit of this prairie style house that was built in the 1910s. Even though this house is getting older, they renovated the house especially the foundations in association with the University of Chicago. The Robbie House was very modern for its time. For instance the ceiling of six meters long over the terrace in the front of the house was made using steel parts so it can stand. Also this house uses not much materials Mostly it was bricks, limestone, wood... But the bricks are particular and changes of the building on the other side of the street for example because the tiles have a uncommon pattern. Also all of the windows visible from the outside had a steel patern with geometrical shapes. In the living room the guide told us that this style of architecture is about making the nature come inside of the house. For instance on the sealing there was wooden arches that seemed like tree branches. There was also a fireplace that was between the livingroom and the dinning room and but there was still a hole over the fireplace so these two rooms weren’t completely separated.
After the visit we went to the Plein Aire Café to have lunch before the visit of the DuSable museum. This museum is about the story of the African Americans especially in Chicago where a lot of people moved from the south to leave the segregated states during the great migration. The exhibition was also about the battle for civil rights, and it’s great we could see it just after watching the movie ’Marshall’ yesterday.
Then we went to the shop of the university were there was t-shirts and a lot of goodies. After that we took the bus to get back to the Latin School.
This day was very interesting and allowed us to discover a beautiful neighborhood and the university where Barack Obama studied. This campus made me think of the British university style.

Friday, October 27th (by Ernestine)

Today was our last day at the Latin school... We went to two different classes in the morning, and we had lunch before we left school to go to the Mexican neighborhood : Pilsen. On our way, we stopped at Millennium park to see the bean which is one of the symbols of the city.
Then we took the Pink line to reach Pilsen and visit the current exhibit of the Museum of Mexican Art. It gathered many artworks created for “Dia de los Muertos”. Sugar skulls and colourful skeletons are all meant to laugh at death.
After our guided tour of the exhibition, we walked around the Mexican neighborhood where there are lots of murals on the walls, some very cute individual houses, and the architecture is strikingly different from the rest of the city... Chicago is such an interesting city for having so many very different neighborhoods ! Tonight we all went to the bowling alley and laser tag with our American exchange students for a last evening together. We had lots of fun !