Reflections

Hello once again,

I am sad to say this will be the last of my blogs from France. Instead of spending a lot of time recounting the events of the last few days,  I figured I would instead provide some of my reflections on the trip as a whole. To be honest, not a lot has been happening since I last wrote. We went for a last night out on Thursday, took care of bureaucratic necessities, made a trip to the market on Saturday morning, watched the Champion's League final with some friends and have been trying to hit all of our favorite restaurants before we go. In general, the last few days have been scattered goodbyes as people leave for home or various trips across Europe. This brings me to the first of my reflections. I've found it has been much harder than I had expected saying goodbye to a lot of these people. While I'm not exactly getting choked up or depressed as people leave, I have already begun to feel disappointed that I may never see some of them again and that I wish I'd had some more time to know them. Of course, I had expected to make friends on the trip and that I would be sad to say goodbye to them, but I think what surprised me the most was the force with which it hit me, even with people I had only really spent time with the last month or two. I will definitely be trying to keep in touch with some of them, and hopefully we may meet up again some day, but it is very hard to see these people who I have gotten to know surprisingly well in the last five months return to their home countries with no certainty of seeing them again.

My second reflection is more on Rennes and France as a whole. I have been bouncing back and forth the last few days between a joy that I will be returning to the home and culture that I know and love, and a sadness that each time I pass a restaurant or building that I like, it may be the last time I see it. I have grown to really love Rennes, and it has begun to feel like another home for me: a place I know well, where I am comfortable and happy. Of course, there are plenty of reasons to be happy to return home. Before spending five months here, I never thought I would love capitalism as much as I do now. I cannot wait to be back where I stores are open past 5 p.m. and entire towns don't shut down between noon and 2 p.m. I am excited for stores where anything I need is available at just about any hour possible. I am excited to be back where libraries and other public services are open more than 5 hours a day and where my school is willing to provide me with whatever I need to get by, including more than one official transcript (this is a recent problem I've had). Nevertheless, I do really love the town and the culture. The food is delicious and there is an inherent politeness and courtesy. Of course, there is also significant rudeness and exclusivity (stereotype that proved true), but it is often directed at those that do not direct incessant courtesy (like not saying merci when someone almost hits you with there motorcycle, then backs up so you can cross the street. yes, that happened). But like I said, the town has been very hospitable and I have grown to understand much more of the culture and customs than when I arrived (so many things still evade me).

In general, I have to say I have had an amazing time in Rennes. I got to take some interesting classes, meet a lot of great people, and grow personally. It has been an exercise in patience and humility without a doubt. But, the amount that I learned from the people I've met, not just French but those from as close as Canada and as far as Australia, has most definitely been worth it. In fact, I would say that I learned more from these people than from any of the courses I took. The experience I've gained here is incomparable to anything I could have done at Beloit. Despite all of the problems, the bureaucratic nonsense, the surprising disorganization, and some of the most inflexible teachers I have ever met (who were ironically telling us we had to be flexible at the same time...), I would not have changed a thing. To those of you who still have the opportunity to study abroad, whether you're studying a language or not, I strongly recommend you do so. To those for whom this is no longer an option, I suggest you take every opportunity to travel abroad. The time I have spent has strengthened my belief in how invaluable any experience in another country may be. Whether it be a day, a month, a year or more, I hope to continue doing so for long after my days as a student are done.

Thanks again to everyone who has been reading these past few months. I appreciate the time you have all spent reading and being interesting (or pretending to be) in my life. I look forward to seeing you again soon. Here are some final pictures of my school and Rennes.

"Other Directions"

"All Directions"
If someone could explain how this sign and the one before it make sense, that would be great.

Au revoir et bon courage!

Tom

P.S. Before publishing this post, I went out for one last French dinner. The restaurant, rightfully called "Amour de Pomme de terres", had the largest portion for a single meal I have ever seen in my life. It included beef, chicken, and a combination of french fries, a baked potato and potatoes au gratin that amounted to about 5 potatoes. I managed to finish my entire meal, but I currently have the largest food baby known to man and am about to enter a food coma that may cause me to miss my train in the morning. In this respect, I should also note that the food will be among some of the things I miss the most. While I cannot wait to have real (deep dish) pizza and hot dogs again, five months without preservatives and high fructose corn syrup were also pretty great.

Counting down

Hello everyone,

This will be the second to last blog I post from France before I leave on May 30th. That said, I will try to make it interesting. The last time we spoke I was preparing for my final three exams. After having taken them, I am proud to say they all went better than the first one. On Tuesday, I took the exam for Sociology of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was a written exam on the subject of the security wall. I have no real complaints on that, I think I covered the topic well and should receive good grade. I also got my paper back for the course with a 13 (grades are out of 20, but more than a 14/15 would require a miracle) which I am happy about. The next two exams were both on Thursday, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The first one was for my Comparative Politics class and is hard to describe. We were told the topic of our oral exam would be discussing how our paper relates to a chapter of the course. My paper was on democratization in Iraq after the revolution in 1958. So, you can imagine my surprise when the first question I was asked was about French media coverage of sexual affairs with regard to the Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the IMF. He eventually asked me a couple questions related to Iraq, but in general the exam was more a discussion of current events focusing on the regime changes in the Middle East. I did not see my paper grade from that one, but judging by the exam I am not at all worried. The final exam was for my Macro class. Since I have already taken macro at Beloit, I probably should not have been as worried as I was, but some of the information did not quite click for me in French (some was a little different because he focused on French specifics) and I had heard that he was a very tough grader (no one gets better than 10 or 11 usually). Luckily for me, when I went into the preparation room I was given the topic I had been studying immediately prior (Labor Market and Unemployment). I spoke the entire time and he seemed happy with my answers overall. He also said that my paper (which I thought was pretty awful) got a 12 or 12.5, though he didn't remember for certain. So, in general my exams went very well.

The next few days were spent with some much needed relaxation. The international students had a BBQ at the park on Friday and I spent the weekend going to the park, vegging, watching tv, and in general enjoying my freedom. On Tuesday, Morgan and I traveled to Mont Saint Michel, a very famous abbey on the border of Bretagne and Normandy. It was a great trip and a pretty amazing place. It turns out it is disputed as to which region it is in because it is in the middle of a river and originally it had been more on the Bretagne side, but shifts in the river flow now put it officially in Normandy. It is an enormous structure, because it is dedicated to the archangel Saint Michael (who seems like the "badass" of saints, pardon my blasphemy) who weighs the souls of the dead to see who gets into heaven. So, any structure dedicated to Saint Michael must be very tall so that those who make a pilgrimage there have to climb toward heaven to honor him (I'm pretty sure I got that right, but feel free to correct me if I misinterpreted that somehow). Anyway, it's an amazing feat of architecture that was started around the 8th century and took centuries to build and has served many purposes since its creation, including as a prison for a while. There is also a nice town at the foot of "the Mont", though for the most part it is inhabited by souvenir shops and restaurants. We returned late in the afternoon and then went to our friends house for dinner, which nearly always turns into a 4 hour affair. These dinners have provided me with a new favorite dessert that I think even I could manage to cook without totally destroying it, since you don't actually cook it. It's called Banoffee pie and it is essentially one of the worst things possible for your body (unbelievable amounts of butter, caramel, chocolate and whipped cream), but it has bananas on it so it's ok. Still, it is absolutely delicious and it is very easy to make because it just needs to be chilled in the fridge.


Now, my I am preparing for all of the things I need to do to head home and I will hopefully be able to squeeze in one last beach trip this weekend. I need to get signatures on forms from people I have never met, close my bank account, do a room checkout, and order transcripts (which apparently a lot of people don't know how to do, surprising at a University right?). Basically, it's back to all of the messy French bureaucracy that, as I'm sure you all remember, I loved so much the first time around. Speaking of which, remember how I was supposed to get a letter telling me when to go to the doctor for my mandatory appointment? Yea, that happened about a week ago. Already, I think it was fairly ridiculous that it took them 5 months to make me an appointment that was supposed to verify that I don't have a disease that could infect and kill the entire country. But, I can accept that as a part of bureaucracy. Still, I would have hoped that the two appointments I had to have (one to get a chest x-ray, one to give it to someone else) would either both be before I left or both after. This was of course not the case. One was supposed to be on Monday (I didn't go) and the other on June 6th. However, I also received an email that only stated June 6th and said nothing about the radiology appointment being on the 24th of May so to be honest I was a little confused. Either way, I can't go the general appointment, so I sent an email notification to the office that makes them and still have not received a response. In general, I don't feel like paying 55 euros to confirm that I haven't infected the entire country (which I don't think you need a medical license to figure out) and since the appointment is 4 days after I leave, I don't have to. What surprises me the most is that a visa is required for anyone who stays in the country longer than 90 days, and I was here almost twice that long, and still the appointment was too late. So, it would seem logical to me, to do the appointment either right away or around the 3 month mark so that everyone with a visa has to do it. But, I won't complain too much because it saves me some money.

That's about all I have for today, I hope you enjoy the pictures below (from Mont Saint Michel) and keep an eye out for my final post from France, coming this Sunday. Thanks again, and I look forward to seeing you all soon.

Duck pond at the park

Lots of fun names for the flowers at the park (They struggled with spelling though)

Mont Saint Michel

View from the stairs on the way up

Terrace at the start of our tour

The chapel (shaped like a cross pointing east toward Jerusalem)

Exercise wheel for the prisoners (conveniently also helped with heavy lifting)

View out on the river

Floral arrangement at the park

A bientot,

Tom

P.S: I forgot to mention that, thanks to some help from my mom, I have secured an internship with Marriot-Lincolnshire in banquets/catering. I know you may wonder what this has to do with any of my majors and the honest answer is very little. I will probably be one of few people not seeking a degree in hospitality or some related industry, but its a good chance to make contact with a company that I might be able to advance with after school. Plus, there is no way it can be any worse than two summers working overnights at Wal-Mart.

Exams!

So, to the mothers I was unable to speak to directly last week, I would first like to say Happy Mother's Day! I thought about doing a blog, but it would have been pretty boring. To be honest, I doubt this one will be much better, but I've added a fun story at the end to keep it from being too boring.

The reason for the lack of interesting information is, as you may have guessed from the title, that its exam time here in Rennes. I had my first two last week, so nearly all of the time between now and my previous post has been spent studying. The two last week were Constitutional Law of the 5th Republic and History and Civilization (the class for all of the international students). I would like to start by saying, I have a few qualms with the examination system here. Since I have had a tendency to criticize the French in this blog, I feel I should point out this is in fact specific mainly to Sciences Po, and in fact many other French students find the system disagreeable. Personally, I'm slightly more critical. For most of my classes, the exam is in the form of a one on one conversation with the professor. They give you a question, which is generally very vague, you have 15 minutes to prepare and then have to speak for 15 minutes. If you are unlucky enough to get a question about which you are not able to speak for that long, you are at the mercy of the professor. So, for Constitutional Law I did not do so hot on the exam. My topic was the "instauration d'un etat de droit" or instituting a state of law in France, which essentially means a system where the constitution is the highest authority above regular law. Beyond that, I was not really sure what else to say, and I was lost pretty quickly. I spoke for a couple minutes but he told me I was getting far from the subject and tried to redirect me. From then on, I was pretty much done. He asked me several questions which were either far too specific for me or that I knew and couldn't remember. While I have not had much text anxiety since my high school days, an oral exam in a foreign language seemed to bring quite a bit of that back and posed a significant problem in my ability to recall the information I had studied. To give you an idea of how bad it was: In order to help me out he asked me about Marbury v. Madison in the United States and I could not remember what it was about. To be honest, I'm a little uncertain about the outcome in that course. As for the exam grade, it will not be good. However, the paper is worth the other half of my grade and I think I did fairly well on that and it is possible that the average could be a 10 (if he's nice with my exam). I decided to take the strategy of talking about other subjects of the course that may not have been relevant when I had nothing else to say so if nothing else he'll understand that I had studied and learned something the past twelve weeks, but as for the grade it's just a guessing game at this point.

The next day was my exam with the woman I have taken to discussing so often in this blog over the past few months. That one went much better. It was a written exam with three short answer questions and one essay question and we had an hour and a half to do it. The short answer questions went pretty well and the essay question was not great, but it was basically impossible to answer in full in the time frame. The topic we were given was "Strengths and weaknesses of the Left in France from 1918-1981", the Left referring to the political left. For starters, this is the entire time period of the course, so describing the strengths and weaknesses in the detail she did for even one political party would be basically impossible. In addition, the French left in this period consisted of about political parties, and almost always the same issues of conflict between socialists and communists, and even within those two parties. I think I answered them all fairly well, but I'm not entirely sure this question is answerable within the given time period. Whatever the result, I'm extremely happy to be done with that woman forever.

As for the rest of my exams, I have three this week and I am officially finished on Thursday. I have one exam on Tuesday, one Thursday, and one that could be either Wednesday or Thursday. I know, it's weird that I don't know when it is, right? In fact, the only exam time I know for sure is the one on Tuesday because it is a written exam where everyone does it at the same time, but the others are posted on the board at school a few days before (not online, god forbid they should save paper or be able to inform us if the times change the day before). Following Thursday, it will be preparation to leave. I have to give two weeks notice to everyone and I'll be making some last minute trips to see some of the sights I have not yet had a chance to see. And now, it's time for the story I promised you.

About 3 weeks ago, some of the international students had a BBQ at a nearby park. We had a good time and headed home around 9 oclock (it was still quite light outside, in fact it stays light until around 10 usually). On our way home, we saw a kitten hiding under one of the cars. It was not exactly tiny but it was thin/small enough to look like it was not yet fully grown. We did not think too much of it at first because we see cats around town all the time. However, this one soon began following us. We thought it was a little weird but were certain it would stop at some point. Occasionally, it did stop, but then immediately ran ahead of us and stopped to look at us. At this point, we were very confused an unsure what to do because we had to cross a major road soon and did not want it to follow us and get hit by a car. However, when cars drove by it seemed sufficiently frightened that it wouldn't follow. This was not the case. In the end, this cat followed us all the way back to our dorm building (about 5 blocks and across a major road) and entered the building when we opened the door. He followed us to our rooms and we began trying to find a French person who would know what to do. He did not look like a stray (he had a collar mark on his neck but no collar) but we did not know who we were supposed to call about something like this. Eventually, someone else took him into their room for a while and we decided he was officially their problem. Not long after, we heard he had found his way down to the door and left the building. As it turns out, this was not true either. He did find his way to the stairs, but decided to wander over to the other building attached to ours. A week or so after, we heard he was still living in that building, taking little pieces of food here and there from whoever would offer it. So, Patton officially has a pet cat.

That's all for now folks. The next few days will be study mania and then I will be home free until I leave on the 30th. I hope all is well in the states and I will be seeing many of you in only a couple of weeks!

Best,

Tom

It's vacation it's vacation it's vacation...

Hello once again!

It has been a while, so I hope you're prepared for a long post. For those of you who don't know, the title from this post is an excerpt from my brother Sam's "Vacation Song". If you have never heard it, I strongly suggest you ask him to perform it for you and be sure he does the dance that goes with it. That said, it's update time.

So, since it has been about two weeks since my last post, I'm going to start from the beginning. The week following my last post was, as I had mentioned, spent working almost entirely on my Centre Pompidou expose. I gave my presentation on Thursday and surprisingly, she did not tear me apart. In fact, it seemed like she kind of liked it. She had one reproach on my organization which made it a bit repetitive and she was right too. I managed to get away with going about 24 minutes (it was supposed to be 20) without her saying anything, so I was of course happy about that. Overall, I was happy with my work and to be honest, if she told me she didn't like it I would have been pretty upset since I read a thesis, the book based on the thesis, and numerous articles about it and spent countless hours trying to figure out a plan (Ask me anything about it, I dare you). To Amy: Thanks for the link, but I had already done my presentation. I read a lot about how iconic it is for the architecture world and in some ways I understand why, but to be honest, it really is a hideous building. Moving on...

Luckily, the work was not yet over. I got to write 4-5 page paper for my economics class on the economic crisis and household consumption. One of the students had told me he would find me a copy of the expose someone had done on the topic for the course, but Thursday afternoon he sent me a note saying that there wasn't one. So, I stayed up all night writing the paper (and maybe taking a break for the Bulls game which was at 1 a.m. here) and finished around 7 in the morning. This one I was far less proud of. It was only about 4 full pages (although with our smaller paper size it would have been more like 5-6) and the organization was difficult to do and caused some problems with the content. In general, it wasn't great, but I have an oral exam in which I think I will do much better. I walked to school Friday morning around 8 to drop my paper off and returned home to find an email from my friend saying someone had just posted the expose. So, yea I was a little upset because, if it were me, I would have asked around (the class is only 18 people and it meets every week) on top of checking the server at school to see if someone had posted it. But, I had already turned it in so I did not stress about it too much. Instead, I reflected on how, once again, the word "French" proved synonymous with "Late".

I spent most of the rest of Friday sleeping and then packing for my trip to Amsterdam and Paris. I spent the next 24 hours or so freaking out that I would somehow miss a method of transportation (train metro bus train2) or that I had already boarded the wrong bus and was headed to Spain instead. Of course, this was not the case and I arrived safely in Amsterdam Saturday evening. I met up with my friend from Beloit and got settled in. Luckily, I had brought a little cash with me because apparently the only cards that work in most of the shops in Amsterdam are the Dutch ones, which is surprising for a city overflowing with tourists (Seriously, the entire time I was surrounded by at least 4 different nationalities). We spent most of the week walking around town, hanging out in the city center where they had a carnival, relaxing in the park (which was filled with neither heroine needles nor tons of people on LSD...Dad...) and of course seeing some of the sites. I met up with my friends from Rennes to do most of the touristing as I did not feel like Jake wanted to be dragged through museums all week that he had probably already seen. I will not go into too much detail on the touristing, but here's a brief overview. First, we went to the Heineken museum. We thought it was a tour of the brewery, but as it turns out "The Heineken Experience" is mostly just a museum. Nevertheless, they gave us a few beers along the way and we learned some fun facts about how it's made. Next was Anne Frank house. This was very interesting and depressing at the same time. They had a lot of quotes from her diary on the wall and video interviews with people who knew her playing in different rooms (getting to which was nearly impossible since the stairs were smaller than my feet and basically went straight up). Last on my list was the Van Gogh museum. I particularly liked this one and spent a lot of time there. They also had a Picasso exhibit that was pretty interesting. Overall, the touristy stuff was fun, but I mostly enjoyed having a calm week without having to focus on schoolwork. I ended the week with a pre Queen's Day celebration (I left Saturday which was Queen's Day) on Friday night when we went to Den Haag to celebrate. The whole country gets pretty excited about the whole thing and to be honest, it seemed a lot more interesting than the Royal Wedding (which I unluckily caught the end of while it was playing in a bar). That's the basics of my trip to Amsterdam. To those of you looking for stories of debauchery and legal prostitution: Sorry, no dice.

My bus left Amsterdam Saturday morning and that afternoon I arrived in Paris. Not surprisingly, we were greeted by several customs agents and a drug dog who preceded to sniff every suitcase and everyone on the bus (the dog not the agents). For a moment it seemed they had caught two women and we were about to see a drug dog attack or at least an arrest, alas, we were not so lucky. I met up with Morgan and her friend from home and we started our plan to sneak me into the hotel. They dropped my stuff off in their room (telling the guy at the desk that they had bought a new suitcase) while I waited outside. We then wandered around town and then saw Thor (the original version). It was not bad, but a bit cheesy for my taste. Upon return to the hotel, we discovered it would be much harder than we thought to get me into the hotel. The guy at the desk saw me try to walk in behind them while they spoke to him and called us on our bluff. In stereotypical French fashion, he proceeded to be extremely rude, call us typical Americans (think we're smarter than everyone) and be generally condescending. He then of course pretended to apologize while simultaneously telling us that he had done nothing wrong (funny right?). Apparently, the hotel had already changed which building they were in and switched their room the next day (which involved moving all of their things while the were out with no notification), so as you may imagine we were expecting a bit more hospitality despite our deception (which we also felt was justified).

The following day, we had hoped to visit the museums of Paris since they are all free the first Sunday of every month. What we had not considered, was that it was actually the French Labor Day so they were all closed (typical). So we instead went to the Pere Lachaise Cemetery (where lots of famous people are buried), got some ice cream and wandered around Paris. It was a pretty relaxing day, followed by a nice dinner where I tried escargo for the first time and surprisingly kind of liked. Our train left at 10:05, so we spent some time hanging out around the train station and then headed home.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable and relaxing trip. I got to see a couple friends from Beloit, hang out in a beautiful city, and see some sides of Paris I had not previously experienced. As for the rest of my semester, it will be back to work. I have two papers to do this week and then it's exam time. But, I'll be finished with my exams on May 19th, so I'll have some time to travel before May 30th, when I leave. I welcome any suggestions on locations. Here are some pictures from the past couple of weeks.

Amsterdam Central Station

View from Jake's apartment

Carnival downtown

Vondel Park

Dog swimming in the park

Outside Anne Frank (there was no line when I went)

Outside the cemetery

Oscar Wilde's grave. Apparently a lot of women don't know that he was gay...

Fountain at the Centre Pompidou (That's not it in the background, it's way uglier.  Don't believe me? Google it.)

Concert in Den Haag for Queen's Day

Behind Notre Dame

View of Paris from a bridge over the river

That's all for now folks. I hope you have enjoyed reading and I will be keeping you posted on my adventures, boring/studious as they may be, through the coming weeks.

TTFN

Tom