Grenoble
After speaking with Ryan and Miranda (our program coordinator) at the get together the previous day, I decided I needed to change grammar classes. At the end of my grammar course, myself and several other students from UM asked if we could be moved to a higher level. The professor told us that we all needed to be moved up, but that they would not have a place to move students until Monday because there were not enough professors to handle the number of students. This was frustrating to me, as I felt like a summer program we are paying for should have planned the number of professors in advance.
In our French culture class we discussed the structure of French politics and laïcité. Laïcité is essentially the French version of the separation of church and state. It means that in public buildings like schools or government offices, there can be no religious symbolism. There is no discussion of religion or religious values by politicians. There is no discussion of religion when introducing bills in the government. While some of the ideas I do find to be appealing, the forbidden nature of the hijab for Muslim women is something that I find to be wrong. Women should have the ability to choose whether or not they wish to cover themselves. It was interesting listen to students and the professor engage in a debate, as values in our cultures seem to be switched. In the US, we are very centered on individualism. In France on the other hand, society focuses on the condition of the whole group over the individual.
After class, a group went out to find a coffee shop for our homework. We were lucky to find one near my place! It was called Coffee and Go. It was humorously Americanized. There were lattes, iced drinks, bubble tea, and candy bars. The decor was American and there was wifi. We did our homework for a while before getting derailed in other conversations. We were discussing our host families when one girl mentioned that her host brother said he was scared to come to the US because he didn’t want to be shot and killed. She was saying how sad she was to hear it, when we all realized that we had our own brush with gun violence. A few months ago there was a campus lockdown over a report that said there were two armed gunmen on campus in a classroom building. We all knew someone who was on campus, or we were there ourselves. I recalled running through the diag, shielding my body with my backpack as people screamed at me to get down. I just wanted to get home. I remembered my dear friend calling from inside the library, telling me she loved me one last time in case she was shot and killed that day. We all sat in silence for a moment after telling our stories. It was good to get them out, but sad that we had to. We all agreed it was time to pack up and go home.
That night we all made plans to meet the French students around 8:30 pm to celebrate America’s independence day. They ended up being a half an hour late, but that gave us time to come into town from dinner with our host families. We decided our group was too big for a bar, so Méline (a French student) decided we would go drinking in the park. Apparently, drinking in public is completely fine in France. We walked to the local gardens and sat down in a massive circle. Part of the group eventually came back with bottles of Coke, tea, and vodka. We made mixed drinks and played the French version of “never have a I ever,” which essentially means you drink whenever you’ve done something that another participant announces they haven’t done. Eventually the groups got smaller as the night got later. I talked with a woman named Fardoti, whose family is from Mali. She left them to live in France with a boyfriend, but they had split up in January of this year leaving her all alone. She started taking classes and learning English. She seemed incredibly brave to me. We showed each other pictures of our families and talked about our home towns. Later, I talked with some other girls about politics in France. While they wanted to practice their English, they couldn’t hold a conversation. As it approached midnight, the UM students got ready to go home. Classes started early the next day and most people had a 30 minute bus ride (I had a 5 minute walk). We hugged all the students and did the customary bizous (kisses on the side of the cheeks) and left for home. It was a fun night.
Mary-Est-En-France 