It's really freaking me out that this whole thing is halfway over already :( I can't imagine going back to reality and being stressed out all the time with real college. So scary! I've already been looking into many ways I'll be able to come back, I learned from the UWM professor that's with us in Paris that UWM offers 1 or 2 year-long programs to come to France and teach English. It's not considered studying abroad because most students do it after they graduate. We also had a "mixer" with UW-Madison alumni who now work and live in France. Although it wasn't at all what I expected, we were told it'd be lots of people with dinner and it just sounded really great and dinner-party ish. In reality, we were in a conference room where an overly enthusiastic lady acting like we were 12 years old introduced us to 4 UW-Madison alumni and they talked about their lives. Okay, it was actually really interesting, I was just pretty disappointed we didn't get food. But what they had to say was soooo good to know. Unfortunately, it didn't seem very helpful to me, because none of them had the goal of ending up in France like I do! They just kinda ended up here with good luck in their careers. One man who's been here 10 years is a medical writer and his summary of being here was "living here is awesome, working here sucks." He repeatedly said that France is not the U.S., don't expect it to be the U.S. He further explained by saying people here aren't motivated like Americans are, they don't work as hard as americans do, they don't know or care about their job like Americans, and businesses are very slow and unorganized. I've been learning so much and realizing how much the U.S. runs everything. We are the Walmart of the world. It's one thing to learn about the U.S. being the most developed country and whatnot in school, but it's another thing to see it in real life. Half the time I'm very proud, but mostly I hope we don't come off as cocky as we sound.
Fun story for you about more ways people try to get money from you on the street. I was sitting on the metro, minding my own business when two 25ish-year-old guys get onto the metro with a karaoke system. They start singing sarcastically and dancing very dirty, using the poles in the metro car and all. My friend then points out to me that their pants have Velcro down the sides…. Yup they went there. Within seconds they're doing a striptease to the music. They were being so goofy and sarcastic I was laughing soooo hard, everybody was. Then they casually walked around the metro car in their underwear holding out a cup for money.
In one of my classes where we always have field trips, we just went to Le Palais de Justice where all the court cases are heard. Lawyers wear black graduation gown type thing during court. We sat in on about 4 different hearings for a few minutes each. Then afterward my teacher explained what they were talking about since this was a whole new set of vocabulary I know nothing about and could barely understand. It was fascinating.
As far as real-life goes, not everything is glitz and glamour for me. I had a little hair dye party in one of my friend's apartments with a couple friends who also wanted to update their roots. We bought cheap box dye and got to work! It was so fun. If only I could afford to have my hair done at a glamorous Paris salon. Another "real life" thing I'm still doing is NETFLIX. Well unfortunately Netflix doesn't work but trust me, I've found other ways to watch shows. I've already watched all eight Harry Potter movies, two show series and I just started my third. So there's that. I'm still normal.
Fun fact about my new European knowledge: I'm a master at military time and I'm starting to understand the metric system!
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