Well, after promising in my last video post that I would write more often, I lost the internet connection. The internet wasn't fixed until this weekend, by which point two friends were in Paris visiting, so I didn't get a chance to post. Apologies!
What have I been up to since I've last posted? Well, Devan and I went to the movies for a second time (not sure if I mentioned it the first time we went) to see "The Artist," which is an American-produced film but the two leading actors are French. If you haven't heard much about it, it's a little bit difficult to explain but basically it is a silent film about two people who were actors in the days when silent films were transitioning to talkies. It was very good, unique in concept though probably not a movie I'll watch over and over again, and I've heard it is up for many nominations and awards.
On Friday, our two friends Matt and Nico, whom we know from Fairfield and who are studying in Florence, arrived in Paris. It was really nice to see familiar faces from home and just as when we showed the girls around the weekend before, it was fun to show off the city we love so much. We brought them to Notre Dame - about my 6th visit, we always seem to end up in that area - and our favorite crêpe place, Au Pet't Grec, where the two vendors hassled the guys in French when Devan and I ordered their food for them. We went to Paul for the best macarons, the Eiffel Tower, Les Halles to wander.
Also on Friday, Devan and I went to Olivier's apartment for a party. There weren't many other people - two other girls from our program and four or five of Olivier's friends - but it was so much fun. It was such a change to be in a setting more similar to what we do back in the states, but also hanging out and interacting with actual French residents beyond telling them what we want to eat at a restaurant. One of the girls I met, Ambre (Amber), declared us "soul sisters" when we discovered we were born on the same day (but a year apart) and twelve hours apart to the minute. The conversations we had would've probably been amusing to an outsider; we spoke in French to the French kids other than Olivier, and they spoke back to us mostly in English. There were probably many weird exchanges of awkwardly-phrased sentences and mixed-up expressions but we didn't care. I don't care. Or, in French - as we learned how to say on Friday - Je m'en fiche! We had fun.
As for other things... well (here comes the nerd), one thing that we learned in history this week that completely fascinated me was that in France, they don't have a concrete concept of race. There is no acknowledgement of it, legally or (generally) colloquially. Of course, France is not exempt from a history of racism or discrimination, but it has been to a different degree than the United States has experienced. France does not have any demographic information based on what we refer to as race in the United States. It is, in fact, illegal to demand such classification on documents or surveys. This completely amazed me. Last semester I took a course focused primarily on race and gender and we looked at the two concepts as social constructions (though they have real meaning and impact on individuals), and studied the powerful role that the two concepts play in American society, so to find out that there is a country that actually doesn't even acknowledge race completely blew my mind. According to my professor, it's not just a political policy either, but there is no sense of race amongst the French like Americans have. In the states, we try to label people. Society in general has an obsession with categorizing everything, driven largely by an attempt to understand things. But race? In its history, the US has produced laws in order to attempt to define what black is, what white is. What percentage of either makes you belong to a particular category? Our system just doesn't make sense to me.
I hope you enjoy the picture I included at the beginning of this post. There are these pictures called memes circulating the web right now, and I saw someone post this on Facebook and thought it was amusing.
For now it's time to post some pictures then get some sleep before class in the morning. Tomorrow I may have the results of my first two tests here... this should be interesting! ;)
À toute à l'heure!
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