National Pride?

Last Thursday, the city of Nantes hosted a little "fete" for the first year university students in the city, which meant we all got to go to. It was held in the Lieu, which has an interesting story all to itself. It was a baked goods production warehouse that specialized in some famous cookie that is known round the world but whose name I can't remember. There's a pretty tower, and the building itself was shaped like a croissant. Oh, don't you love the French? Anyway, there was music and some carnival type games and a bar that didn't open for two hours after the party started. Hmm. Anyway. You walked in the door and gave them your ticket, they gave you a wristband and asked you where you were from. If you didn't say France, they sent you over to another booth where you collected a name tag with your home country. Etats-Unis. Somebody in the group made a crack about it being more of a conversation stopper than a conversation starter, and it really made me start to think. I ended up putting my tag on the inside of my jacket. One of the other girls in the group asked me why I'd done that, and I tried to make some joke about wanting to be approached because I was cute, not because I'm an American. She almost literally blew up at me for being unpatriotic and not proud of my country, went on for a good five minutes about it all. She was going on about the current regime and to be honest I zoned her out after awhile. At the time I just kind of stared at her, but now I wish I would have asked her why she was so proud of the United States. Don't get me wrong. I am not ashamed of being from the United States of America. There are some things I'm very proud of. I love being from Iowa. But honestly I'm not sure I'm proud of it either. Having studied some of our nations history, I see many things within even the last fifty years that I am not proud of. Do you know how hard it is to explain how our government elected a man that lost the popular election? Or why a nation that was founded by refugees and immigrants is literally building fences to keep new ones out? Or how the United States has completely undermined the United Nations? Big sigh. There are things I am proud of. But there are a lot of things that we are not doing right. I didn't not wear the tag because I'm ashamed of being from the USA. I didn't wear it because I didn't want to have to stand there and defend policies I don't agree with. I don't think the fact that I'm an American is the most interesting or important thing about me, and it is definitely not something I feel the need to advertise, especially when I am in another part of the world.

I guess I'll apologize for this blog, if anyone takes offense to it. I know that my relationship with the young woman mentioned above is now more than a little strained, which was of course not my intent. I put the question of national pride to some of my friends at lunch yesterday, and none of them had an answer for me either. I think it is one of those ongoing questions that you never really come up with a satisfactory answer for.

As for the rest of my life, things are going. These last two weeks have been rough, with the last few days being exceptionally difficult. I've been having serious problems sleeping, including the night before my European Union midterm. I have now lost count of the number of nights I've stared at the ceiling until well past 3:00am. I felt like I was sufficiently prepared for my EU midterm. Its a topic that I find very interesting, and so studying was more interesting than work. But when I sat down in the classroom and got handed the essay questions, everything I knew fell out of my head. It is quite possible that I completely failed that test, which I haven't done in a long time. I got the institutions of the Council of Europe and the European Commission for Steel and Carbon completely mixed up, and couldn't remember the date of the Treaty of Paris. ARgh. The one really bright spot this week was getting to see Emily Friedman, a friend from Wartburg AND home. She took her fall break in Paris and was flying back to London out of Nantes, so I bought her some lunch. It was really nice to see a familiar face.

This weekend I don't have any plans other than studying. I have my grammar midterm on Monday and my Palestine midterm on Tuesday. I slept a lot better last night, so I'm hoping I've broken out of that. I'm probably going to head to Centre Ville later today or tomorrow to look for a new pair of black flats, the ones that I've had forever and wear all the time have literally lost their sole. Hah. I hope everyone from home is doing well, I really miss everybody. Let me know!