Virtually Home

In one of many incidents since arriving in France that have served to point out how uninformed, in general, I am about world news and American politics, I learned that the State of the Union had been given last night from a Facebook status update by a friend from Norway. And so I watched it on YouTube, where it had been posted in English and Farsi by a guy in Iran, and marveled about how cool technology is, and how strange it is that our politics are so widely followed. I liked the things he said about education. When Obama kept saying "both" parties, I thought about how bitter the independents and the tinier parties must be that they never get mentioned seriously. I liked that he called people out on denying the "overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change". I felt kind of awkward when he addressed Congress like a classroom full of children, asking them not to get in each other's way just because they could. I felt even awkwarder when the military ...

Yesterday after class I was waiting to ask our professor a question and listening to the conversation he was having with another student. The question he'd asked had to do with the difference between a linguistic sign and a symbol, and as the professor started talking about symbolism, he suddenly says: "Like America. Everyone in the whole world knows the value of America. When you seen an American flag, you don't just think that it symbolizes the U.S. -- it symbolizes a lot more than that." At which point the student says "ok, I understand now" and they both turn and look at me. I'd sort of worked out my whole question in advance so I could minimize stuttering, but I was so surprised that it didn't work out quite like I'd planned. Last night, Alex had heard about a rock show near our place, and we went. It turned out to be a juice bar called Soup&Juice. A juice bar that also sold beer? Or, kind of. They explained to us that they would onl...