A Little Eccentric

Le week-end

Hello!
I am actually writing this on Saturday. Hopefully, I can find a cyber-café with WiFi to post this from on Monday. Chiquita and I were going to go into town today and check out the sales. In France, they have two huge sales every year when they go from Winter-Spring and Summer-Fall. Basically, they take their winter stuff and continue marking it down until its gone. Its on the very end of the sale, so if you can find something in your size, the price is ridiculously cheap. I bought a full-length coat AND a pair of boots yesterday for only 27 Euros! (and yes, they are the kind of knee-high boots that go over your jeans; they are THE THING here) You should see me, I am starting to look pretty French. However, it is snowing really pretty hard today. It snows here, but not often at all so everything is positively shut down. There is maybe an inch or two of snow and the whole bus system is not running today. This means I am stuck out here completely. Being from Wyoming, Chiquita and I were annoyed and repeatedly called them “pansies.” We stood there for 20 minutes before a guy was nice enough to come tell us the bus wasn’t running. One thing you have to get used to in France, they never formally post or tell you anything. There are lots of stories about them shutting off water in dorms for 2 days and not telling anyone when they were doing it or when it would be back on, etc. That sort of thing would drive you positively crazy at home, but here it is the standard.

The school system here is really different than at home. Our college system is geared towards making friends, socializing, etc. along with academics. Here, not so much. The students go home every weekend and there are no parties, etc. There is also no Union or centers for students to hang out in. They basically go to class and go home. It is extremely hard to break into any groups, and all the international kids I have talked to say its pretty much impossible unless you live here for several years. So, you can breathe easy, there will be no French boys in my future. J Plus, I hate to say, most of them are kind of icky.
Also, today marks my being in France for 2 weeks, and a full week entirely on my own (even though it feels like 2 months). Considering how hard it was to get integrated (this was seriously the hardest two weeks of my life) I’d like to say felicitations to myself.

One thing that is kind of crazy…there is this 50-something year old Arab guy who lives near Chiquita on her floor. He is extremely nice and we chat with him quite a bit. When Chiquita mentioned she was American, he said, “I’m Iraqi. Your soldiers are everywhere in my country right now.” She said something to the effect that she wasn’t the one that put them there and hurried back to her room. We wondered if he would still be so friendly towards us, but when the Arabs were outside taking pictures of the snow he came running over and asked if he could take a picture with us and we of course obliged. Then later tonight when we were making dinner in the kitchen on Chiquita’s floor, he came in and we had a very long discussion with him about Saddam Hussein and post-war Iraq. It was incredibly interesting to talk to an actual Iraqi. I was scared to ask him questions, but Chiquita straight up asked him what he thought of American soldiers, living under Saddam, etc. In a nutshell, he said that living under Saddam was awful and there was no liberty at all. But, he said there have been all kinds of problems since the Americans came. He said at first the soldiers were nice and helpful but he described them now as very mean and would randomly kill people. He also said that the lack of structure is harder to deal with than the tight control under the regime, but he says it was not better under Saddam. Basically he said he is glad Saddam is gone, but things need to get straightened out fast and he doesn’t like the attitude of the soldiers. It was a very interesting conversation (all in French, of course). But he ended it by saying that war is political, and he likes Americans as a people and that he likes both of us, and asked us if we now liked Iraqis because we had the opportunity to sit and talk with one. Of course, we both said yes. It was crazy. Afterwards, me and Chiquita had a big conversation about seeing the war from both sides. We could see why the soldiers would obviously get harsher and more violent with their lives on the line and having to protect themselves, but also why the Iraqis would dislike them, etc. Very bizarre we could make friends with a guy whose country our country is bombing. What a small world, huh?
Also, I ate a delicious chocolate mousse that I took a picture of, and I bought a plant for my room and named it "Gary Pierre de la Touraine." I know, I'm weird.

posted by Molly Jo @ 3:25 AM