Center for International and Cultural Education
Leaving Nantes
On Saturday, I watched the French countryside fly by on the train that took me from Nantes to Paris, from where I will fly to the United States on Monday. On the tray table in front of me sat my journal, the (French) Harry Potter book I’m currently reading, some tissues, and a packet of [...]
Our Food Used to Be Alive
This may be surprising to many Americans, but most of our food used to be alive. Before those chicken nuggets were ground and reshaped for dipping in colorful high-fructose corn syrup, they were chickens with beaks, feathers, and legs. Before our Blizzard was a shake, the cream came from a cow that mooed, had hooves, [...]
Words…also Studying Abroad
Words are like magic that we made up. They are a created force used to represent our thoughts and our mind, to reveal and discuss reality, and to understand and change the world in which we live. Words are like magic for the way in which they direct the flow of our mind. We can [...]
Today
I started out this adventure with so many plans and goals. As it continued, I only accumulated more. The problem is that I thought of new goals faster than I checked them off. It’s now May, and I have less than two weeks left in my program. This fact slapped me in the face recently [...]
The Power of Shoes
Leaning towards the window to look out at the French countryside, I watched trees flash by from the comfort of my seat on a train. This was a TGV train, which is France’s high speed rail network, and one of the fastest (if not the fastest) in the world. The plum colored seat in which [...]
College, à la française
Our professor pulled out a packet of tissues and set it on the desk. It made a small plastic noise as he pulled out one of the small paper squares. I assumed he needed to blow his nose, but he didn’t bring the tissue to his face. Instead, he lifted it to the white board, [...]
La Révolution Française
In elementary school, I did a project on the French Revolution. I made one of those tri-fold display posters, covering it with construction paper, names, dates. The poster explained that the French Revolution was when France won its independence. The problem was that no matter how much research I did, I couldn’t figure out from whom the [...]
Of Energy and Ideas
My last post was left hanging on the edge of a discussion on energy and innovation. So, I’m going back to Saint-Malo in this post to pick up where I left off. One of the details I didn’t discuss in depth before was that the tides in Saint-Malo are ridiculous. At high tide, whole worlds [...]
Spring Break in the Corsair City: Arrr!
The walled-in City of Saint-Malo sits on the northern coast of Brittany, overlooking dozens of rocky islands which sit stoicly on the horizon, unmoved by the English Channel rushing around them. The air of the city is mixed with the waters that crash endlessly on these rocks. These same waters, which now hang in the [...]
The Unity of France II: One Nation
Every American knows the phrase “One nation under God,” yet few people realize that our country is not a nation in the strictest sense. While nation, country, and state are often used interchangeably, they are not the same. A nation is a people. They have a culture, a language, a history. They might have a state. For example, Jewish Americans are perfectly [...]