Friday, December 28, 2012

Christmas Oysters

Merry belated Christmas! My Christmas was lovely. And very oyster-filled. I do not eat oysters, but everyone else does – it's a traditional dish for both the 24th and the 25th of December. This means that everyone in my family works double shifts just before Christmas for my host uncle, preparing and selling the oysters that everyone else will enjoy as their Christmas entrée and that will ensure my uncle's financial well-being for the year ahead. The oyster business tends to hinge directly on the sales of the week before Christmas, so it is a very important time of the year for the family business.

Thus, when I remember “my Christmas in France” in future years, it'll be oysters that I think of. And my post about Christmas living abroad won't be about homesickness or coal in my stocking, but about oysters.

On the 23rd of December, we prepared the oysters we'd be selling at market on the 24th. I only stopped by the oyster hut briefly, as they already had enough workers, but I packed a few boxes and watched long enough to figure out how it works. Most of that day's work was preparing the pre-orders. Many people pre-ordered their oysters if they had a very large quantity, usually 4 to 16 dozen (~ 50 to 200), to ensure they would get their oysters and to make it easier for us. We filled those orders, packing the oysters into crates stapled together from scrap wood, making sure the oysters were right side-up (so they wouldn't empty out their water and die and go bad), packing them in tightly so they wouldn't move, covering them with wet seaweed, and tying the lids on. This, of course, was already after all the work of sifting out the mud, dunking the oysters in boiling water to kill off the parasites that live on their shells, and sorting them into different sizes depending on their weight and shape. Then we loaded the pre-orders and cases of unpackaged oysters into the trucks for the next day.

The next day, Maman and I left the house at six to pick up cousin Nathan and drive the hour and a half to St. Georges-sur-Loire, a village near Angers where we'd be selling our oysters. My host brother and sister worked at the Nantes market the same day, but got to sleep in an extra half-hour since Nantes is much closer to home. In total, my uncle sent out 6 or 7 trucks to different markets that day, so there was enough employment opportunities for every one of my cousins and I. When we got there, we set up three tables piled high with pre-orders for Nathan to deal with, and the truck for Maman and me to take of.
 Me in the truck:
 Me and Nathan with the truck and the tables of pre-orders:


Selling oysters is a complicated business. First you have to ascertain if the customer has pre-ordered or not, since often they haven't figured out whether they should be talking to the people in the truck or the guy standing by the massive pile of pre-orders. (Don't judge them – French people are a little slow, okay? ;) ) If they haven't pre-ordered, you need to find out what kind of oyster (or clams, or bigorneaux) they want, and how many. Bigorneaux, by the way, are something that my dictionary tells me is a “winkle” in English, but I've never heard of winkles, so maybe we don't have them in the US. Anyway, they're a kind of snail. Sometimes the customer knows right away, and comes up to you saying “Hello! I'd like 3 dozen oysters, caliber 3, please.” But sometimes they don't know what kind of oysters they want, and then you have to explain it to them.

Oysters get sorted into 5 sizes, depending on weight. The very biggest ones are ones, and the very smallest are fives, with medium-size oysters therefore being threes and fours and big-ish oysters being twos. Oysters that are too long to be considered an ideal shape get sorted into their own category – longs, which are cheaper. Because longs come in all different sizes, it is the only type of oyster we sell by weight and not by the dozen. Sometimes people will ask for a round number of kilos of longs, which is easy (3.50€ per kg x nmb kg = price), but sometimes they stubbornly want, for example, two dozen longs, in which case you have to count two dozen longs, weigh them, and multiply 3.50€ by a number that isn't necessarily round, which is just unnecessarily cruel.

Here are the different calibers of oysters:


Now, I'd like to impress you with just how difficult it is to sell oysters. If someone asks for 4 dozen oysters of caliber 4, you first have to multiply 4 x 13 (a baker's dozen, just in case some of the oysters are bad) to get 52. Then you look on our handy price chart to multiply the price of that caliber times the number of dozens. I don't remember how much it is exactly, but let's say 3.30€ per dozen, which sounds about right. So while you're getting out the right size bag for 4 dozen oysters, you tell the customer, “That'll be 13.20€, please,” so they can get their money in order while you count. Then you have to count 52 oysters, while at the same time conversing with the customer so they feel that you're a friendly around-the-corner oyster seller, and listening for oysters that ring.

I don't know how to describe the sound that bad oysters make, but in French they call it “ringing.” Oysters with holes in their shells make a dry, hollow sound when they clack against other oysters. If an oyster has a hole, that means it didn't survive the boiling water bath to kill off the parasites, and therefore it's already been dead for awhile. Oysters have to be eaten right after they die or they aren't good, so a dead oyster is an unsellable one. So as you're counting to 52 under your breath and asking the customer if they're having a nice holiday season, you also have to listen for oysters that ring hollowly as you throw them in the bag, so you can take them out and not sell bad oysters. It is one of the most challenging multi-tasking manoeuvers I've ever been asked to perform, somewhat on the level of playing a challenging piano accompaniment to a choir of confused singers who need cues.

After you've successfully counted 52 oysters, you have to deal with the change. The customer gives you a 20€ bill, you kindly ask if he wouldn't have 3.20€ of change (because we always run out of change), but often he doesn't. Oh well, 20 minus... how much was the price again? 13.20. You count out 80 cents, having to double-check the markings on the coins since (we're pretending you're me) you're still unfamiliar with euro coins. 50 cents plus 20 cents plus 10 cents. Now we're at 14€, so I still owe 6€. That's one 5€ bill and a 1€ coin, since the smallest paper denomination in euros is 5€. Once you've finally got the change right, you have to hand it to the customer in a way that shows them you've counted correctly – generally I try to start with large denominations, handing them the bill, the euro coin, and then sort of saying “and 80 cents” and putting the other three coins on top, since I doubt they really care if I got the 80 cents wrong. (I could be wrong, I'm not a professional!) At first it doesn't sound that bad, but you ought to be terrified of making a mistake and short-changing the customer or short-changing your boss, and after a full morning of mental math, it's pretty exhausting, especially since it's in French, and I'm incapable of doing math in French – numbers remain the only thing I have to translate.

It wasn't an exceptionally busy market day (not that I would know; it was my first), but we sold 7 crates of oysters and had a decent amount of pre-orders. As our number of customers dropped off steeply, Nathan and I headed around the corner to the boulangerie and the charcuterie to buy two baguettes, three slices of ham, and some rillettes to make sandwiches. After lunch, we packed up our tables, organized our cash register (though I'm not sure if you can call a box full of money a cash register), and drove home. Well, Maman drove. Nathan and I slept. Heehee. Sometimes I'm glad I can't drive in France.

And sometimes I can't believe the story I'm living. I feel incredibly lucky that when I'm old, this will be one of my stories. That I'll be able to casually mention “When I was young and living in France, I spent Christmas eve selling oysters for my host uncle.” No big deal. Not only is a year abroad already a good story, but the typical exchange student would be talking about buying oysters from the quaint, charming little oyster stand on the corner. But not me. I was inside the oyster stand, trying to figure out how many oysters six baker's dozens make (it's 78). I win.

Now that you know everything there is to know about oysters, I suppose I'll tell you how my Christmas was, too. On Christmas eve (after a hot shower to wash off the oyster smell and a short nap) we went across the street to my aunt's house for a dinner that lasted until midnight. I was pretty sleepy, so was glad to come home and fall into bed despite enjoying the dinner. On Christmas morning, we found that Père Noël (Father Christmas, aka Santa Claus) had come by despite the fact that we hadn't put our slippers under the tree (the French equivalent of stockings). My favorite present is the veritable mountain of Kinder chocolate that my host sister gave me, since she can't believe that we don't have Kinder in the US.
A sample of my mountain of Kinder (because some of them are in the fridge and I already ate some of them):
 
I also got a wonderful warm winter scarf knitted by my mother, as well as socks and mittens and tights and dried tapioca so I can make bubble milk tea, and a lovely necklace and massage appointment with my host sister from my host mom. I gave a Hollister shirt to my sister, an Apple t-shirt to my brother (who loves everything Apple), and miscellaneous presents for my parents. It was a pretty cheerful and fun Christmas morning, with everyone being pleased and appreciative of their presents.

For lunch, which is the biggest meal of the day for most French holidays, we went back to our aunt's house, bringing along presents for the little cousins. The only other remarkable event of the day is that I tried an oyster, which I already knew I wouldn't like (seafood is the only thing I don't eat) but thought I should make sure. It was gross. I enjoy selling oysters and now I know a lot about them, but I still don't like eating them. After lunch, which finished around 6pm, I spent the rest of the day skyping back home to watch my family open presents and catch up with them. All in all, it was a lovely Christmas, and I didn't even feel homesick. I think the fact that I was involved in festivities, even if they weren't my family's festivities, means that I didn't feel the distance as acutely as I might have. As it was, I felt more sad about missing Thanksgiving and Hanukkah than about Christmas.

Now we're just waiting for January 1st, when we leave for the Alps. I have very little to do, so I've been running, painting things for Maman, and watching hysterical old French comedies with my host sister. Life is good.


Now for some good old French-Canadian music, because our Canadian cousins do it best.
Garolou, La Vendée
Mes Aïeux, Dégéneration
La Bottine Souriante, La Montagne du Loup

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Searching for Happiness

Much of my life has been an active search for happiness – not an idle desire, but an actual concentrated effort, conducted with the scientific approach I grew up with. Happiness is one of my top goals, right next to being a generally good person and being an intelligent and rational being.

Life has a lot of factors to it. (I hereby present myself with the Understatement of the Year award.) It's hard to know what things make a difference and what things don't. For example, why was junior year so great and sophomore year so terrible? I know that I liked my classes better and my group of friends better, but which is a bigger factor in overall happiness? Being content with school or having a good group of friends? Similarly, the happiest I ever am is at summer camp. Why? It's easy enough to say “Well, it isn't specifically the canoeing, or the being in nature, or the Voyageur traditions, or even the people. It's just the ensemble of everything that makes it so great.” And while that may be somewhat true, it is not a useful statement. It means that I cannot try to apply camp to my everyday life to improve my overall happiness.

So I try to experiment with little things, refusing to give up. I speculated that waking up early to morning light might be part of the difference, so I switched rooms with my brother to catch the morning light and tried to stick with my camp sleeping habits. Did it work? Who knows. That was right around the beginning of junior year, when I did indeed get happier, but I also had better classes and better friends, as I mentioned before.

One thing that is a rare obvious difference is exercise. That is well-researched and known to be hugely effective. If you could make an anti-depression pill with the same benefits that regular exercise gives you, you'd be a millionaire. I know that I personally am extraordinarily influenced by this effect. Exercise correlates almost perfectly to my weekly ups and downs. Now that I have Ultimate, I go for runs much less often, but together they are still two of my greatest sources of happiness.

The very fact of conducting this search is also a source of happiness. I think it could go either way – there are people who try to be happy in a melancholy, “look how horrible the world is” kind of way, like they're looking for it just to prove someone wrong. A lot of moody teenagers are like this, and I sort of imagine that a lot of great poets were the same way. Can't you just imagine Edgar Allan Poe saying “Okay, I guess I'll play laser tag with you, but do you really think it will make the emptiness in my heart go away?”

On the contrary, my search for happiness is genuine, and that means that the things I notice often bring joy in themselves. Noticing that I'm happy is pleasing: when I'm laughing with friends, there's that incessant introspective part of me that's saying “hey, good job, it looks to me like you're fitting in,” and makes me smile for a different reason than the original one. When I see a dew-laden spiderweb outside my window, I stop and admire it, and it makes me smile because there's beauty in the world, and because I'm glad I can appreciate it.

One can become blind to beauty. I love the rain, but when it rains all the time, I can fall into the trap of looking outside and saying “ugh, it's still raining!” Completely forgetting the fact that I love the rain and could watch it streaming down and painting bull's-eyes on puddles for days on end. I try to avoid this line of thinking just by reminding myself that the rain is pretty. It usually works.

On an interestingly symmetrical note, one can become immune to discomfort. This is something I appreciate much more. I read in a book about the Holocaust that one can get used to anything. The German people just stopped reacting to atrocities after a while. The Jews got used to the conditions in the ghettos. And so no one really fought back, because the whole thing got started bit-by-bit, so people had time to get used to it. The same principle has been at work recently: in no way whatsoever do I want to compare my stay in France with the Holocaust, but I'm getting used to things I don't particularly like. I thought I'd never get used to being clumsy with words. I thought I would always resent that social disadvantage and be embarrassed by it. But lately I have been able to go days without remembering that my native language isn't French. I've become used to the struggle to find my words sometimes. The struggle lessens but doesn't go away, but objecting to that struggle does go away. I have become accustomed to a lot of things that aren't really my favorite: not cooking my own food, the TV and radio always being on, the immense quantities of free time at school, not being with my family, etc.

For a long time I thought happiness would be permanently out of my reach: that I, too, had fallen victim to the mental illness genes that lurk in one half of my family and would be forever adrift in depression, bipolar disorder, and whatever else lay in wait for me. Discovering that I was wrong and that I just had an unusually bad adolescent hormone experience between the ages of 11 and 15 was gratifying. Last year was a pretty darn good year. This year started off rough for a couple reasons, mostly starting with too high expectations for the “great adventure” of my year abroad (which seems to end up containing less adventure than my life at home did), the realization that I'd be happier at home, and homesickness.

But it's better now. I truly don't know if I would've been happier at home. At home I would've been bored and frustrated from my wanderlust, regretting that I hadn't taken the year to go abroad. Even if study abroad isn't everything I hoped and dreamed of, it has its fun moments, and at least I know now. It's good to know. It's good to have the experience. And now that I really am finding friends and fitting in, gaining in confidence, and learning to accept the difficulties of not being a French native, it is pretty fun. The number of good moments in my day has multiplied since a month or two ago.

The other day my frisbee coach told me that I have, without a doubt, made the best decision in my life in coming to France. Americans who speak fluent French are rare enough that I'll never have to worry about unemployment ever – the world of international business will always want me. I agreed with him, that it's a priceless experience, and that now I'm starting to really enjoy it even if a month or two ago I wasn't so sure. He looked at me for a moment and said “It was the frisbee, wasn't it?” The frisbee that gave me something to occupy myself with, a reason to stay, the confidence to speak out a little more and make friends and follow my own desires. Yup. Pretty much. And how lucky was I, to randomly end up neighbors with the frisbee coach for the ONE frisbee team in the Vendée.

Who knows what the secret to happiness is. But little by little I'm figuring out the things that help and the things that hurt. Exercise is necessary, as is having a passion. My passion used to be music, but now it can be Ultimate. Friends are necessary. I'm working on that, and I think I've found some pretty darn good ones. Confidence is necessary. I struggle with that one. But it'll be my New Year's resolution to stop being shy, because being shy is a stupid counterproductive emotion that can probably be defeated by intentional forced bravery. I think it'll also help that I'm turning 18 in February. Though it's only a number, it'll mean that I'm officially an adult, that I run my own life, have the right to make my own decisions, and can't take crap from nobody. 17 year olds have the right to their opinions and eccentricities as well, but they don't have the “I'm a responsible independent adult and I do what I want” card.

It turns out CIEE was right. My homesickness/culture shock pretty much followed their pattern exactly. Month one was scary but not too bad. I started to get settled in after that and enjoyed the beginning of month two, with a “you've got this!” kind of attitude. In the middle of month two, culture shock struck. Oh, how I was irritated at France (specifically the Vendée) and its lack of intellectualism, its parties, its judgemental females, its free time, and at the cultural and linguistic wall that kept me from feeling like I could make real friends. This lasted for about a month – it was about month 3.5 before I started forgetting how irritated I was and getting really into the activities I enjoy (aka frisbee) and hanging out with the people I like at school. December is month 4. (Holy mackerel, at the end of this month I've already been here four months. That's a third of a year! That's a pretty long time.)

It turns out time works just like it does in real life.
Wait a minute, that sentence totally didn't say what I wanted it to say. Let me try again: It turns out the way that time goes by in the space of a year mimics how time passes as we grow up. (Better.) See, when you're four, a year is a REALLY long time, because it's a fourth of your life. When you're 16, a year is not so long – only a little more than 6% of your life. Similarly, during a year abroad, the first week seems incredibly long. Every day is filled with so much new information and so much to get used to, and you evaluate all of it in the context of “this is what I'm seeing just now for the first time, and what I will have to live with for the next 10 months.” So the first week and the first month seem incredibly long and it seems unimaginable to live a whole 10 months that slowly. Fortunately, just like living, time speeds up. After you establish a weekly routine, the weeks pass quicker and quicker, each week a smaller fraction of the total time you've been abroad. And now, time just seems to be whizzing by. Each month doesn't take very much time, so in just a little bit it'll be the end of January, which is my halfway point, and then it'll be just a few months from over, and then it'll be... over. How bizarre. How incredibly weird to think about the end, when it's still just the beginning.

10 months is not a long time. Especially not in the grand scheme of things, the 100 or so years I get in total to search for happiness. And since living abroad changes everything, it gives a bucketload of new changing variables to help diversify (/confuse) the experiment. Bit by bit, life is getting better. Or I'm getting better at life. And you know what? This year is helping. I'm glad I came.


Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Feminism

Although in general I would not consider myself “anti-feminist” (because I am for equal rights of women), I wouldn't choose to identify myself with the feminist movement either. I could go into the reasons, but I couldn't possibly write it better than one of my favorite bloggers, who did a series of brilliant posts about feminism, trying to understand it and sympathize with it, and sometimes feeling victimized by it. You're probably saying to yourself “Tl;dr” right now (Dear Grandma and Grandpa: Tl;dr is short for “too long; didn't read”) but I promise that if you even just start to scroll through the meditations, you'll end up reading all of them and your time will not be wasted:
First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Meditations on the subject of being a privileged white guy feeling terrorized by militant feminists, and other related topics.

If you really did skip over that section (no really! Read them!), I'll take a moment to summarize my negative feelings about feminism with a first analogy to race, which I believe to be an even more flagrant issue.

I am not racist if I refuse to give a black person something. Yes, I have been accused of this, and no, that is not acceptable. I am not racist if I acknowledge the fact that there are differences between races, such as Ashkenazim having long lifespans, or even (God forbid I attribute positive or negative attributes to races!) the fact that Chinese people are on average more intelligent than other races, second only to Ashkenazim. No, I am not racist if I acknowledge these differences, even if I mention that Ashkenazim have long lifespans and are the most intelligent ethnic group and I also happen to be half-Ashkenazi myself. Yes, I do believe that racism is an over-used word (a “superweapon,” if you read the blog I linked to above). Yes, I do acknowledge the fact that there is still racism in the world and that we should fight it, but accusing non-racist people of racism does not help your case.

The other problem I have with militant anti-racists is Affirmative Action, which deserves a whole post of his own and I wrote an essay on it last year that I got a bad grade on because my teacher was pro-affirmative action. (Grumble grumble bitterness bitterness.) But let's just leave it at this: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” --MLK Jr. This is what I want – I don't want it to be easier for blacks to get into Harvard than Asians, nor vice versa. I have read Tim Wise's “White Like Me” and didn't agree with most of it. It is true that blacks, on average, are disadvantaged in the race to success in college and jobs: growing up in poverty, with worse schools and a lower cultural value on education. But it is unfair and inaccurate to assume that all blacks are disadvantaged by an arbitrary 280 SAT points and that no whites or Asians are poor and disadvantaged. (To clarify, being black instead of Asian is as helpful as having scored 280 higher on the SAT in terms of getting admitted to college, on the old 1600 point scale. So you can picture it, that would be a 420 point difference on the new scale, for example, 2200 for an Asian and 1780 for a black.) This is why we have application essays: to get to know the person behind the application. But it is far too inaccurate to sort based on race, and it isn't fair to whites, blacks, or Asians to do so. (If you think it is to the advantage of African-Americans, keep in mind that affirmative action creates a different meaning of the phrase “Harvard diploma” for different races – since studies have shown that it is the type of student admitted to the top colleges and not the education provided by the top college that makes a successful graduate, if you admit a lower caliber of black people and a higher caliber of Asian people to Harvard, this will generate “Hey, this job applicant is a Harvard grad!” “Oh, this one too!” “...Well, the Asian Harvard graduate obviously had to be a more impressive candidate than the black one to get admitted, so we'll hire that one.” (Disclaimer: I do not know if this actually happens or not; it's just a theory. Let me know if you find any studies on it!)

This is approximately how I felt about feminism until rather recently.
(My brother read this post and said 'It sounds like you're saying "There's too little sexism to effect [sic] us anymore" and then immediately after that saying "Okay, well there could be enough to effect [sic] us somewhat, but not so much that it deserves to be made a big hairy deal of."' So just to clarify, yes, that's what this post is about, but with the emphasis being on how my views on the subject have evolved over time, partly thanks to the differences in treatment of women between the US and France.)

My thought process goes something like this:

I am aware that sexism was a huge problem in the past and still is a problem in many parts of the world for many people. But we have made so much progress against it that I have never felt denied an opportunity because of my sex. I have no reason to be feminist because I have never felt like my path to success is more difficult because I am female. The obvious challenges that still exist often have other reasons besides sexism behind them: There are many more male US senators than females, which is not because all men are misogynistic oppressive rapists, but because

  1. Men “look” more like senators, which is probably partly a social construct and partly a natural evolutionary urge since we look at men as the alpha wolves of the pack, and their natural height and brawn (to fight off the other potential pack leaders!) is clearly authoritative and a desirable trait in a leader. This is not necessarily a good thing, but I don't consider it a sexist thing either. It's an unfortunate, somewhat natural phenomenon.
  2. I don't have enough information about this to say anything, but it is true that there are natural differences in male and female brains. To choose a random example, the average male has better spatial skills than the average female. There might be biological, rather than societally-imposed (and therefore sexist) differences in our brains that account for highly skewed gender distribution in jobs such as politics, fashion, science research, etc.
  3. Sexism.

I promise you, I really do acknowledge that this is an issue. I just think we tend to exaggerate. And the last thing I want is a 50/50 female/male ratio in Congress. I want our politicians to be elected for their legal knowledge, their logical thinking, their effective policy-making, and their competence, regardless of sex, race, sexual orientation, or religion. I will still rejoice for the victory against prejudice when we succeed in electing a gay muslim athiest, but I won't vote for them if they aren't competent.

I still feel this way, but feminism is multi-faceted. There are certainly more issues than this, but most feminism I've encountered falls either into the discrimination-in-jobs category or the objectification-of-women category. The first category is the one I've discussed above, that I accept as an existing problem but don't get up in arms against because I've never personally experienced it. But the second one is one I've been thinking a lot more about lately.

Reason 1) I've already mentioned being intimidated by the fashionable French. Perhaps most of the US is just as fashionable as France, but I doubt it. My theory is that the Silicon Valley is particularly unfashionable because we value education above all else (and thus Harvard sweatshirt = fashionable, plus we don't give a damn), that the rest of the US is a little more fashionable than us, and that France is much more fashionable than the US in general. It is true that this holds true for the men as well as the women, but it's not equal. In the US the problem is that we're so homophobic that men could be afraid to dress nicely. Fitted khakis and shirt, a wool coat, a fashion scarf, and hair gel (completely normal in France) borders on metrosexual in the US. In the US, social pressure does not give men much choice, whereas women can dress like tomboys or femininely or however they want. In France, men can either dress nicely or in jeans and a sweatshirt (like the majority of American men) – they have free choice. It's the women in France who don't have a choice.

Before coming to France, I never would've imagined that (outside of TV shows about catty rich high school blondes) someone would actually say “Ew, look at what she's wearing!” in response to an ugly or unfashionable garment such as a T-shirt. Most people have heard “...well, that's an interesting fashion choice,” referring to a very short skirt or too many colors or very gothic or very cheerleader or any fashion choice that is deliberately extreme. To my social-o-meter, it is acceptable but not kind to comment negatively on deliberately extreme fashion choices, but not acceptable to call a person ugly (ever) or to call their garments ugly if they are simply plain. During the last 3 months, I've heard insults like that many times – not intended to be mean, but mean to my ears anyway. This is the sort of comment that people imagine others say of them but in my previous experience, no one ever says. In short, it's paranoia. But whereas I have never been too concerned with my appearance and rarely experienced such paranoia, now it's reality and not paranoia, as I realize I should be careful with how I dress so as not to put myself at a social disadvantage.

This, to me, smells awfully of objectification of women. Please let me know if there's another explanation that doesn't involve sexism (and that passes Occam's Razor), but that's what it sounds like to me. Remembering that I said in the US it's men who don't have a choice, let's acknowledge that that is a problem, too – not sexism, but closer to homophobia, in my opinion. But the lack of choice for women in France smells like sexism. We're obligated to look nice. Why would that be? I can't think of any other explanation besides the fact that a woman's role is to be decorative (aka a sex object, depending on how far you want to stretch the argument). They're all perfectly made-up. Clothes that I consider normal (T-shirts, sweatpants, sweatshirts) are not acceptable for girls to wear. Skirts and dresses and heels are much more common at Truffaut than at Homestead, and an amount of jewelry that would look skanky at Homestead is common at Truffaut. It's one of those things that in theory I don't support, but you can't fight a country and a culture. It's easier to conform and not make life harder for myself. (Don't worry; I still rebelliously wear my giant blue sweatshirt once every couple weeks or so just to remind myself that I'm American.)

Naturally, these girls don't think of it as an obligation. When I mentioned it to my BFF Julia, she seemed surprised. “It's just a habit!” But when she forgot to put on makeup one day a few weeks ago, she was desperate to find someone with an emergency makeup kit so she could fix the situation. That doesn't sound like a habit to me – it sounds like an obligation. And naturally there are girls who don't obey the rules. There will always be the nerds and the social outcasts who either haven't realized the rules exist (like many of my friends and family), don't have the confidence to give themselves a make-over and be like everyone else (once a late bloomer, always an awkward egg, just like me!), or just don't want to, strongly enough to overcome the societal pressure. But back home, at least at a high school full of nerds like Homestead, it was perfectly acceptable to choose whether or not to be fashionable. Fashionable people, like this cool fashion blogger from Homestead, aren't outcast for not being nerds (as far as I know; I have no personal data on this), and nerds are not ostracized for their sweatpants and Harvard sweatshirts. We are respected for our choices, and whatever we choose is generally not so unusual as to be remarkable. Here in France, it doesn't feel that way at all.

Reason 2 that feminism has become more of an issue for me since coming to France: I'm going to touch on this only briefly because I have little data on the matter, but French boys seem to be a lot pushier than American boys. You know that image we have of sexy, romantic Frenchmen who are slightly obsessed with chasing pretty girls but they're handsome so it's okay? Well, yeah, that. It's only charming in romantic comedies – in real life it doesn't fly. (Man, there are so many things wrong with romantic comedies... PLEASE don't think these are good stories to emulate!) Most of the American boys I knew were adorably shy with girls. This is clearly why the modern tie was invented by Anglo-Saxons: Anglo-Saxon girls need a handle for their men, or they'll never get kisses. This is not at all true for the typical French boy. Needless to say, I am a big believer in asking permission and respecting a negative answer as the final word – none of this “playing hard to get” nonsense. In Amurika, we teach our boys to respect womenfolk, or Pops'll shoot ya with his bear gun.

And last and least, Reason 3 is that my French teacher is a serious raging feminist. I do not always agree with her, but she does bring up some good points. My favorite one is this short video which is in French, but you'll get the gist even if you don't speak French. It swaps the gender roles of standard western society simply to shock you and realize that some things that we consider normal really shouldn't be. We shouldn't have to be afraid if we're walking down the street and there's a group of big strong guys leering at us. Granted, most guys are not rapists and would feel wounded if a woman was afraid to be alone in an elevator with him, for example. “I didn't do anything!” he would think, indignantly. And he would be right, most likely. And when a guy asks a girl out, sometimes she might be afraid as well. We don't know if it's just a guy asking us out, or if a refusal will be met with unwanted persistence and harassment. This, too, is unfair to the poor average guy who's just trying to get a date. I wish we could tell the difference, so we'd never say “Get away from me, creep!” to a nice guy who just wants to buy you a coffee, and we'd never accept a cup of coffee from a rapist. Unfortunately, men don't come with labels, and the fact that they are the physically stronger sex means that sometimes women will be afraid of innocent men, and sometimes women will trust men who will take advantage of them. Sure, women are mind-readers, but not infallibly.

...Shoot, I totally had other things to say, but then I got distracted and forgot what they were.




Okay, moving on. Here's my random PERSONAL UPDATES:

I GOT INTO UW-MADISON! :D If you'll remember from this post a super long time ago, my tour of Madison convinced me that that's where I wanted to go. I'm still going to wait for Berkeley to reject me before I say yes to Madison, but I'm pretty sure that's where I'm going. And I might end up rooming with one of my awesome Voyageur friends if she decides to go there as well! I'm getting pretty stoked for all of it – for living in Madison, which is a beautiful little city, and for the snowy cold, for living near the Boundary Waters and also my aunt and other assorted family and friends in Minneapolis, for getting to retake up band and all the musical opportunities I'm missing out on this year, for frisbee, for being gloriously undecided and getting to decide what I want to do with my life, for more study abroad, for making friends and Hoofers and sledding down Bascom Hill on cafeteria trays and getting to restart my life again, but this time in English and with a little more confidence.

On the other hand, I think I have to mention that last week I felt sad instead of excited for the first time at the thought of going home. My frisbee coach was talking about how we're going to play beach frisbee this summer and learn to run in the sand and how much fun diving for the disk is in beach frisbee. Then he asked me if I'd like to come help out with the mini Friday night practices for the younger kids he's going to set up next year, before remembering that I wouldn't be there. It really startled me, the feeling of wishing I'd be here to play beach frisbee and help out with the little ones. I'm having a good time, but normally I think of June with nothing but excitement.

In other news, we just got our grades for this trimester. I have an average of 15, which is equivalent to an A and is about the 4th highest in my class. It makes me feel half guilty, because I didn't do any work this trimester and I'm doing far better than I would've done at home with a full load of AP classes.
Just a note for any future exchange students reading this – I don't know why it works like this for me, but this is not a result you can expect. All the other American exchange students I know in France are not doing so well, and they don't get graded because if they were they'd get zeros. (And here is where Julia would tell me to shut up and stop being arrogant, but no, I'm just telling the truth.) The German students I met in Paris, on the other hand, they're right along with me, acing school. So I'm guessing it has something to do with good education (Homestead not being a typical US high school) and something to do with mastery of the language. I don't really know. But for whatever reason, exchange students either succeed or fail. They don't do anything in between. Just a heads-up.

All is going well. I have friends, at least, a few. School's fine, and now that first trimester grades are done, I'm essentially a second semester senior. I have another Ultimate tournament this weekend. And it's almost Christmas vacation, which means skiing at Méribel!

Here are your complimentary songs for the day. They're all good ones this time, too. (I've decided it looks much prettier to use hyperlinks instead of pasting youtube links all over the place. Maybe the perverse French obsession with things looking nice is getting to me.)

Tryo “Ce que l'on sème

Kyo “Dernière Danse

Patrick Bruel “Lequel de nous” (My host mom has a crush on Patrick Bruel! It's adorable.)