French School Hours

Art History Online

I am an Art History student here in France, my teachers tend to want us to do our research in the library, searching through books for important information and siting our references. I did this once. It sucked, took me 5 hours to get anywhere with it. So now I go to the library, pick out some appropriate books, write the titles down and go home to do my Art History online. I find Wikipedia to be a very useful site along with Google for finding smaller, more specific sites. One thing I need to be careful of while doing my work for art history online, however, is the very tempting urge to take the well-written gabber written on wikipedia or other sites and to paste it onto my pretty little paper. NOT A GOOD IDEA. Everyone knows it, but it must be repeated as many people copy and paste anyways. Well, teachers aren't all that stupid so if they see a paper come into them written in a college proffessors hand chances are they'll notice. Don't take the chance - if you really want to do your art history online and copy it, it usually suffices to rearrange the sentances and put some less-appropriate verbes in. Replace many complicated words with simpler, more comprehenisble, but still accurate ones.

The net is great and Art History online studying is a lot faster and easier. I suggest it to the fullest just don't be a dumb sh** and plagerise. Use your brain a tiny little bit. ; ) (and don't forget to use pictures, they help with examples and take up a nice amount of space on the page.)

Sex Ed 2

I went to the sex-ed conference today. The speaker was not able to get to my lesbian AIDS question so I'll look it up a bit later to speak aboout it - but he did evoke an interesting point about French culture that we do not have in America that I thought I'd share with you guys...

In France the general thought on sexually active teenagers is that it is their body and they can do what they like with it - the parent's jurasdiction ends below the waist. This means that there are many teenage health centers where one can get free condoms and birth control in France. One can even, as a minor, get a free and anonymous abortion aka - without your parents ever knowing.

The parental menality in France also tends to be fairly different from that of the average American parent (not just the French government that is). Teenage boys, for example often have posters of naked girls on their walls and sleepover parties tend to be multi-sex. This does not mean that the party is one big orgie, on the contrary, generaly nothing happens - the french are just a lot less stuffy about the whole sex thing than Americans in general.

Well, that'll be it for my little side-note on french culture. Until next time!

Indecent questions

Just for the record, if you ever go to France, or meet a person outside of France who is French and they ask you an extremely indecent question such as, "Are you a virgin?" or "Have you had sex with ......... yet?" or "Do you want to have sex?" - Try not to be offended. They are not trying to be rude or invasive. They are French. They just simply do not think of this information as private.

Teen Love in France

The French are extremely open to the possibilities of the glories of love even, in my opinion - a bit too open - thinking that every crush they have is true love. I have a friend, Bobby who is a typical, extermely stereotypical French guy. He speaks english, but it took him over half of the school year to finally admit it to me, he is hot, in love with love, and cheats on his girlfriends - but only with other girls that he loves... Bobby is confident, cocky, and pretty much the result of having too many girls after him for too long.

I have another friend, on the other hand, her name is Eléonore. She is a slightly, or perhaps not-so-slightly plump girl who falls in love VERY easily. Now, in contrast with Bobby (despite the inpressive number of girls he seems capable of loving) her loves come hard and strong but leaves just a quickly. She will be on the point of stalking the guy for 2 weeks or so, then crying or being extremely happy for no apparent reason then, after a bit, she'll go back to normal.


Another example is Andrew, one of my closest friends. He is a very caring and romantic guy (then again so is every french guy, but he is adorable with it), he is not, however, very handsome ,he is on his second girlfriend this year though. His first was his ex who he dumped because she wanted to have sex. As I said earlier, he is adorable. His current girlfriend is a cold person who is not loving towards him. I dont know why he is with her. Well, these are three French personalities in love, hope it helps...

French School Week

A French High School school week changes depending on what part of Frace one lives in. Last year, for example, I lived in the South of France and had school from Monday to Friday each week. Now I live in the south of France and have school six days a week, from Monday to Saturday, but I only have two hours of class Wendsday and Saturday, on the other hand I have twelve hour of class Monday, from 8am to 8pm with two hours for lunch. I know that in some parts of France you only have clas four days a week - no class wednesday.The school day is generally from 8am to 6pm, although once or twice a week one either ends earlier or starts later. Everyone, everywhere in France has at least one hour for lunch, often two, depending on the day, as the schedule changes daily, but rests the same each week.

Sex Ed

Next friday my scool is having a sex-ed talk for sophmores (myself included) therefore, yesterday my Bio teacher passed around some papers so that we could pose some anymouse questions to the person giving the conference. Many people wrote nothing, I myself wrote seven questions - three for me, three for the girl next to me and one for a guy I know - so it looked like everyone had done their part. Many of my questions had to do with sexual orientation or gay sex. I find it much more interesting.

One of the seven questions I asked I did not know the answer to...How do lesbians transmit AIDS? Can they? What are the protective mesures against it? (I will repost when I know the answers) The others I asked were for the benefit of people too shy to ask them themselves.

Among the other questions was "Can you get AIDS by giving a guy head?" ( Est-ce qu'on peut transmettre le SIDA en suçant une bite? - for those of you studying french). I find it disturbing that so many of my nearest and dearest do not know that the answer to this question is YES! So for God's sake use a rubber if your gonna lick the lollipop... so to speak.

The French School System

I don't know much about the system in generel except the order... first comes la maternelle, then primaire, then collège, then lycée. Lycée being high school. Now high school in France I know about in detail. It is for three years, seconde, première and terminale. I am in seconde. Basically it is a year of adjustement and figuring out what you want to do in the future. At the end of secode you decide which speciality or veau you want to take. There are three specialities, L, S, or ES. L being a focus on literature studies, S on sciences and ES on economics. The speciality you choose in high school is very important because it chooses your future in France. If, for example, you choose to go into S you have the most career options available to you of any of the sections, you could be a lawyer, doctor, teacher of science, etc ect. In short, there are A LOT of options. If you dont take S in high school but want to be a doctor your pretty much screwed because you'll have a difficult time getting into a university for sciences.

L on the otherhand has the least amount of career oportunities available, pretty much its the arts or a teacher, jouralist, or an art curator etc. But the options are a lot more limited. Peronally I will go into L and much prefer the people who go into L because they tend to more creative and artistic. That and I just can't really understand people who enjoy math and science... Also, in L you tend to have the choice to choose une option to go with your studies that also appears on the BAC, it can range from art to art history to theatre or something like that. I am in History of Art.
The choice of which speciality you go into isn't nessecarily yours either. If your grades in math and science are not all that exceptional but you want to go into S the teachers will say (if you have good lit grades) that you should go into L because that is what you are good at. You can then either be a good little boy or girl and say ok or resist and they generally have you redo the year (all in the fashion here in France).

The classes you have later on also change depending on which speciality you choose, for example, if you go into L you have no more math or science after your second year of high school ( or perhaps you have biology into your final year...) but you have 7 hours of philosophy a week your last year. Whereas if you go into S you have no more lit classes earlier and an insane amount of science and math classes. Also, no philosophy. S is commonly know to be the hardest option with the most work and the most amount of school hours, and L is known to be pretty much the easiest, that is - if you can write. Well, hope this helped! If you have any questions just let me know.

Sarkozy

My opinion on Sarkozy is simple- he sucks. He is a racist asshole who can BARELY call himself a socialist. Making the social system's benefits harder to acess for foreigners. His goals seem aimed towards "more work less social benefits". Isn't France kinda known for being a great place to live a stress-free life? If you take that away your are left with a country full of now STRESSED stuck-up overly polite snobs. Great idea Sarkozy. France lives with its debts, it works well with them. He should focus on tourism and bringing money in that way. Tourism is France's top revenu, focusing on making this country even prettier would help tourism. France is now one of the least safe places in europe (it still heaven compared to America, but hey, Europes pretty safe), he should focus on making it a safer place to live with less petty crime and gang issues. On the plus side, it does seem like he'll be good for the french economy. He recently sold a train system to Morocco. It cost a lot. Yay.

About Me

So here's my, "about me". I'm a 16 year old high school (lycée) student curently living in Strasbourg, France. I have been in France for two years now with my mother. We moved out because the school system in America, let's admit it, SUCKS, and because my mother felt that as a french/american I should learn the language. Goal accomplished, I am now almost fluent in French and am learning Spanish though my lycée.

I'm new at this whole blogging thing and haven't quite figured out how to ad pictures yet ,I'll add one later. For now descriptions will have to do. I have a fairly identifiable style... Wear a lot of black and generally have synthetic dreads of some kind or another. Naturally I'm blonde, but, along with many other of the other natural blondes of the world, I have dyed my locks. Mine are now black with blue roots. I wear a lot of make-up and red lipstick. I think asian girls are sexy and I love Tarentino movies.