I was walking past one of the more popular parks in town a few weeks back, and
noticed how the people casually scattered across the grass resembled the famous
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of la Grande Jette by Georges Seurat (as made
famous by this scene). Some of my
friends and I had already been throwing around the idea of doing an end of the
year event just for us year long students, and I decided this might be a fun
group photo if just our smaller group got together and recreated the famous
tableau. And today was that day.
So we had a lovely picnic among friends, and then started staging this piece of performance art. This involved me holding up someone’s smart phone with the image of this painting as a point of reference, and dragging each person one by one to their mark and telling them how to stand. We even had a few props to go with the painting. Meanwhile, there are dozens of other people in the park minding their own business while this large group of Americans is doing who knows what. It was pretty funny. And this masterpiece is what we ended up with:
This evening was also the end of the year meal put on by my program. It was the last time we’d all be in the same place, and that was strange. I know once I leave this country there are some people I’ll never see again. For some of them, that’s okay. For others, it’s a sad reality. People can try and try to stay in touch and life just happens. I got to know pretty well most of the people who were here for the year and a couple people who came just for the semester, and I know we’ll all go on to do great things. And of course…
...we’ll always have Aix.
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