Things I've learned to love about France

Now that I'm firmly in my second semester, I can tell you for sure that I don't hate everything. Watching all the new people here try to find their way through this country has really shown me what I've gotten used to.

Bread, cheese, coffee and wine.
The French do all of these fabulously well, and I’m terribly spoiled because of it. When I get back to the States, I foresee myself paying extra to obtain a higher quality of all of these things. I recently purchased a little stovetop moka pot for myself, and it was the greatest idea ever. I can make myself café strength espresso in like three minutes in the comfort of my home. Quality>quantity.

They care about students and young people.
These kids don’t know how good they have it. Their university education costs only a few hundred euro in tuition for the whole year. My European friends are being paid by the EU to leave home for a year and study in another member state. If they take out loans, they pay them back when they reach a certain annual income level, not starting six months after graduation. Their student ID gets them a discount so many places. Just being under the age of 24 brings so, so, so many discounts. Museums. Travel. Other things. I was telling a foreigner the other day that it’s hard to travel around the US because it’s so expensive, and that there are no student discounts for rail/bus…and her jaw hit the floor. They can’t imagine life without it. France and Europe understand that young people are our future and deserve an affordable education, and that they’re poor and should be treated by society accordingly. It’s the best.

I think I like having things closed Sunday.
At first it seemed a little weird, but now I approve. Everyone makes sure to get all of their things done beforehand, and all is well. It’s just really nice to have a day that is so chill. I went from DC where if you’re standing on the left side of the escalator you get run over, to the south of France where people could care less when things get done. That attitude might be annoying sometimes (like when I was waiting for internet) but now I think I like it. And I know I’ll like it more once I get back to America.

PUBLIC TRANSPORT. SO MUCH PUBLIC TRANSPORT.
I love love love love this so much. There’s an impressive network of high speed trains all over the country, and then each region has a network that services many smaller towns that the TGV misses. And if the train station isn’t in the center of town, there’s a bus that will take you to the station. And did I mention the student discounts? UGH it’s just so awesome. I understand it’s different for America because France’s population density is more or less three times that of the US along with a huge size difference…but still. It’s just a really great system.

Oh, the places you'll go!

I’ll add more to this as they come to me…

The one we call "Miss Cray Cray"

If you follow me on facebook, you might have seen several references to a crazy woman living at my apartment. My living situation is a bit strange, where I’m only renting my room in this apartment, and not signing a lease for the whole thing with my roommates. So this means I only have legal authority over my room, and my landlady can place whomever she wants in the other empty rooms as she pleases. So I got back from Italy to find out that my landlady had moved an American woman in her late 40s into one of my apartment’s spare rooms. Things were a little crazy, and Dru and I weren’t certain why she was there, and it took us a while to figure it out.

This woman was telling Dru and myself one crazy story after another. She had been to x, y, and z. She studied every subject from a-z at said prestigious universities. She has advanced degrees in these things. She was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. She was a Congressional Page three times, one of those times as the personal page for the Speaker of the Senate. She was sailing around the world. She was kidnapped by Colombian pirates and tortured. She’s been living in France for five years. The list goes on and on. The point being, there’s too much for anything to make sense.

So this woman just seemed too strange for things to add up. I’ve lived with someone like this before during my stint as an RA so this was just déjà vu. I consulted with my program’s staff, who contacted my landlady to see just exactly what was going on. Apparently this woman lives on the 2^nd floor of my building, and was sharing the common spaces of her apartment with a 70 year old British man. For whatever reason, this woman couldn’t handle it and because my apartment had available rooms, my landlady said she could move down here until the end of the month when the British guy was moving out so she could feel better. She’s paying for both rooms, though…so my landlady is really the winner in this. But regardless, here’s the kicker; my landlady then tells the woman from my program that apparently this American woman was kidnapped by Colombians and apparently she was tortured. Apparently my landlady saw her captain’s license and some sort of proof that this incident on the high seas took place. And apparently that’s why she’s crazy.

You might notice that I just said the word “apparently” a lot. You have to understand that this is not a story that I can believe until I actually see some proof for myself. I’m sure Colombians do kidnap people, but I just am finding it hard to believe that one of them is living in my apartment. Regardless of why she’s crazy, I’m still treating her the same way—with a good deal of caution. If this is really what happened and why she’s like this, I don’t want to be insensitive. But you have to understand my skepticism. It’s one hell of an awkward situation that I hope none of you will ever have to understand, how to find a balance between being nice to her and being freaked out as fuck. Strange things are happening in this apartment. Jars of unopened, cheapass jam are disappearing. Juice glasses and Tupperware are walking away. This woman makes no noise when she travels. I’m not one to use Harry Potter references, but it’s as if she apparates into the room. You turn around and she’s just there…staring at you. Staring into your soul.

But yeah…that’s her in a nutshell. We try to avoid conversation, because it gets on the crazy train real quick and then things get awkward. And she’s only here until the end of the month. And that’s almost here! Yay! Dru and I have had to celebrate someone moving out of this apartment twice already, and we’re going to celebrate this one too. We just have terrible luck.

As a disclaimer to any family members who might read this and worry, I am in no danger. This is just giving me some interesting stories that I’ll never forget. This is what can happen when you live in an apartment where you’re only renting a room and not the whole thing.

OH, THE THINGS A YEAR ABROAD CAN TEACH YOU.

Welcome to 2012.

So I really suck at keeping this totally updated.

At the start of the month I went to Milan for a long weekend to celebrate my 22^nd, and it was magical. I picked up Italian my sophomore year of college just for funsies, and those four semesters were the four easiest As of my life. However, when you’re in France for five months straight, completely immersed in the French language…it gets buried a little. So the Carly going through Italy this time was a bit weaker than she would have been a year ago, but whatever. I remembered enough to know what was going on, wiggle my way through a crowd, interact with a cashier, and go to a restaurant. It was pretty bare bones, but it was enough to get by.
I totally forgot about European sale season, and was pleasantly surprised to see that it indeed started on my birthday in Milan. The stores here don’t really have a “clearance” section ever; they just have gigantic multi week sales in January and July/August to get rid of their stock to make way for the new season. The shopping neighborhood in Milan was more or less the size of the center of town in Aix, which was amazing. Parts of it were normal stores, and parts were giant D&G’s and whatnot. I stuck to the normal stores and left town with a few pieces that I saved a bunch of money on. Had I brought a larger bag—I would have bought so much more. So it was probably for the best that I was restrained.
But overall it was a wonderful trip. I went with the other two girls from my program that are here for the whole year and also study at Sciences Po. We saw some touristy stuff, did our shopping, and ate some food. Oh, Italian food… Pizza was a staple of our diet, and I was in heaven. Between that and obtaining some Italian hot chocolate, I was just so happy.

After Italy, I had to get back into the swing of things rather quickly here. My schedule required a bit of re-tooling, due to constantly being disappointed with classes I was testing out. Ultimately, I think I’ve decided on courses dealing with all things Canada, France in the World, States and Societies in Europe in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries, International Humanitarian Crises, International Economics, and Contemporary International Relations. The last one is specifically dealing with the EU’s relations with the rest of the world and requires a 20 minute oral presentation and 15 page research paper. I’m actually really excited for it, and I think I’m going to focus on the EU’s relationship with the United States. Since this is my last semester in school for a while, or maybe ever, I decided to find classes that I would really enjoy being in and topics I was interested in—regardless of the way they fell into a schedule. I can make fun happen around a schedule, but I can’t make myself hate life less in a super boring class.

My program acquired about 30 new students who are here from Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin, but just for the spring semester. Only six of them are studying at Sciences Po, though. The rest are at the liberal arts school with the rest of my program. I’ve had the opportunity to meet quite a few of them and they seem nice. But of course, I’ll never see most of them since they don’t go to my university and we have no real reason to be in the same place at the same time. Regardless, two years as an RA and 22 years as a nice person have led me to share my semester’s worth of tips and tricks. One of them moved into an empty room in my apartment, which is nice. I’m sick of having unpredictable people passing through here, which brings me to my next point. Nevermind, she’s getting her own post.

Last weekend, I took a little day trip with the international association at Sciences Po. They are so so so so awesome. I give them seven euro, and they charter a bus to take us to a town in the region, feed us breakfast when we get there, and then show us around. What more do you need? I almost wish I wasn’t graduating so that I could get back to UWM and be a part of the international student association just so that I could “pay it forward” and help out people adjusting to Milwaukee. So I saw a bunch of old churches and buildings, which has started to feel so normal. We spent some time wandering around a 12^th century abbey, and it was really neat. We don’t have anything nearly as old and impressive in the States. Don’t get me wrong, the US has plenty of impressive things—they’re just not that old. With the exception of the Grand Canyon, take that Europe.

And since I know there are people who read this that aren’t on facebook, like my grandmother, here are public links so that you can see the photos I took in all of these places:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2409263984728.131582.1045057187&type=3&l=c0cb843b88

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2820500145375.140181.1045057187&type=3&l=ee9d077d1f


I’ll have even more updates soon. My life is busy and amazing right now. Still working on that voting situation, if anyone is concerned. Still working…

Friendsick...to miss friends but not home?

Just wanted to say that I miss all my friends from school…a lot.

I’m sorry I shipped myself to DC for the summer and missed Red vs Blue. At least I was able to get you guys a sweet trophy. Who couldn't love that face?

I’m sorry that once I stopped being an RA and actually got free time, I left the country for a year. And that’s also the year when everyone is 21, even Keith. Sometimes I wish I could just go back into this picture for a little while and ignore the fact that I would one day occupy the room in the background. This was only 3 years ago but it still seems like we were babies back then.


We all know I had to do both of these things. After all, I am majoring in World Domination. DC was very easily the coolest thing I’ve ever done and I’m so happy to be in France for a year. But it’s not all rainbows and butterflies. Like right now.

I still don’t have an exact date for when I’m coming home, but I’ll let you know. And we can celebrate our reunion and graduations together.

Bisous.

...I'll post something less sad in a few days. In all reality, my life is pretty awesome right now. I just love my friends to bits and pieces and miss them thiiiiiiiiiiiis much.

Help! Help! I'm being repressed!

If you’re family/friends from Wisconsin, a lot of this probably isn’t news to you. If you’re blogstalking me from Europe, prepare for an education.

After the November 2010 elections when the Republican Party took over the Governor’s Mansion and both houses of the State Capitol, the legislature was able to very quickly send a wide variety of bills to Governor Walker and these bills became law. One of them was a bill greatly strengthening the requirements for voter identification at the polls, leaving Wisconsin to have some of the strictest voting laws on the books in the entire country. Since this isn’t a politics blog, I won’t go into full details of how this law is complete bullshit. We can save that for a face to face conversation once I return to the States.

I had ten days between coming home from my internship in Washtington, DC and leaving the United States for ten months. On my list of things to do was to go town to Village Hall, and register to receive absentee ballots while I am abroad. I filled out some forms and they explained that I would receive my ballots by email, and I’d just have to print them off and mail them back to be counted. However, yesterday I received an email from a village clerk saying that there were going to be some issues with this process.

Apparently there were some changes to absentee voting that meant that after the February primary election, absentee ballots could only be emailed out to members of the military and “overseas voters” (a person who is residing overseas indefinitely). Since I am neither of those, there’s an election in April where I will not be able to receive a ballot via email—it will have to arrive via standard US Post. This becomes a problem because I only have about twenty days for them to mail me the ballot and me to get it back to them. Mailing things across the ocean isn’t exactly the quickest and easiest thing, and having to do it twice will obviously take twice as long. So in theory, for me to be certain that I wanted my vote to count; I would have to pay an arm and a leg to overnight/express mail my ballot back to Wisconsin to be counted.

There are a number of things that I do not understand:

· How does physically mailing a ballot versus emailing a ballot reduce voting fraud, when in both cases the voter is physically mailing the ballot back for counting?

· How does a citizen living abroad indefinitely have primacy in this situation over me if I’m the one who definitely is coming home and will be more directly affected by the outcome of the election?

· How is it more cost efficient to the tax payers to be paying to physically mail ballots to certain people instead of emailing?

· How does leaving me to pay the hefty fee for express international shipping not count as an obstacle for me to practice my right to vote?

Over the summer, I tried to do my own research on this voter ID law once it started to receive more and more press. I decided to write to Mr. Jeff Stone, who is not only my representative in the Wisconsin State Assembly, but he coauthored the voter ID bill in question. I explained to him that I was researching the bill, and was looking for information regarding absentee voting while overseas and any changes that might be made to the procedure after the new law is implemented. A few weeks later I received a response in which he called my concerns “unfounded and unnecessary” and said that everything about absentee voting remains “relatively intact”.

At this point, a girl can’t help but feel deceived. I began to realize that this could not only pose a problem to me, but to any Wisconsin student who wants to practice their right to vote while they are studying abroad in the future. I asked the village clerk with whom I was in contact if the same twenty day window would apply to the elections in November, and she said that there was a 47 day window between which ballots could be sent out and received for counting. So this isn’t even an issue for all elections, just some of them.

I might be preaching to a niche market, but this is important. The right to vote—the backbone of democracy. America goes to war in all corners of the world to spread democracy yet at the same time we have stuff like this going on in our own country. I am one of the last people who you should try to tell that she won’t be able to vote.

I am going to get answers, and no one is going to get in my way.

**please excuse weird coloring and formatting, blogger is being dumb