I had my first visitor this weekend!! Chris decided to take a couple vacation days from coop and take the looooong trip across the pond to spend a long weekend with me in Paris. I'm jealous of him because he got a direct flight out of Boston and I have to spend considerably more time in Heathrow airport than I would like. He also got to fly airfrance, which I'm considerably jealous of as well.
But I digress. Chris came to visit me, and although I can't speak for him, I think it was an all-around successful weekend.
I realized this weekend how much I enjoy introducing outsiders to this fun, exciting, different life that I live over here. In many ways it was very surreal, because although Chris and I have been the best of friends for a couple years now, I sometimes felt like I had to re-introduce him to myself. While I maintain that I'm essentially the same person I've always been, and that Paris has not, I repeat, has NOT changed who I've always been, certain aspects of my life and personality are different here. And for that reason it felt a bit surreal at times.
The poor guy stayed at a small hotel directly across the street from me and not only did he have to endure my 5 flights of winding elevatorless stairs, he also had to endure 5 flights of perhaps the windiest, narrowest, steepest stairs in existence. Welcome to Paris. They apparently have a fear of lifts here, because elevators are a rare commodity in buildings older than about 40 years.
On a completely different note, I recently had a conversation with a french man that I met in a bar that I found rather unsettling. I'll preface by saying that the French love Obama. Like, really love him. Like, men, women, and children probably all want to have his babies. I'm sure I've mentioned this at least once before. As an American living in Paris, I find that this has both its advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, I'm able to live here freely without feeling like I'm being judged and discredited for the mistakes and wrong-doings of my nation's government. I encountered a bit of hostility very early on in my time here one night on the metro. My friends and I all got onto the car preparing to go out somewhere, I think to a club or something when we ran into a few young french guys. They all did the typical, "I see zat yoo arr Americaine. Where arr yoo frome?" I couldn't even get out my reply before he delved into the Bush-bashing. Except, it wasn't so much Bush-bashing as it was American-public bashing for electing such an individual to office. This caused me to go into liberal American defense mode and defend my country. I countered with the standard, "well, the American public didn't really elect him into office, we just re-elected him in 2004." But of course the French don't know of/understand the electoral college whatsoever (I can't really blame them, as most Americans don't really understand it either) and when I tried to explain my assertion, they had to idea what I was talking about. Of course. Thankfully, all of this quickly ended once Obama was inaugurated.
Going back to Obama, having him as president when the French like him so much also has its disadvantages. The main one being that it's very hard to have a critical discussion/argument about Obama with the French. It's hard to believe, but it's true. The president was recently in Strasbourg for a town-hall style discussion during his European tour. I just happened to be in the AMEX for lunch while he was speaking and I was able to watch it in its entirety. At the end of the speech he quoted the French motto, "liberté, egalité, fraternité", except he said it backwards. Now, it obviously didn't bother me any. And in truth, had he messed up the US's "In God we trust" I probably wouldn't have cared either. But the French, you see, are.... different. They take these types of things muuuuch more seriously. Like, don't insult their country unless you have a death wish. After Obama made his error, everyone in the bar let out a collective and surprised gasp. Had he just messed up the French motto in France? The entire country is probably watching this right now, what's gonna happen? Everyone in the bar and I hesitantly looked around the bar to see if any French were among us, in case we had to do damage control. Make sure no pint glasses were broken or chairs thrown at televisions or something. But nobody did anything.
Shortly thereafter, I was in a bar talking to another random French man that I struck up a conversation with. I mentioned this incident to see how he felt about it. He didn't care whatsoever. In fact, he still managed to find a way to defend Obama, saying something like, "well, yoo see, he does not, errr, parler le francais tres bien. I understand that he makes mistakes in ze francais." I was floored. I think I mumbled something about how it seems a bit insulting to come into one's country. In all honestly, I thought his error was easily up there with Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" flub. But not the French, apparently. He wouldn't even let me get a defensive word in against Obama; any time I tried to say something, he'd shut me up with "Ce n'est pas grave" or something to that effect. Had Bush made that mistake the entirety of France would probably have declared him the anti-Christ, and yet Obama can do no wrong. I don't get it. Perhaps they are so desperate to maintain that Obama is the savior of the free world that they are willing to put aside any and all criticisms that they might have. Defend him to the death or something. I don't know.
I'm really looking forward to getting back to the States just for the poilitics. Electing Obama to office was probably one of the biggest events in our nation's history, and it's been hard being gone for the majority of his first 100 days. I think I would have prefered to be in the States to see how the American public is reacting than in France who apparently think he's immortal or something ridiculous like that.
