On being an American in Paris

Haven’t had consistent internet access at all, so posting has been difficult.

Saturday: Lots of walking, then met up with my friend Lindsey, who I met on a study abroad program in 2006, and who now lives in Paris with her French husband. We had a very nice long chat catching up on the last year. Lindsey has an awesome blog that I follow.

No pictures of this day because I didn’t realize that my SIM card wasn’t in the camera! Rookie mistake.

Instead, I can provide you with a funny sign I saw the first day. This says: Long live striking! They get fat off our earnings, they pollute, lie to us, exploit us, they give us nothing, they give in. Strikings is a tool to defend and conquer. It's a right! They don't mention whom they are striking against. I guess it's just The Man. The Establishment. Yes, well, those social programs do have a cost, you know....

Evening was dinner with Fred, Charlene, and my friend Kat from my master’s program at Auburn. We ate at a place right below Fred’s new apartment; sat outside and the evening weather was divine (unlike Auburn where it’s still 90 degrees at 8:30.) I had terrine de queue, which is a pâté like fois gras, but made with beef and we had a lovely rosé from Alsace (how pretentious is that sentence?! Guess I should add, Mm, yes, bring the car around, Jeeves.) Fred and Charlene were tired out from doing work in their new apartment all afternoon, but they are thrilled about the new place (I’ll post pictures when I see it next week, all finished!)

Sunday: attended mass at St. Sulpice.

St. Sulpice

Cathedrals like these in Paris always catch me off guard. In the midst of teeny studio apartments and somewhat cramped grocery stores, suddenly is this HUGE space. I have found Parisian masses to be rather lonely; in the past it’s been pretty much just me, an ancient parishner (sp?) or two, and the priest. I mean, I once was asked to serve wine at communion because there was no one else there to do it. Here there were more people, but many of them were tourists, too. As always, you could tell the Americans… the fanny-pack clad mom was taking pictures up until right before the service and the girl was knitting. I’m not lying. During the service. I mean, you know I’m all for industry and productivity and whatnot, but could you at least confide your personal activities to your own church instead of turning someone else’s into recreation hour? But just so you know, this is why Americans have bad experiences in France! People are mean to you either because you are being extremely rude, or enough extremely rude people have come in front of you, and they assume you're from the same mold.

St. Sulpice from the inside (from Google images, so minus the fanny packers).

Met up with my group at the hostel Sunday evening. I think this is going to be a really great program. They are super-organized and apparently they are paying for everything. They even gave us two metro tickets (only about $1.20 each, but I thought we would surely cover little things like that on our own).

The group is comprised of about 40 people in their 20-somethings from all over the world. Here’s a list of the countries:

Algeria
Myanmar
Morocco
Luxembourg
Brazil
Canada
Hungary
Kirghistan
Romania
Belarus
Belgium
Greece
Israel
Russia

There is one other guy from the states (from Boston and goes to Brown). Isn’t this cool? When in the world would I have ever met someone from Belarus or Kirgizstan or Myanmar? So this is basically the total opposite of the typical “study abroad trip”, where you tend to just stick with the Americans from your school. I’ve already learned a ton about all these countries and we don’t even know each other’s names yet. (Yeah, we all have foreign names to each other, so we’re having a hard time remembering!)

Funny story about perspective: a girl from Toronto said, “Oh you must have a nice English accent.” I had to ask what she meant, because of course English is my native language, so I don’t have an accent like foreigners speaking it. But then she said she meant because I was from the South! It was a funny experience to have a non-American thinking of me of having an accent, because I don’t think of myself as having one (although I definitely do on certain words, at least.)

I’m typing this on the TGV (the high speed train; literally translated TGV is the train of big speed) on the way to Avignon. We are passing hay fields, sunflower fields, little villages, etc; it is quite picturesque. Every little village has a church that was probably built in about the 11th century.

There are several aspects to being in a country like this on a program like this that make you think. First, France has been around for so much longer than our country. Avignon itself is ancient. Makes you reflect on how young our country is, and how that might affect the way we live and think and view the world.

Next, there’s meeting these kids from all over the world, most of whom speak a minimum of three languages, many of them can get along in four or even five. It is actually quite terrifying to think about the monolingualism in our own country, and how the lack of seriously studying (= actually being able to communicate in) another language-- which by default makes you study a culture-- makes us so insular. Our country is already isolated geographically; since we are already unlikely to meet people of many different cultures at home, we should prioritize language-learning all the more. But instead we just plug along with English, knowing less and less about the lives of people elsewhere.

I just had a fascinating conversation with an Israeli, who among other things, commented about Americans taking their birthright trip (the Israeli government pays for American Jews to come and visit Israel for a week or two when they turn 18.) My friend was remarking that there tend to be two problems with these American Jews visiting Israel: 1) since they aren’t 21 and can’t drink at home, they tend to spend much of their trip partying and binge drinking, and 2) they tend to see themselves, now that they are traveling, as instantly an expert on the unrest in the West Bank, etc. They have no idea what it’s like to live there, to work there, to deal with the daily realities of life in Israel, but many of them tend to see the world in black and white. This guy has just completed his three years of mandatory military service, and he was reflecting on how much that changes you. You might become more to the left (treaties, peace) or more to the right (stand up for rights,) but during the time that you serve you see so much that no matter what you conclude, you have an idea of how complicated the situation it is. I think that Americans are not very good at looking at things from others’ perspectives. It makes me wonder where we are headed in the next 50 or so years, since as a country we are so insular in our daily lives.

OK, off the soapbox now. We will be arriving in Avignon in another hour or so. More to come, contingent on my access to wireless!