Monday, September 28, 2009

Monet and the Internet

On Sunday I got to go to Giverny on GW's dime. They do this kind of stuff for the other GW students all the time (basically, they babysit them) but they forget the Sciences Po students exist. We literally got an invitation 3 days before being like "oh, you go to GW too, come!"

Giverny is where Monet lived for the 2nd half of his life and where he painted all the water lillies. The gardens were very pretty, but I enjoyed his farmhouse more. It's pretty small, but each room is a bright beautiful color and he had amazing Japanese prints all over the house (is it bad I like those more than his own work?) Also, the tour guide kept mentioning how the Nixon administration gave millions of dollars to restore Giverny? ...why? Monet is French, shouldn't the French government do that? Shouldn't we have given that money to people that could have actually used it? That bothered me.

Anyway, that was free, but the best free part was the meal. I got mussels, pomme frites, a brownie (not so good, leave that to the Americans) and wine! Thank you GW, my $50,000 while abroad goes to underage drinking. Anyway, they invited us to two more free trips to Normandy and Brussels!

I learned today that in France they read your grades in front of the entire class! Not so into that. My teacher made a girl cry in class today because of how harsh she was on her presentation of an article. Not that she told the girl how to present it, no, she just assumed she would know the correct format. Can't wait till it's my time to present!

Today I tried to get Internet. My landlord told me I could just walk into the store, give them the name of the person who lived their before me, and all should be well. Here's my conversation with the Internet man:

"Hi, I need Internet, here's the name of the person that lived in my apartment before me."

"Id?"

(Hand him my Illinois license)

"ha ha, American! Wow, so cool. America is so big"

"Yeah, i know."

"But this is France, this won't do. I need your lease, bank account statement, and passport."

"For Internet? (sigh) Okay, how long will it then take to get Internet once I have all of that."

"15 days."

"15! Why so long?"

"This is France. How long does it take in America?"

"Ugh, the same day usually."

"Wow! America is so cool! But yes, 15 days. You are the first American I've met who can speak French, the others can only speak English."

I agreed, said it was sad, and then apologized that Americans can't speak other languages.

So yeah, I won't have Internet in my house for at least 15 days! I have to get a bank account which takes a few days. AH, France you kill me sometimes.

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