Food or Sleep?

(Is it just me, or does the duck in this 16th-century

relief have TEETH? Either the sculptor had never

seen a duck before, or he had a great sense of humor!)

******

So which would you choose: Food or sleep?

These days, I usually go with food.

Every morning at 6:45 AM sharp, the nuns at the CM Residence start serving breakfast, and those who snooze lose. During my first few days here, I was still adjusting to the time difference. As my phone alarm was blaring, "WAKE UP!" my internal alarm was blaring, "GO BACK TO BED!" My rumbling stomach finally made a deal with my foggy brain: "If you roll out of bed and grab your food from the cafeteria," it said, "I'll let you come right back and sleep some more."

Being foggy, my brain accepted the deal.

What my brain didn't immediately realize is that the cafeteria is full of interesting people and that, by entering a room with interesting people, I would probably become so engrossed in an interesting conversation that there would be no going back to sleep. My stomach is smart like that.

Yesterday in the cafeteria, I met an architecture major from France. Today I met a girl from Holland, and we made plans to visit to the Metropolitan Museum later on. I'm also friends with the sweet women who work as servers, even though they don't speak much English and I speak even less Spanish. ("Gracias!" "Mucho gusto!" "Tortilla!") Every time the cafeteria workers see me now, they say, "Look; eets Erica!" One lady smiled as she was dishing up my dinner yesterday and told me, in confidential tones, "Erica my favorite." I wonder if she meant the name or the person?

But here's the bad news: I know enough people now that I'm actually going to have to start looking. . .you know. . .put-together for breakfast. My friend from Holland saw me with make-up for the first time as we left for the Met today, and she looked surprised. "Oh!" she said. "You look nice." Surprise! (Sometimes I hope people won't recognize me in my just-rolled-out-of-bed state. But invariably, they do. How? Does the frumpy me with bed-head really look that much like the ready-for-the-day me? What if I'm wearing my glasses? I mean, really, people?!?)

I had a great conversation with my Dutch friend as we made our way to the Met. Although she's here studying finance and preparing for law school, her mother is a concert pianist, and she herself grew up playing the violin. She offered all sorts of insights about the cultural gaps between the U.S. and Western Europe. In Holland, for example, the arts are government-subsidized (whereas art programs in the U.S. are privately-funded). As a result, people from all walks of life have more ready access to the arts. (This isn't a political statement, by the way; I'm just recounting what she said. And it's true that government funding can fuel a renaissance: It happened when Eleanor Roosevelt convinced her husband to instigate the Federal Music Project, and it stopped short when that program dissolved.)

In Holland, too, art history is an integral component of early education--even at the elementary school level. Classical music isn't seen as something elitist or privileged; it's an exciting art form with a living history, and because they understand its past, young people are eager to play into its future (no pun intended!). In America, pop culture seems to fill that need because classical music no longer does--at least not for the general public. Then, too, the arts aren't very well-marketed in the U.S. ("Ironic," my friend pointed out, "because Americans are the best marketers out there!").

The Met itself was just as wonderful and as overwhelming as I'd remembered it, and the upper-level Garden Terrace was picture-worthy today. Inside the museum, we hit the highlights: The impressionist/early modern paintings, the Greek, Roman, and Assyrian ruins, the armory, the American room, the Egyptian wing. We also walked through the Alexander McQueen "Savage Beauty" installation and my Dutch friend--a fashion enthusiast--gave me the insider's tour. (It's a good thing we got to the exhibit early in the day; we were able to pass right through, but by the time we left, there was a line that stretched through five wings of the museum!) Afterwards, not wanting to pay $2.25 for the Metro, I walked the 34 streets and 6 avenues back home.

Now I'm exhausted! I've got much more to write, but I'll do it tomorrow. In the meantime, here's a quick teaser: This evening, I sat in a theater about 20 feet away from Donna Murphy--the woman whose voice was used to create Mother Gothel in Disney's Tangled! She made me--and all the gray-haired couples in the room--weep shamelessly for about twenty minutes straight. (I really started envying all those elderly people their handkerchiefs!)

But that's a story for later. Sometimes sleep wins out over everything else!

'Night.