Happy Halloween all! Sorry, but I am 100% positive that this latest post will not be available for your reading pleasure on the actual day of Halloween (oh darn!), but none the less, I am here – living, breathing, and existing – on Halloween! Boo to you! They don’t really celebrate Halloween in France. Well, not very well at least. It’s one of those extremely American traditions that French people secretly think is really cool and desperately want to copy, but alas cannot because they can’t just go changing their entire culture (at least not all at once).
It’s true though, there are elements of American culture that French people admire ridiculously much. In some ways, I’m found that they wish they were American. Halloween is one example. Another good one is the French teenagers obsession with Converse (you know, the basketball shoes?) Total. Obsession. Seriously, ask any SYAer what their host siblings favorite type of shoes are, and not only with they know exactly (which is pretty bizarre, who goes around talking about their favorite shoe type?), every single one of the them will say “Oh, obviously, Converse! Isn’t that your host sib’s favorite too?” Answer: YES. So yes, it’s cool to pretend you’re American in France. In general, Americans are cool. Here’s the paradox: American’s are also idiotic, ignorant, arrogant, and frivolous. Yet, French people like us and want to copy us. That makes sense right? NO.
Seriously, if anyone in the world was a hypocrite about anything, it might have to be the French and their strange American love/hate relationship. It’s kind of funny though; me and Kelly were talking about this exact same thing the other day. Apparently, Americans are the stupidest and more ignorant people ever. And yet, tons of French college students still flock to the US to go to college. Some French kids would kill to go to university in the US. Seriously. They want to come really really badly. Next up, Americans are ugly and have no fashion sense. Yet, Converse are literally everywhere and French teenagers wear Abercrombie hoodies despite the fact that there aren’t actually any Abercrombie stores in France (well, maybe one in Paris, but I don’t think so. I think they buy them online, it’s so weird.) Our American government is corrupt and unjust, yet our election news is huge here. Explanation? No clue. C’est bizarre, je dis. Très bizarre. Actually, it’s not bizarre. It’s just French.
Another funny Frenchism I’ve discovered, now that I mentioned the election. The general French population has some funny ideas about Obama/the election. I discovered this the other day when I was talking about politics with my family the day we got back from the Loire Valley. I said that everyone thinks Obama is going to win because he is way ahead, and my family said “obviously” and then they said “blah blah blah MORT…DEAD!”
Silly me, I thought they were saying that it’s too bad that Obama’s dead. Now, you have to understand, I actually had been out of town ignoring world news for the last four days, so it isn’t out of the questions that I would have totally missed something like that. But basically, I was thinking, “OK that sounds utterly ridiculous” but I was still a little upset that we didn’t have internet access at home because I really really wanted to go on CNN. com just to make sure my world wasn’t crumbling around me.
Anyway, I survived thinking that Obama might be dead (I wasn’t actually that worried, you see) and the next day I was sortir-ing with Maggie and Lucie in République and I just randomly burst out: “Hey, Obama isn’t dead right?”
Lucie laughs – a laugh of comprehension! Yes! – and says that her host family thinks that Obama is going to get killed too. I was like, WHAT? And then she explained this to me:
Apparently, there are many French people that believe in three absolute truths of the US election.
1) 1. Obama will be a better president than McCain.
2) 2. Obama will win the election.
3) 3. Obama will be assassinated by crazy racists.
I find this to be ridiculous. Have they no faith in America? We’re the land for the free and the home of the brave and the melting pot of the world, not to mention that we have the freaking Secret Service to prevent presidents for getting killed. It’s not like it would be that easy to just take out Obama. I mean seriously. And we’re not that racist either! Look French people! Obama’s in the lead! What does that say about how “racist” America is?
Anyway, very funny and interesting. Whoo culture!
Oh freaking Lord, it is SO cold here. Apparently global warming is hitting us really hard this year, because it’s supposed to SNOW next week. No joke. SNOW. S-N-O-W. Cold cold cold. It gets dark and it gets down to like five degrees Celsius, which in case you need a refresher on none stupid American temperature measure…THAT’S ONLY 5 DEGREES ABOVE FREEZING. It’s cold, yo. Very cold. Yesterday when we were hanging out in Rennes, me and Maggie and Lucie were literally hopping from restaurant to restaurant just because walking around aimlessly deciding where to go was out of the question unless we wanted to freeze to death. So we tried a new kabob place (two thumbs up) and after that went straight to Café Candiot where we stayed for maybe an hour and a half and then went straight to get crêpes. And somewhere along the lines we stopped in Galleries Lafayette and Maggie actually bought a beret because it was so cold out and her ears were cold. Yeah. Cold.
It gets dark here earlier too. It’s not too dark right now, but even when the sun is up it’s cold and gray. California cloudless skies are very far off.
I’ll keep you updated about snow. If it happens.
Oh by the way, I bought Grey’s Season 1 in FRENCH! It’s so amazing I love it. It’s annoying how all their voices are different though. And that one episode where in the English version Ellen Pompeo had totally lost her voice is normal in the French version! I was like, why does this voice sound normal? It’s supposed to be weird and nasally, I’ve seen this episode at least 10 times and every single time the voice was weird, and you’re telling me that it’s normal now? Really? Really?!
I sent out a bunch of postcards from the Loire today. If you get one, yay you! If you don’t get one and feel very strongly about it, leave me a pointed comment and I’ll be sure to send you one in two weeks when we’re at Mont St. Michel, d’accord?
Tout le monde, bisous de France!
(Don’t eat too much candy now, little childrens!)
1 comment:
holy moley rayla. SO MUCH WRITING. midterms delayed my ralya-blog-reading for about two weeks. ANYWAY, LOL french people are seriously jealous of CONVERSE of all things? haha. :D hm, i think obama's going to be assasinated too. there were already 4 attempts BEFORE the election. i can't imagine what's going to happen when the economy completely collapses. hopefully that won't happen (the economic collapse or the assassination) but i think there's definately a good chance of either one of those, or both even, happening.
SERIOUSLY??? FREEZING??? wow... we were in like the 90's two weeks ago... it was hot.
grey's :D we've gotta watch them all when you get back!!!!
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