French Guys Dress Like Fags

It's true.  They all wear tank tops and capris and they all have both their ears pierced and wear more jewelry than my mother.

Onto other news, this morning I woke up and opened the shutters, and there was a lizard on my window sill!!!!! Today I had a paper due, so I went to the University early to finish it, which turned out to be a really good idea since the teachers were there early too and were available for questioning.  It only took like an hour for me to do!

After class I went to Le Musee de la Resistance et la Deportation, which is a museum full of information, photographs, and keepsakes that have to do with French Resistance during La Seconde Guerre Mondiale (WWII).  It was really cool because we learned about a lot of things from that time period extensively during French 232 (winter semester).  I was really bothered by one thing though: there was a definite lack of acknowledgment of female resistantes.  I remember reading a lot about women like Lucie Aubrac and Olga Bancic who risked their lives and even the lives of their children in transporting information (sometimes swaddled within their infants' clothes) for the Allies.  There were also a bunch of women who had relationships with German soldiers and were ostracized from French communities after the occupation ended, a lot of them were forced to have their heads shaved in order to endure embarrassment for the "crimes" they had committed.  None of that was documented at the museum.  So that was disappointing, because those were some of the only fascinating things I remember from class.  Some interesting things they did have where huge publicites, or advertisements, for le S.T.O (service travailler obligatoire) which was a volunteer program available for the Southern French, and was marketed as a way to serve their country.  For every two volunteers that would go work for the Germans in Germany, one French prisoner of war would be released.  One really disturbing thing was a wall full of pictures of children from the 40's.  When I got closer, I realized they were pictures of Jewish children who had been killed by the Nazis.  Ugh. Sickening.  At the end of the exhibit, there was a quote painted on the wall that read:

"Pour prier comme il nous plait, si nous somme religieux.  pour ecrire ce qu'il nous plait, si nous sommes poetes." /"If we pray as we please, we are religious.  If we write as we please, we are poets."  That's my own translation, so I'm not sure how accurate it is.  But I took it to mean (in the context of resistance) that writing what you think is more powerful than simply thinking it or praying it because it gets things done... I thought that was interesting and true.

Oh yeah, and there was an old bike randomly sitting beneath an S.T.O. advertisement.  So Nathan, I guess if you lived in that time period, that would've been your ride.  It's more bad ass than the one you're rocking now...

I'm talking to my cousin Isabella right now.  Apparently her family will be in Paris next weekend so I'm going to try and go meet them by train!

Anyway, I am meeting a lot of people from class downtown for dinner/going out (to a club called Vertigo) in 2 hours, so I don't really have anything to do at the moment.  But I have nothing more to say so, au revoir!