A Day in Nantes

Today I went to Nantes with my host mom and host sister. Nantes is a pretty big city – about the same as San Francisco, population-wise. To my host family, it's a Really Big City, because we live in Bois de Céné, population 1,602, smaller than Homestead High School. We go to school and do errands in the “city” of Challans, population 18 thousand, or about an eighth the size of Sunnyvale. It took us only half an hour to get to Nantes because there was almost no traffic. Then we hit the stores.

French people are so classy and dress so well – I keep wondering why no one has cornered the market on importing French styles to the US with a store named “La Mode Parisienne” or something like that, and all the labels marked in French. People would think it was so classy. I really feel like it would be a successful women's fashion store. Why is that not a thing? It might have something to do with the fact that all French fashions are trying to imitate the US. We went to H&M (it's pronounced “osh ey emme,” not “aych and emme”), which is hugely successful here because it's American. [CORRECTION: It's Swedish, and I should look these things up before posting them. Thanks May!] The other stores we went to were French, but sold plenty of shirts with badly-worded English on them (“Hello, Welcome to the paradise with me...” What?).

I guess French people don't realize they're cool, because they're so concerned with how cool America is. The funny thing is that they think America is super fashionable, when a lot of things that I would've worn at home couldn't be worn here. T-shirts (the non-fitted kind) can't be worn to a French high school, because it's not fashionable enough. I'm glad I didn't bring my massive stack of band shirts. Flannel button-downs are my staple in the winter, but those too are a little too shabby for France. Ditto for sweatpants and sweatshirts. So it's almost like they think they're importing American fashions, but they aren't really. They have French fashions that they stick American labels on.

Anyway, I loved the stores and found them quite classy and French, even if the labels were American. I stocked up on warm clothes because I seriously underestimated how cold it would be here. It's been hovering around 45 degrees F during the middle of the day, and feels colder because of the wind. And if I squinted hard and pretended that the € sign on the price tags was actually in dollars, it wasn't even too expensive!

Having an American credit card is a fiasco. There isn't really any other option, because you have to be French or over 18 and living here permanently to get one of their cards. They have a credit card that you stick in a slot instead of swiping. While it's in the card reader, you type in a four-digit code to prove your identity. My host family was quite astonished when I explained to them that no, we don't verify our credit cards. If someone steals it, you just have to cancel your credit card before they buy a yacht. So every time I buy something, I have to explain that it's an American credit card. Then I swipe it, and we have to wait for a while while the cashier figures out how to deal with it. The first store I was at just asked for a signature. The second asked for a signature and ID – fine, I have a CA driver's license, and some stores in the US also ask for IDs, though it isn't particularly common, especially if you're only buying one 20€ item. The third store I was at spent about 20 minutes figuring out how to deal with it at the cashier, and then asked for a signature. I scrawled a JM – my initials – which is what I normally do when asked to sign things that aren't terribly important. The manager (the cashier had long since given up and called for the manager) looked at my signature, compared it to the one on my credit card, and said “It's not at all the same, so can I have your ID please?” I was astonished. I've never seen anyone actually look at a signature before. But I gave her my ID and she proceeded to write down every piece of information on it – that it was a CA driver's license, the number, my full name, when it was issued, and when it expires. I almost protested on suspicion of identity theft, but decided she was just being careful because she's not used to dealing with American credit cards. Understandable. But still, weird. So in conclusion, in big stores like H&M, it almost always works in the end, but it takes patience. In little stores, don't even try. Pay in cash.

So after a nice day of shopping, we went to McDonald's for lunch. Let's get this straight – I hate McDonald's. 7 years ago I threw up Chicken McNuggets all over the floor of a bus in Washington D.C., which completely ruined my trip to the capital and I have kept a grudge against McD's ever since. I eat there exactly once a year, on the bus ride home from camp, because we have no choice. Usually I order a smoothie, preferring to listen to my stomach rumble all the way home than to suffer through a cheeseburger or some other equally greasy, unappetizing, reconstituted cow brain.

French McDonald's is completely different. I figured it would be, which is why I didn't object to going there. Here is a picture of my “McBaguette” :

The portions are small and expensive, as opposed to large and cheap in the States. The McBaguette is pretty much like a Subway, but with fewer vegetables. Here I opened it up so you can see the interior, which is meat (actual meat, not reconstituted cow brain, since French alimentation is highly regulated), lettuce, and delicious spicy mustard sauce.

So if you're ever in France and don't know where to go to eat, the “MacDo” isn't a bad option.

Nantes itself is like any other big city – an older San Francisco, or a small New York. There are a couple special Old World things about it, like the Château des ducs de Bretagne which is this massive old castle in the middle of the city. French people are very casual about the old historical buildings around them. To me it's bizarre to drive past a mall, an apartment building, and then * PAF * a frigging Hogwartz, but my host mom is just like “oh, hey, look, there's the château,” and my host sister just rolls her eyes and says “YES, Mom, we know, we can see it.” Teehee.

← The castle up close

The castle from above

 In exactly one week I will be in Paris for three days! So if any of you have recommendations for cool things to do in Paris, go ahead and comment below.

The American Essence

 On American Intellectualism, Ambition, and Competition:

“Americans are at the same time extremely individualistic and yet capable of doing incredible things as a group.” – Loic, my frisbee coach. Sometimes they spend a lot of time and effort on things just because. Flashmobs, marching bands, Guinness World Records, and many other things are not only dominated by Americans, but defined by them. In France, the idea of spending so much effort on any one thing would be inconceivable. And yet at the same time, the French are a people very aware that they are a part of a world. When I described the Silicon Valley mentality (where everyone must be perfect and 90% of the time their perfection must be academic) to my host mom, she replied incredulously, “But you need all sorts in the world! You need both the engineers and the gardeners!” Everyone does the best he can, and if it's not enough, he's supported by those who did more than enough. That's called socialism, and it's also called realizing that everything isn't about “fair” and whether you personally will be justly rewarded for your labor. In France, everything is calmer, people go by their own schedules. Why would they do otherwise? It's the fierce individualism in America that drives us to competitive extremes. Every child is instilled with the desire to become someone extraordinary. Maybe it was just my friends and I, but I am still terrified of being average. The American Dream is to start off poor, the bastard offspring of some no-good immigrants, but to work your way to the top through cleverness and perseverance. Samuel Gompers is the American Dream; so is Andrew Carnegie. This is less possible than it used to be, but the attitude is still there. The demand to become exceptional. The lack of legitimate excuses. In France I've very commonly heard reference to if someone has the “capacities” to do something or not. “He succeeds/does not succeed in school because he does/does not have the capacities.” That's not something very commonly said in the US. If you don't succeed, it must be because you aren't working hard enough. Where is your ambition?

My respect for capitalism has grown so much during my time in France. Capitalism is such an American idea as well – the thought that merit is what counts, and those who are clever and determined enough to succeed in business as well as school should be the ones to reap the benefits. We have very little idea of “natural rights,” despite the infusion of John Locke in our Declaration of Independence. It's a very American attitude to assume that the homeless, the unemployed, and those with failing businesses must have failed through some fault of their own. We feel pity when we learn it isn't their fault – if staggering medical bills made them unable to pay the rent, or if an earthquake destroyed their house and livelihood – but such is life, we say. C'est la vie. An expression that comes from the French, but means something very different to each culture. France says “Hey man, c'est la vie. T'inquiète pas. (Don't worry.) I'll pay for the house until you get back on your feet.” The US says “Well, c'est la vie. Shit happens. I hope you work it out.”

This heartless attitude is what makes the fashionable young liberals of my country rebellious. Sitting in their coffeeshops with their thick-framed glasses and flannel button-downs, they long for a country like Finland, a nice socialist country that will give everyone the education, medical care, food, and financial aid that they need. “Where are our basic human rights?” they ask. Yes, it's heartless. But it goes hand-in-hand with our success. A year ago I saw only the upsides of socialism, but now I see where it fails and where America, in its turn, shines. If you don't fend for yourself, you don't come up with brilliant new ways of doing things. That's all, it's as simple as that. Why does the US lead so strongly in technology and innovation? Japan is following closely behind, but they're behind. iPods and iPhones and netbooks and the Internet and everything that is now commonplace technology was pretty much invented in the US. Other countries – Taiwan, China, Vietnam – produce our technology, serving as our factories. Japan and certain European countries follow behind our inventions, tailoring them to meet new purposes, giving them shiny new looks and different forms. But we invent them. In a land of the truly free, where it's your fault and your doom if you fail, there is all the more glory and honor when you succeed. Each of us, thinking only of ourselves and how we can play off our strengths to win in this game against the world, chooses a passion to follow that we hope will make us stand out. Brilliant programmers don't become pianists, brilliant musicians don't become janitors. There is shame in janitorhood. There is shame in being a failed programmer. It's a dog-eat-dog world, and don't you dare think you can relax. It's your life in the game! You can't spend junior year socializing, that's out of the question. It's your life! Don't you want to have a good one? Don't you want to succeed?

In France, the idea of stressing for your future to the detriment of your current social/mental/physical well-being seems ridiculous. In the US, the contrary. So maybe that's bad too. We have two tally marks against us while I'm trying to talk about how fantastic the US is – we're heartless to the poor and we're too stressed. Let me get more to the point and talk about why we're so successful a country.

For starters, school in the US – or at least, in the Silicon Valley where I grew up – is a gauntlet. If innate capability x work = success, those with an insufficient combination of talent and motivation will be labeled failures, the derogatory term “high school dropout” to haunt them for the rest of their days. We weed out the weak. And we strengthen the strong. At Homestead High School, I learned real science and math, in a way that made sense to me so I could apply it to any other type of problem, instead of just blind repetition (think Asian countries) or blind guessing (what I've mostly seen in France). I took courses that demanded hours of work per night – hours of being productive, not just hours of sitting there complaining about stuff that would take half an hour if you just focused. APUSH made us efficient. There was a choice between efficiency, no sleep, and bad grades. And sometimes you got bad grades even if you were efficient and did all your work – that's where natural talent comes in. All these factors got taken into consideration, and we learned how to deal with what we were given. Those who could never succeed in school, like I said, got weeded out. Those who could succeed if they worked really hard learned to work really hard. And those like me who were bad at working hard but had the brains to succeed learned to cultivate our strong points – enough sleep and focus can boost your intelligence and make up for a lack of productivity. It's a game, a game that everyone is desperate to receive the highest score on.

“I am not unique. That is okay, though; really, it is. I don’t need to be special, but apparently that is what is necessary to get into college.” – Ali, a friend of mine writing about applying to college.

We live in fear, but it's only half-imagined. It's not for nothing that we worked like madmen. To get into a good college, you need good grades. Granted, a good college isn't necessary, any more than having a nice car is necessary. You can still find a job with a degree from CSU Stockton, even though it would be easier with a degree from Harvard. But it's partly to make our future easier and more fruitful, partly a status symbol, and mostly simply because we think of ourselves as the sort of people who go to nice colleges – that is where we belong, and to not go to a good college would be failure because we would not end up where we feel we belong. But we do create this for ourselves, mostly. There are plenty of options for those who don't take all AP classes and work like madmen – I'm not going to pretend all Americans are like that. My friends and I are the minority, not the majority. But we create this for ourselves, create this world of intense competition, and decide we'll win it. Just like in the future we'll create goals for ourselves above and beyond making a living. Like Jobs and Wozniak and Gates and Zuckerberg. We'll create new things and never be satisfied and always have this crazy drive to do more, more, it's never enough.

French people know how to be satisfied with themselves. That is why they are not the technology and business capital of the world. We are.

What I'm trying to describe is that our school system is (perhaps unintentionally) modeled after our economy. My high school was competitive because of the students in it. The teachers helped too, but it was the students who made it that way, the offspring of Chinese Tiger-mothers who will disown you if the envelope from Harvard is thin instead of fat. They sign up for AP courses, increasing the demand for higher level classes and bringing in skilled teachers who have the training and the desire for such courses. They work like madmen, so when the majority of them have As in the majority of their classes, the teachers realize that this doesn't give very much discrimination between the good students and the better students, so it becomes harder to get an A. Teachers grade harder, and the curve changes with the increased competence of the students. There are still non-AP options, so this upward spiral of competition is not derailed by the students who lack the intellect or the willpower to compete with the others. There are plenty of high schools where this doesn't happen. If I went to high school in Wyoming, I would get all As without ever working, because the competition never got started and the expectations remained low. It's a free market. Unregulated. It's capitalism. In France, schools are mostly all the same because the idea of tracking classes – having separate AP or Honors classes for the more skilled students – doesn't exist. They all take the same classes to pass the same Bac at the end of junior and senior year, except for the different specialties in science, economics, or literature. So it's hardly possible to have that inflation of expectations because of the way it's structured and controlled by the state, even if the French attitude would permit such ridiculous competition (which it doesn't). It's socialism.

Again, I want to be very clear that most of America is not at all like this. But the pockets of the US that are like this dominate our international image. So really, when I talk about America, I'm talking about the Silicon Valley, Massachusetts and especially Cambridge, and the urban and well-educated parts of New York, New Jersey, Texas, and all those other states with a few highly intellectual pockets. It's a minority, but it's enough, it's what makes us stand out, and it's what I grew up in.

So in the US we do some silly things like marching band. Marching band, at least a competitive one like at Homestead High, takes about 20 hours a week of practice and competitions. Actually, at Homestead we can't call marching band a sport because there's a California law against having more than 16 hours of practice per week for sports. So we do marching band anyway, but we don't get sports credit for it. Hah. It's crazy – what do we get out of it? That is a question, by the way, that would never be asked by someone in band. It's a question a French person would ask, though. We get friends and companionship and physical discipline and musical training and the satisfaction that comes from being good at something. Some of us do it for college apps, but fortunately not too many. But because it looks like so much effort and doesn't even give you a concrete end product, I can't possibly imagine that the French would have marching bands. What a uniquely American, incredibly silly idea. It's silly ideas like marching band that turn out high school students with a level of discipline, leadership, and determination that will make them great.

There's a marching band motivational speaker named Scott Lang who comes to talk to my high school band every year or two. I disagree with many of the things he says, but one thing we do agree on is how great marching band kids are. A couple years ago he said that it will be a marching band kid who finds the cure for cancer. It will be marchers who will invent new technologies to improve our quality of life, who will end wars, who will fight for peace and freedom and a better society. I couldn't agree more. We have taught these kids both the meaning of hard work and that when you work hard you can achieve truly amazing things. That is a valuable knowledge.

The kids I know at my high school in France have ideas already about what they want to be when they grow up. There's a lot of pressure in France to decide what you want to do from a young age. Going into junior year you have to choose to specialize in science/math, economics/social stuff, or literature, unless you want to pass the Professional Bac in something technical. Even before you get to high school you're asked to make a choice – general high school, vocational high school, or straight into the uneducated work force. Compared to the US, there's far less shame in choosing a lower level of education to do a more manual or less intellectually demanding job. It's just a choice they make. As such, most of my friends already have ideas about what they want to be: a psychologist, a mid-wife, a physical trainer, an interior designer, a journalist... My friends back home in the US have no idea what they want to do. They have vague ideas in the realm of science or programming or teaching, but the choice is still far away. We go to big, unspecialized colleges, and don't even have to choose a major right away, and we can keep switching majors until we find what we like. As such, we have a wild ambition to be something great. We haven't been asked for a concrete, realistic plan for the future, so our dreams are far from realistic. I change dream-jobs every couple of months, but I'm currently debating between an anthropology or linguistics professor, or a Bill Bryson – a writer who makes a living by doing awesome things and documenting them. Because our school system doesn't demand any choices until we're 18 or older, it allows our imaginations to run a little wild. Steve Jobs didn't decide he just wanted to be a programmer and sat in a cubicle programming all day. He decided he wanted to create a product that would change the world. A user-friendly PC in every household. So he did. Because why not? This is America. (DISCLAIMER: I don't actually like Apple.)

America, land of the insanely motivated, the ambitious, the unrealistic dreamers with a lot of pressure to make it big, to be special. It can be brutal. I know a few kids who've cracked under the pressure of the Silicon Valley mentality. And it can be great. Junior year, which is supposed to be the most brutal, was the best year of my life so far. I took APUSH, which is a brutal class that deprives you of sleep and makes you a walking textbook of US history. I loved it. Our teacher was charismatic, funny, interesting. The class was less about memorizing dates and more about seeing how history fit together – was FDR's New Deal successful? Why? Why not? In what ways was WWII just an extension of WWI? How did the Paris Peace Treaties differ from the Treaty of Versailles to really end the war? History became a story, and the details that fleshed it out were sometimes hard to memorize, but actually added meaningful information. I took calculus, which is the first time ever that I liked a math class. What a beautiful subject – a math so useful in the real world that practically all the questions in our book were really physics questions. Yes, it was difficult, but I was happier than I'd ever been before. I was interested. I didn't even have time for normal teenage social drama, and it was better that way. My favorite classes were the AP classes, and I got better grades than I'd ever gotten before. If you didn't know before that I'm a nerd, I guess you know it now.

But what I'm trying to say is that the gauntlet of Silicon Valley schools is not only detrimental to some students' mental health, but it also causes other students to flourish. And the ones who crack under the pressure will still go on to have fine lives – after a little bit of therapy, they'll go on to community college and become a social worker or some other not terribly high-status but unobjectionable job. So it's not the end of the world, and it's no coincidence that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak both graduated from my high school. True, they hated school. But not because it was too difficult. Because great minds like that hate restrictions, and they were ready to go off and program brilliant things long before society was ready to let them. They were born and raised in the Silicon Valley, and they grew old here. It is a melting pot of intellectual snobbery, high-tech industry, and a cultural bonanza of immigration.

I won't really get into this because it's a whole other topic, but places like the Valley that have lots of immigration but high costs of living are actually self-filtering environments. It's hard to live in the Valley because you have to have enough money to pay the rent. Being an engineer or a programmer gives you a very high salary, enough to pay the rent. So immigrants who are determined to give their children the very best education the US can offer them can't do better than to educate themselves in a technological domain and move to the Silicon Valley. It's incredibly difficult to live near good Silicon Valley schools if you don't speak English and work at a McDonald's. You just can't afford it. So the Valley draws the best and the brightest and the most ambitious from every country, while filtering out those who want to come and profit from the education but don't yet have an education themselves. Again, it's brutal, but effective. It also means that the Silicon Valley is one of the least racist places I ever been.

Okay, this is getting way too long, and I don't even know who's going to be interested in it. But to summarize, after living in France, this is what the US means to me:

-Individualism and knowing how to work together, driven by collective competition

-Capitalism of the economy and of political structures like public education

-More pressure to succeed

-Less pressure to choose a job from a young age, leading to more reckless, unrealistic ambition (which is a good thing)

-Competition, competition, innovation

And this is why the US is the world leader in business and education, and why I've learned that capitalism isn't that bad after all. This is why, despite my wanderlust to see as much of the world as possible and learn about other cultures, I know I will spend most of the rest of my life in the US, in one of the pockets of intellectualism that I mentioned (Silicon Valley or others). This is why high school in France is really boring for a Silicon Valley-raised nerd like me. This is my culture, that I can identify much better now that I've discovered a different culture. It defines me, but I'm okay with that, because I like it a whole lot better now that I've learned about the alternatives.

Angst

Last week was not such a great week for me. I'm not sure if I'm starting to follow CIEE's predicted pattern of homesickness/culture shock or whether it was just a bad week, but this week has gone much better. Homesickness and culture shock come in waves, usually changes on a daily basis for me but sometimes there are completely good weeks or completely bad weeks.

So, this bad week was partly because of things that will not go on this blog (because the Internet has the memory of an elephant) and partly because of a few realizations. Here they are. First, though, I would like to mention that I write about angsty things on this blog because the goal of this writing project was actually to give a realistic picture of what being an exchange student is like. I'm not looking for sympathy, and I don't even like talking about my emotions. But it is interesting what being far from home in a different culture will do to you, so it is that that I'm trying to share.

Now that I've gotten used to my life here, I can decide if I like it or not. I now know now that I can handle it. I have a routine and it's not awful and so it's a lot less scary than the first few weeks I was here. But I've discovered that there's a lot of things that I just like better than home than here. I prefer Homestead to Truffaut. I prefer band nerds to... well, actually, I can't figure out what the stereotypes are here, since no one does any activities like band or chess club or whatnot. I prefer the food at home, I prefer the culture at home, I prefer the busy Silicon Valley life full of intellectualism and stress and band and sports and constant busy-ness. Because I've settled in now, which is a good thing, I can evaluate my new life and how happy I am in it. And it's just a little depressing because while I appreciate the idea of having an adventure, I just like the Silicon Valley better than the Vendée in most respects (not all, but most). And I came here looking for an adventure -- it is an adventure to live abroad, but it doesn't feel like one. My life is actually pretty boring. It's not terrible by any means, and it's not like I'll be suffering until I come home next summer. But it is depressing because that means I'm sort of waiting to come home, instead of reveling in every moment.

I don't want to be waiting to come home. I'm not at all saying that this is intolerable. I'm having fun, I'm just aware of how my values and culture differ so much from those of the Vendée, and I'd be doing things I enjoy more if I were at home. But I feel bad for feeling this way instead of making the most out of every minute in France. I worked so hard to get here, to do this. I wanted it so badly. So I hate that I'm looking forward so much to being back in the US. It's not even that I regret coming; it's good to get to know a different corner of the world, and as a whole it's giving me a new way of seeing the world and that's valuable. It's just that I have a little over eight months left and that seems like a really really long time of awkward parties and wasting time and doing boring stuff at school and not having really close friends with whom I can talk to in my native language about culturally relatable stuff.

Let me explain the parties bit.

I have a problem with parties. My host siblings bring me to a lot of them. Just last weekend I went to one, to celebrate the 18^th birthday of a girl I really like. But I don't like parties. I tried to socialize, like I always do, and had a few good conversations about school and whatnot, but mostly ended up chilling on a couch in a corner by myself. Why? Because I'm really frigging awkward, that's all. A few weeks ago I was optimistic about the parties I go to, glad that I manage a few conversations and reassuring myself that as my French gets better, there will be less of me chilling on a couch in the corner. But now I'm realizing that the French isn't the problem -- I'm perfectly capable of conversing with people. It's just that I'm awkward. If I were at the exact same party but with anglophones, the result would be the same. So that's depressing, because I'm not at home with my fellow band geek friends whose idea of a party is making crepes and chilling on my trampoline. Instead I'm with, well, “normaler” people who have real parties, the kind where people wear lots of make-up and dance and things. (Excuse me while I go hide under my covers. I'm terrified of dancing.)

So my problem is roughly that I'm here without good friends I've known for a long time, with people who have a completely different idea of how to have fun and grew up with a completely different culture. Somehow it was okay to have a language barrier, but it feels much less okay to have a cultural and personality barrier. Because it means it won't change. I won't get less awkward at parties. And no matter how good my French gets, I still won't be French. I'll still be different.

At home, fitting in never bothered me. At least, not since middle school. I am the confident sort of person who wears sweatpants and t-shirts proudly, glad that I don't care what other people think of me. At home, I say what I think and laugh too loud at my own stupid jokes and disconcert people just for fun. It's not common, but there have sometimes been “normal” or “popular” kids who've scorned me for it. And I never cared. But here my goal from the beginning was to fit in. Desperate to make friends, to be liked, I'm terrified of making wrong moves. I'm painfully, acutely aware that I'm not an ideal friendship candidate because my French isn't perfect – hence, I'm not clever or conversationally skilled. I'll always be asking others for help, and so my relationships with others tend to be dependent (while I'm used to others being dependent on me). So that awareness makes me shy and nervous and terribly concerned with what others think about me, which probably makes me even less desirable as a friend candidate. Good job, brain. That was not useful.

Long story short, if I were at home, I just wouldn't go to parties of that sort. But here it's just another part of my losing battle to fit in.

Change of subject.

On Saturday I went with my host dad to see the big boats of the Vendée globe race, which starts here at the Sables d'Olonne, goes south around the Cape of Good Hope and circles Antarctica, then comes back north after Cape Horn and finishes in the same port as it started. The record is around 84 days. It's particularly difficult because it's a solo race, so physically quite exhausting for the skippers, who have to spend four months never sleeping longer than 30 minutes at a stretch and basically living tied to their controls. Every year there's one or two dead or disappeared, usually near Cape Horn. Exciting stuff. I honestly can't say going to see the boats was that exciting, because boats are, well, just boats. But I liked learning about the race.

Me and my host dad at the Sables d'Olonne:

 BOATS!

This week was pretty darn good. I guess I got all my angst out last week, so this week I just didn't think too hard about things and had a good time. The highlight of my week was Thursday night frisbee. It was a killer practice, where we ran three kilometers at top sprint speed just to warm up. Determined not to finish last, though I am the only female and one of two teenagers, I completely emptied my energy reserves and finished 6^th. And to top it all off, on the way home (I carpool with my coach), I discovered a shared love of history and politics with Loic. Since my host family is very conservative and I'm rather liberal, we haven't discussed politics too much at home, but Loic is also liberal and quite well-educated in international politics. We talked about our favorite and least favorite US presidents, immigration policy, and capitalism. He actually inspired me to write up something about the differences between French and American politics, which I'll put in the next blog post. You can tell I'm a nerd when the high point of my week was discussing politics, but it's true.

Because it was such a long post, you get not one, but SIX complimentary songs for the day, and all of them are good for once.

Here's a really terribly sexist song, Femme Libérée that is quite catchy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAQRWmAcmW4

A song I knew and liked before coming to France, but turns out is actually known here as well (unlike all the obscure French-Canadian music I listen to...) “L'assasymphonie” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncE2_2HkaxI

The best song EVER though I admit I got it from French camp and haven't heard it in France. “Le Lion Est Mort ce Soir”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9Kj2-hkQBI

And my favorite French band is called Louise Attaque and here are my favorite three songs:

Je t'emmène au Vent:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0emXuhPTWUM

Fatigante:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3e5EanH4sk

Léa:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGJC0KAPeYA

Six Weeks, or A Tale of Too Much Introspection

Tomorrow will mark this as the longest period of time I have ever been away from home. Well, not exactly – I haven't counted the days, but last summer I spent about six weeks away from home, and tomorrow I have lived in France for six weeks. If at any moment after tomorrow I feel homesick, I feel like that's justifiable. Up until now, it's been like summer vacation except for the knowledge that I wouldn't be coming home after six weeks.

So far, at least, my own patterns of homesickness and culture shock have not even remotely followed the pattern explained to me by the CIEE orientation folks. They say month 1 is the “honeymoon month,” where everything is new and exciting and you don't even have time to feel homesick about it. Around month 2 or 3, you get the culture shock blues – some little thing starts to irritate you to no end (like Nate's example of the low water pressure in Spanish showers) and you get frustrated and angry and homesick. One or two difficult months later, you acclimate, and start really thinking of your new country as home. Then several months later, when you go back to the US, you have to go through to same process all over again – reverse culture shock. Again, I'm only 6 weeks in, so I can't really speak for this whole process, but month 1 was definitely not my honeymoon month. As much as I preach about change and adventure being the spice of life, I am not very good at adapting quickly to new circumstances. Moreover, I'm a perfectionist, and so where everyone else looks at me and says “wow, she's doing great, for an exchange student! Good language skills, getting good grades, and making friends. Impressive!” I look at myself and say “well, I guess we're coming along. But you really need to work on getting over your shyness, making more friends, and participating more in class. Stop being so afraid all the time.” Month one was difficult for me. Especially the first two weeks, every morning I would wake up to my iPod alarm, the same one I used at home, and it would take me a minute to figure out where I was (California? Nope, I'm not in a hammock. Minnesota? Nope, I'm not in a tent. Band trip? Nope, I'm not in a hotel. OH FRIG I'M IN FRANCE HOLY GOD WHAT DID I DOOO). And when I realized where I was, I felt that depressing heart-in-stomach dread feeling you get when you have to brace yourself for something unpleasant or scary. It wasn't really unpleasant, but scary, yes. I was scared every time I opened my mouth to say something in French, wanting so badly to make friends with everyone, sound intelligent and likeable, and succeed in Being Me, but in another language.

Yes, living in another country definitely teaches you about yourself. I honestly did not realize how much of an anxiety-case I am. For one thing, in the Silicon Valley I think we train all of our kids to be anxious and have inferiority-complexes. Every time we get a B on a test, we can hardly sleep for worrying that we'll get a B, or, even worse, a C in the class, which will destroy our chances to go to Berkeley and have a brilliant intellectual future. The pressure to be perfect is hardly noticeable when you live there, because it seems normal. And upon moving to a much more relaxed environment, it at first appeared to me that everyone here must simply be exceptionally lazy; it is only more recently that it has dawned on me how THIS is normal, and the competitive atmosphere of the Silicon Valley is not at all.

So month 1 was difficult for little anxious me. But every day I got more comfortable with my host family, with the language, with my role here in general. Every day, I felt a little less dread in the pit of my stomach when I woke up and realized where I was. Eventually, I stopped thinking I must be in California or Minnesota when I woke up, which made the whole process much easier. Certainly there are bad days and good days, days when I wonder what the heck I was thinking when I decided to come here, and days when I thank my perseverance in arguing with my high school from the bottom of my heart. But as a general trend, just like the stock market (viewed zoomed-out enough), it has gotten continuously better.

I've definitely been waiting for a few BANG moments. You know, the moment when I realize that I actually live in France. Or the moment when I first feel so homesick I cry. Neither one of them has happened, and I've come to realize that they probably won't. Days before I left Sunnyvale, I said it hadn't hit me yet that I was leaving. As my plane was landing in Paris, I said it hadn't hit me yet that we were in France. After a week, I started to have little moments of realization, like every time I see a cow and I say to myself, “teehee! I live in France!” Or any time I have a cultural surprise moment, really. But I've never had one defining moment where my brain, like my facebook status, changes from “living in Sunnyvale” to “living in Bois de Céné.”

Similarly, tears are almost never for one well-defined reason. I have now broke down in tears exactly once, after my first month here. Certainly it was from homesickness, but it was triggered by hours of working on my French homework – understanding a bunch of old guys' sexist literature and then writing a properly feminist essay on them. I mentioned earlier my secret Silicon Valley anxiety that I never before realized was unusual. Even though I know I'm getting better grades than my friends, my host siblings, and, well, pretty much everyone, even though I know that as an exchange student I'm not expected to do everything perfectly, I have this fear that if I am not perfect, something will go wrong and I won't get my diploma, hence, will not go to college. This fear is more legitimate than it sounds – there is ONE person who is in charge of whether or not I earn my diploma. She knows nothing about how school works in France, and is also one of the flakiest individuals I have ever met. Therefore, if she sees that I earned, for example, a 12 in French, she might decide to take 12/20 = 60% = D- which does not earn me the credit I need for my diploma. Obviously this would be ridiculous – a 12 is really more like a B than a D- – but she doesn't know that, and has no one except me to tell her otherwise. So I cried, because what if I do everything I can to do well in school, but still don't get perfect grades and don't end up with a diploma? I'm not French and can't write a feminist essay in French that will earn me a perfect score of 20, that would be interpreted as an A back home – I should be grateful that I earned twice as many points as some of my classmates.

This reminds me very much of a ski trip about 7 years ago, just after my grandmother died. My brother Alex and I almost never fought, even as younger children, but we got into a screaming match while we were sledding, because I hadn't packed his warm winter socks and his feet were cold. Obviously this argument wasn't about me forgetting his socks – it was about how we were both tired and cold, but mostly about missing Grandma. So, yes, I'm worried about getting my diploma, and have the Silicon Valley school anxiety bug. And yes, it was also about being homesick. But tears are seldom for one clear reason, and therefore I will never have The Moment when I first cry from homesickness.

Just a quick note – I pretty much never cry, so I'd like to officially blame the Silicon Valley for the anxiety that got me two weeks ago. It wasn't me. Also don't make fun of me, and no pity comments. K thx.

So, six weeks. I finally live here, I guess. I have a weekly routine that is reassuringly consistent, sometimes seeming so cyclical that I get mixed up week-to-week. On Thursdays when I go to frisbee, or on Fridays when I get a ride home from the neighbors, or all the very repetitive events that happen exactly once per week sort of get mixed up in my head, until at frisbee I ask myself, “wait, didn't last Thursday just happen yesterday?” After 3 or 4 weeks, time seemed to speed up until now it's going quite quickly. I have a routine, I have friends, I have a sport, I even (sort of) have a job. And I am doing just fine.

Last summer, my six weeks away from home consisted (roughly) of four weeks of French camp, half a week of chilling in Minnesota with my good friend Solange and her family, a week at my family's cabin in Wisconsin, and half a week of college touring and other shenanigans (CU Boulder on the way home from Wisconsin). It felt a lot shorter than this six weeks, mostly because my six weeks in France came with an expiration date in June instead of now – it's a milestone, and not an end. But either in Minnesota or in France, six weeks is actually a really short period of time. And already I'm 15% done with my year abroad, a figure which is almost frightening. It makes me feel like I must not waste time, or imagine that I can do things slowly – because before I know it, I'll be on a plane home, and I don't want to regret not making really good friends, or not pursuing the things I wanted to pursue.

May I have no fear, and may I be able to logically analyze social situations. When I want to add to a conversation, may I remember that people only hate Americans in my imagination (well, and in the media and stuff) so that I may have the courage to speak up and thus put into the open more of the personality that has been in hiding since I came here. May I remember that everyone else is as self-absorbed as I am – they are not judging me, they are instead wondering how I judge them. May I have the confidence to make friends and try new things and really live in my new country, instead of just biding my time until I go home. My I have the ability to turn off my anxiety and my ego, and just do the best I can.

And lastly, dear Dice of the Universe, can I pretty please have my diploma, too? I promise I'm working hard.

Beauty

Today I brought my camera for a run with me, so here's a post crammed full of pictures for y'all. I got lost, as usual. There are two possibilities: 1) There's only one road in Bois de Céné and it just turns around itself a lot, so no matter which way I turn I'll get home eventually, or 2) I actually have a spectacular sense of direction that I've never noticed before. I probably ran at least 5 or 6 miles today, and had nooo idea where I was, but as always, I got home. Somehow. When I get to an intersection, I just sort of look both ways, sniff the wind, and pick one -- it always gets me back eventually. Huh, life's a mystery.

 The pictures definitely don't do it justice, but here is a grove of trees I found very early on, by the road that runs behind my house. Several weeks ago I was struck by how much it looked like Lothlorien (it's a forest in Lord of the Rings, for those of you who aren't up to date). The trees have pale silver trunks and delicate branches that were tipped with golden leaves. Now there are very few leaves left and it's no longer quite Lothlorien, but it was still quite impressive today with the brooding pale grey sky silhouetting the graceful skeletons of trees.

 Anyone who can tell me what this vegetable is gets a bonus point!

 Okay so I still think cows are pretty exciting. Yes, I'm kind of a city girl sometimes...

This is where I live! When I see this sign, it means I'm not hopelessly lost. (Once, I accidentally ran into the county next door -- I live in the Vendée and I ran into the Loire-Atlantique. Teehee.)

 There's Old World beauty here. It's green everywhere and full of old, crumbling stone buildings being slowly consumed by ivy. Impressively old churches with cool architecture are a fact of everyday life. At night, the stars light up the sky like fireworks, so far from any city lights to drown them out.

1) It's always grey and rainy here, so pictures always come out underexposed, 2) I'm using my iPod touch as a camera, and 3) I know nothing about photography so a better camera wouldn't help anyway. But if you can tell despite all of these things, here's a picture of a typical old, crumbly house. I think it's so unbelievably cool that there are old crumbly houses, which just goes to show that not only am I American, but also that I am from the west coast instead of the east.

 Another fact of life here, besides the churches and old crumbly stone houses, is what I don't know what to call except "ruins." There are just portions of churches, former abbeys, or religious monuments of some sort scattered all over. Old French Catholics took their religion pretty seriously, I guess. So this... ruin, or whatever I should call it, is situated between my house and the center of Bois de Céné. (I say "center" ironically, because our incredibly ghetto downtown consists of a boulangerie, a post office, one small elementary school, a café, and a pharmacy. This is why people laugh when I tell them I'm from San Francisco and now I live in Bois de Céné.)

"So if Old World beauty is stone buildings, empty green fields with blackberry bushes, and cows, what is New World beauty?" I asked myself during my run today. Obviously the US is too big to be characterized by one type of beauty. In many ways, Bois de Céné looks remarkably like rural Wisconsin, like my great uncle's farm. But I really couldn't think of how to characterize any kind of beauty from the Silicon Valley. When I think of San Francisco, it's impressive for tall buildings amid foggy, bustling streets, for graceful architecture like the golden gate, and for the art that springs up all around in graffiti, in vendor's wares on the beach, and in paintings displayed proudly on the walls of any self-respecting SF shop. But... Sunnyvale? Cupertino? We have many good qualities, but beauty isn't one of them. We don't have nature and we don't have big impressive city things. Where there is green, it isn't a satisfying GREEN green like up north where it rains more; it's sort of a dusty brown desertish green. (Think Rancho San Antonio if you're having trouble following me.) There've been beautiful moments, to be sure. I remember with fondness the Mary pedestrian bridge that lights up at night like some silvery futuristic necklace strung out across the black sky (black, instead of milky with stars like it is here). But I hesitate even to mention how I enjoyed the sunsets during marching band practices, or how pretty Memorial Park can be when you're throwing bread to the ducks, because sunsets and ducks are things even more plentiful and beautiful here. So let's just say as far as beauty goes, Bois de Céné: 1. Sunnyvale: 0. Don't worry, Sunnyvale, you can be happy with having better schools.

“Attention à la présentation!”

All the other Americans I know in France agree on at least one thing: the school supply situation here is quite frankly ridiculous. Everyone has a pencil case containing at least 10 different colored pens, 4 different highlighters, whiteout (in pen form and in roller/mouse form), a ruler, glue, pencils, and an eraser. Bare minimum. The prepared, well-organized French student will also have scissors, a stapler, and probably some other super fancy goodies that I'm not even aware of. Here, no one is too cool for their super decked-out pencil case, whereas in the US, guys who think they're cool will often forgo the pencil case entirely, preferring to bring a single pencil or just borrow from their neighbor in every class.

I'm pretty sure if you turned in homework written in a million different colors in the US, the teacher would sort of roll his eyes at you and remind you that you're no longer in middle school. Here, it's what you're supposed to do. I write all in black, and can't stand doing anything else.

Even in the US my bad handwriting sometimes provoked “try to write neater, please” comments on particularly messy homework, but not usually. It's cramped and sloppy and I make a lot of mistakes, which I tend to just cross out and continue writing. (I can't stand whiteout. The stuff drives me crazy.) What makes it look even worse is that French handwriting is actually different – we are taught to form our numbers and letters differently, so that makes my writing even more difficult for my teachers to read. In math it was most confusing, so I've already switched to writing my ones like sevens and my nines like lowercase Gs, but I will probably not adapt to their super curly semi-cursive style of writing.

Where all of this is heading, of course, is that everything I do looks like cat vomit to my teachers and classmates. I got a math homework back with “Attention à la présentation!””written on top (“be more careful with the presentation!”). I was aware it wasn't pretty, but felt rather self-righteous about it anyway since it was I who had explained the homework to half of my class. Then on our math test, I was careful to be really neat and use my best “presentation” handwriting – I got it back with the same comment. As my classmates would say, in an exasperated tone of voice, “Putaaaaaiin!”

The funny thing is that in a way, neatness is subjective. Yes, in general Americans just turn in messier work than French people. But in the US they hate when you do math homework in pen, because there's always too much crossing-out or whiteout. I am stubborn and generally try my hardest to ignore this rule and write in black pen, but in the US, neat math homework = writing in pencil. Here, turning in work written in pencil would be unheard of, practically an insult to the prof. And then, of course, there's the matter of handwriting, where I have just as much trouble reading French handwriting as they have reading mine. Yes, I'm a messy student with terrible handwriting, but not all of it is me – some of it is just plain cultural differences.

Anyway, if any of you are thinking of moving to France any time soon, practice your prettiest handwriting and get used to colored pens and using rulers to underline everything. That's all.

Another thing I find pretty cute, and in rather the same vein, is their lab attire. But first, permit me to describe science class in general. Comparing my physics/chemistry class this year to my Chem Honors class sophomore year is rather like comparing you, dear reader, to an arsenic-based lifeform. The contrast between teachers is equally stark – my shy, awkward, nerdy prof now is the farthest thing imaginable from Napoleon-complexed, over-compensating, fire-breathing Narf at Homestead. In Chem Honors, labs involved a lengthy purpose, procedure, and research before starting, detailed observations in the lab notebook during the lab, and a conclusion and error analysis afterward. Here, labs consist of going to class, doing the lab (no lab notebook, no procedure, no nothing), and then talking with the prof about the results and what it means. I like the general idea – it makes science stay science instead of being the elaborate religious ritual that it was in Chem Honors, but at the same time it takes away from lab technique, and we don't get very good results. Today we were measuring concentrations of a solution, and I'm certain our lack of procedure and carelessness were reflected in the data. But the funniest thing is the lab attire: Lab attire back home consisted of closed-toe shoes, tied-back hair, and safety goggles. Lab attire here consists of none of these things, but we wear lab coats. How cute is that? As my mother said, “Dressing appropriately is a high priority after all, at least in France.” Protecting their clothes is apparently more important than protecting their eyes. Oh well, to each his own. I rather like my eyes, but I guess clothes are nice too.

Hey, guys! Look at the view from my window this morning! Also there was a really cool spider. Too bad you can't see how nice his web is in the picture.

In other unrelated news, frisbee yesterday was really fun. Only 5 people showed up: the coach, two adults, another young and relatively inexperienced player, and me. We worked on technique, played games (2 on 3 works pretty well when 2 of us are young and amateur and the other 3 are world-class players), and just plain had fun tossing around a disk. In a smaller group, I'm less intimidated by the quality of the players and not quite so lost. I just really enjoyed it, and hope frisbee will keep getting easier and more fun for me. I know I have a lot to learn, so if I keep my ears open and pay attention to our coach, I don't doubt that I'll improve quickly.

To follow up on my last post, I just thought I'd mention that I talked to my English teacher about my bad grade and he changed it to 12/20, just like that. The pretense both of us used was that it was my poor French skills that got in the way. Huh. So now my grade in English is as good as it is in French. Yay? Oh, the irony. In French, on the other hand, I was exceedingly pleased to get a 12/20 on my essay, which is about a B even though it looks an awful lot like a D- to us Americans. The prof said if I were French, she'd have given me a 10, which is still not too shabby at all. Good lord, was I relieved. I worked all weekend on that thing and was still terrified that I'd completely missed the point of the texts we were supposed to analyze. And that, my friends, is exactly why I'm not your ideal exchange student. I don't know anyone else who expects to write essays in French and get passing grades. Most of the other exchange students I know don't participate like a French student would, not doing all the homework or tests, and they are totally okay with that – we're not French natives and we shouldn't be ashamed of what we can't do, just like how we shouldn't be ashamed of not being able to swim as well as a dolphin. Me, on the other hand, even when I know logically that I should have different standards than the other students, I'm terrified of not passing my classes and therefore not getting my diploma, not going to college, and ending up as a McDonald's janitor for the rest of my life. Welcome to the beautiful neurosis-land that is Ikwe's brain, everyone!

And my last bit of unrelated news for today, far away in the land of college apps, is that I am DONE applying to McGill University, the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and the University of British Colombia. I'm slowly but surely editing my essays for the other three (University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Washington, and the UCs), so if you feel like editing, shoot me an email. I was extremely impressed because the other day I sent UW-Madison a question, fully expecting them to take several weeks to respond. It's admission season, my question was complicated (everything becomes a million times more complicated once you're applying from another country), and they must be flooded with admissions questions every day. It took them an HOUR to write me back with a thorough and helpful response. Go Badgers! Whoever said that public universities can't give you the individual attention you deserve, I present this as evidence against your case. It's particularly impressive once you compare it to the month it took for my high school guidance counselor to get back to me and tell me that she'd look over my email “later” to let me know if I'll even earn my diploma or not...

Okay! Super long rambling post is over! I've had a great week and hope all of you lovely people are doing well too.

Love,

Ikwe/Jenna

Your complimentary song today comes with a condition: if you recognize what American song the melody strongly resembles, please tell me, because it's driving me nuts. I'm sorry it's not a very good song, but I'm dying to know what the American song it reminds me of is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKJx-BnSLQU&feature=endscreen

(Keen'v, Contre Son Corps)

Another song by the same artist is way over-played on the radio, but is kind of catchy: Ma Vie au Soleil http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOdOhQFt1GE

And if you wanted an actually good French song, here it is, Joyce Jonathan's Je Ne Sais Pas (Merci Nina! <3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsJWSDe44Uk