Not much new has been going on here, starting to fall into a rhythm. Since everyone now has officially started classes, things have calmed down. I have decided to take up my extra time with some sports. I have signed up for English Boxing, French Boxing, Judo and weightlifting. France, and the French, is very bureaucratic. For me to be able to use the weights, I had to have permissions form a professor and pass a test on top of paying for a card. Talk about nickel and diming to death, it seems that if you want to do anything you need 5 peoples permission then have to pay for something. It’s backwards from the States, and what I can tell from other students from other countries, it is quite backwards from their systems also. It seems the French have carved their own little world in the EU sometimes, it is quite interesting.
The French is coming along. Way easier to pick it up when you are constantly surrounded by it. Not quite to a full conversational level yet, but it is coming along well. I think it is funny that the French can speak English, but they refuse too (well the ones that don’t deal with international students that is). I have come to find out that with the “American Accent,” it can be quite difficult to correctly pronounce French. For example, water (l’eau). I cannot, for life of me, pronounce it correct when I order it; I have to just say “water.” It works, sometimes I get weird looks, but my mix of Franglish works.
I still think it is interesting how I can make do with daily life and not have to really speak any French at all. I can walk through the grocery store and buy all my things just by saying “Bonjour” and “Merci.” They tell me how much it is, but I can’t understand what they say so I look at the register display. Also, it is interesting how many words English shares with the Romantic languages. It is actually quite easy to read and get the jist of what the products are.
Other interesting things, bikes. Since everything is so close, everyone rides bikes and walks. The bicycles aren’t the interesting part, it is the riders. When I walk to class in the mornings, you will see a mother or father riding with a baby seat attached to the back and two or three other children following behind them on their own small bikes, looks like a flock of ducks. Also the professional women, I still find it interesting to see them riding bikes with their full professional get-up and heals. You have to be careful when walking on the sidewalks. Sometimes they have dedicated bike paths, and you will get run over if you aren’t paying attention. Other times they just ride on the side and ring their little bike bells. I want to go out one night and collect all the bike bells in Strasbourg, they have become quite annoying.
Cars and Drivers, they are different also. The cars are a lot smaller, but the drivers are crazy. It makes big city drivers in the U.S. look tame. One-way streets, stop lights and stop signs all seem optional. I have been in the car a couple times with some German and French drives, and I will not get back in. Also, the parking; in the U.S., we park facing the same way on the right hand of the street, not here. Sidewalks are parking lots, and town squares are roads.
Smoking, every freaking person here smokes. Smoking never bothered me because 1) I have worked in bars all the time and 2) 2nd hand smoking in U.S. public really isn’t that big of an issue. Here, I have to find different ways into the school and other public places. You aren’t allowed to smoke in bars or restaurants here, but the smokers all graze outside of the entrances. I don’t exaggerate when I say that to get into the school; I have to walk through a cloud of smoke. I will take some pictures to show. Also, the age that people smoke and the amount of people that smoke. It could roughly be the same as the U.S., I haven’t really counted, but it is more evident here that people smoke. U.S. smokers sometimes try to be sly and sneaky about it. Not here, from 9 years to 90 years, they all smoke. I was walking and saw two little girls; they couldn’t have been more than 11, rolling their own cigarettes. Also, that is a huge thing here, rolling cigarettes. You are in the minority if you buy what we Americans would consider the standard cigarette.
The way girls dress also is different. Example, we were going out the other night and the girls were trying on their clothes. They asked the guys opinion, and I didn’t realize how “culturally shocking” my opinion was. Under their dresses and skirts they always wear something called leggings. I told them they look like a grandma and need to take them off and then they replied with something along the lines of “that’s slutty.” Well, that is a huge difference. You can tell who an American, or potentially British, girls are by the way they dress…they show their legs. Europeans tend to be more conservative when it comes to appearance as compared to Americans, so it is a tad bit weird.
Facebook, I do think that it is more of an issue over here than in the U.S. While I have drastically cut the time I spend on the internet, I do find I’m spending more time on Facebook. But the time isn’t stalking like most users do, it is communicating with the new friends because I don’t have any other way outside of seeing them in class (I still refuse to get a cell phone). But my roommates, holy hell! If I do a day or two without getting on the net, I’m good. These people, they can’t go more than a couple hours. We don’t have internet at our apartment yet, so we are borrowing a password to a router. When you get 8 + people using one router, it gets very very slow. I can compare it to and old person without their morning coffee, if they don’t get their 8 hour dose of Facebook, they are grumpy as hell! I find it really funny, I take advantage of the situation to make cultural jokes.
Speaking of cultural jokes, I see it in the States as well as here, but the stereotypes are amazing. I do love to hear people’s opinions of the U.S. and Americans when they haven’t even met any Americans, and Americans do the same with other nationalities they haven’t meet. I do believe that for 5 of my 7 roommates, I am the first American they have met. But I had recently seen news broadcast of a father telling people on a school bus he was going to beat them up. By the time it gets here, the conditions under which he made that decisions didn’t make it here also, so it becomes “crazy Americans”. So, the Europeans see the most exaggerated viewings of American society. I have been asked numerous times if it was true that everyone’s 16th b-day in America was like the MTV “My Sweet 16” where the girls and boys get Porsches, ect. I told them I only wish. And the Jersey Shore, I freaking hate that show to begin with but you wouldn’t believe that is how some Europeans stereotype Americans. My theory, when you watch American Reality Television outside of an American context, it does more to promote negative stereotypes of America than our politics!
My last point, American TV. I wanted to catch up on my last episode of “White Collar” so I got onto Hulu. I didn’t realize how hard it was to stream content from outside the U.S. I can’t access Hulu or many news networks because I’m not inside the U.S. I wanted to listen to the MJ Morning show the other day when I had some time to kill and it wouldn’t let me connect on I(HEART)Radio because I was outside the U.S.
Well, this was quite a long post. Every time I come across something worth talking about, it put it as a not e in my iPhone. A lot of this stuff wasn’t from the past week, but weeks since I have been here.
Au revoir!
Billy
No comments:
Post a Comment