Je suis bien arrivé en France il y a cinq jours, et je m’ammuse à Saint Raphaël au bord de la mer. Tous ce passe comme les dirigents de l’Expériment au Vermont nous ont prévu: il y a certains jeunes Américains qui s’adaptent mieux que d’autres, mais tout le monde ont de bonnes familles d’acceuil, et ils les aiment bien.

Heir, on est allé à la plage, et après, je suis allé à un concert de jazz. En faites, c’était le finale jour d’une samaine de jazz ici à Saint Raphaël, et il y avait des danceurs de claquettes, et on s’est bien amusés.

Bon, je dis au revoir pour le moment.

In a few short days, I head off to Brattleboro, Vermont for training with the “Experiment in International Living”:http://www.usexperiment.org/ folks for a three-week foray to the southeastern part of France with twelve high schoolers from around the country. I am very excited for the opportunity to lead a group and look forward to meeting all of them and helping them expand their knowledge and understanding of the larger world beyond the one they call home.

The funny part is, I participated in a longer version of this program when I was in high school, and the experiences set my thinking apart from the normal, domestic mentality that pervades our society. I can directly attribute my year-long return to France while in college to the EIL(Experiment in International Living) experience. There is nothing comparable to abandoning your life in the United States, a comfort zone, and heading into the unknown without any friends or knowing anyone to mee t a host family, other Americans, and other students like you from all over Europe and the world at large.

I can remember when I began my study abroad, I met my host family and for the first month or so, I could only catch pieces of their speech. I would understand the gist and respond as necessary. This process, however, was extremely draining. I would get home at the end of a school day, talk to my family during dinner and a bit after dinner, and crash for the night. The experience was as if the extra neurons organizing my brain to understand this completely different language was draining me of all extra energy, and I am certain that this is actually the case. After the first month, though, speech and comprehension became easier, but far from fluent.

After many experiences and many months away from home, I left as I discovered that last bit of every student abroad hopes to achieve: fluency. Being gone for so long, I was a bit homesick, but I also knew that my French would suffer upon my return. And it has. Upon my return, I continued to read “LeMonde.fr”:http://www.lemonde.fr/ daily, but that habit withered long ago. I have found maintenance of my secret French identity difficult to keep up give the lack of interest shown by those around me. Still, I have kept a few ways: reading French books and writing letters to my host family.

Amazon is a wonderful thing when you are a French-speaking American living far from France’s borders, as I can call up “Amazon.fr”:http://www.amazon.fr/ and order any book I like. While living in France, my youngest host sister would pass each Harry Potter book to me after reading it. I enjoyed them thoroughly as the difficultly was more in the vocabulary than in the language structure. To top it off, the Harry Potter series are quite entertaining. Upon my return, I anxiously awaited the release of the French translation of the fifth book in the series. I have it sitting on my night stand, but still have yet to pass page 50.

Perhaps, I will read it on my flight to Brattleboro.

!(alignright)http://www.sensoryoutput.com/wp-images/postings/flag.jpg(American Flag)! It’s difficult to believe that three whole years have passed since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the downing of a plane full of people in rural Pennsylvania. I clearly remember my French host mother picking me up from school around 3:00 pm (EST + 6) and gravely telling me that something bad was happing back home. When you hear something like that, you immediately think of your family and those close to you, but upon arriving home, I watched the surreal events of that New York morning unfold on live television from the other side of the Atlantic. I was in shock as I watched the two towers crumble and mortified by the shear confusion in the media about how many planes were hijacked, their targets and the estimated dead. Being so far away, though, I felt disconnected from the situation, only hearing about the disruption to air traffic and other commerce around the USA that week. Scary stuff.

_Le Monde 2_, a French monthly news magazine, put out a special edition the following week that included pictures from Ground Zero. It was different, I’m sure, watching the events unfold in other country (France, no less)—the news media and government responses to this attack on America clearly showing solidarity. But as with all things, they changed. By the spring of 2002, Bush had given his infamous “‘Axis of Evil’ State of the Union address”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html, after which the French and other Europeans had a field day picking it apart morsel by morsel. Clearly, I witnessed the initial falling out between the US and France, as relations became more and more sour, and the situation has only worsened with Iraq. Oh well, what can you do? The French will be French: righteous about their place in the world and their need to demonstrate this non-existent authority. The modern world really has given France a case of insecurity, as they attempt to assert their will without much success.

Still, 9/11 really did rally the French and the rest of the world for a time. We should not forget that _solidarité_, nor should we forget those who perished on that fateful day that fundamentally changed our world.

Today, I wanted to comment on something I caught from the New York Times a few days ago: “You Are How You Eat(The New York Times – Opinion – Op-Ed Contributor – You Are How You Eat)”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/06/opinion/06HAZA.html?pagewanted=all&ei=5090&en=7fcc13481276ed7d&ex=1246852800&partner=rssuserland. As some of my friends reading these posts know, I lived in Pau, France during my sophomore year in college. While I was there, I lived exclusively with a host family, opting to take on the full immersion experience. And that it was: I spoke more French, observed first hand family life and ate more delicious culinary delights. My host mother fixed some of the greatest dishes: _quiche au saumon_, _la soupe aux tomates_, _et mon favori, boeuf bourguignon_. Naturally, these meals usually were accompanied with a simple green salad, cheese, fruit, and/or yogurt depending on whether it was lunch or dinner. I ate wonderfully: three square meals a day that were rich in all the food groups.

Now Giuliano Hazan talks about Italy, but I think this applies just as well to France. He speaks of the importance of pasta in Italy and Americans’ misunderstanding of carbohydrates thanks to the media frenzied “Atkins craze”:http://atkins.com/. Although this mentioning of carbohydrates is simply a cursory argument to his main point: you are how you eat—that is, how much time out of your day you take to enjoy the simple pleasure of eating. Still, I must address this common misconception with regards to carbs: Americans tend to eat simple carbs consisting of simple sugars and lots of “enriched” flour-based foods. These types of carbohydrates are found in store-bought slide breads (the really soft crappy kind), soft drinks, cereal, hamburger buns. In France (and Italy), the carbohydrates were tied up in more complex forms in _bagettes_ and _pâtes_ (often forms that come with fiber). “Simple versus complex carbohydrates”:http://www.ivillage.co.uk/dietandfitness/nutrition/carbs/qas/0,,267_156580,00.html is pretty straightforward: the body can digest and absorb simple carbs faster than complex ones. The body spends very little energy digesting these simple carbs only to absorb them and get people fatter. Complex carbs require more processing time and energy for eventual uptake into cells, meaning slow absorption (allowing the body time to adjust or use them as needed).

The author’s point about how we eat is entirely valid as well–given Americans’ penchant for quick, on-the-go meals. Traditional family meals have been superseded by a fend for yourself strategy, and that is not necessarily bad but it does reinforce bad eating. Kids have no idea what is good food or bad food, as they will eat what tastes good. In France, my host mother instilled constantly the virtues of a tasty, well-balanced meal that consisted of freshly-baked, hearty breads and food straight from the store that day. Here: kids fix their own (often pre-cooked, pre-made) meals not having every learned this delicate balance that is our diet. It is unfortunate, and until these shortcomings are remedied, I fear the explosion of the overweight population will continue.