damn you Paris.

Well, I deserve to get my name written on the board with 2 checkmarks next to it for this blunder.  I thought, hey, it would be fun to spend 2 days in Paris before I go home, you know, to kind of tie together all the loose ends of my trip, anend it in the same place I began it.

What I forgot what that Paris is the effing city of love.  I think I am the SOLE person here who is not walking around hand in hand taking wedding photos or making children with someone, but I did kind of have a fun renting a bike for 1 euro and riding around Paris for six hours - seriously.

I am really, really sad today - and this WHOLE big thing finally got to me today once I got back to my hostel room.  I sat down, and just started crying.  I have no idea why, I never cry.  I guess I just REALLY miss my kids, and I really miss Rebecca, and I really miss Calais, and I'm not ready for this part of my life to be over.

well I've been waiting for a while......

I wrote this stanza to a poem several months ago, during the midst of my worst month in France.  I can say that finally, my request of the song has been fulfilled.  And about that, I am happy.

And one day this old world
will win back my heart and I'll be cured
from the apathy that's conquered her
and you'll be waiting there

This country, this place, these people, this life - it has won back my heart and I have been cured, and the apathy that had conquered my heart has been defeated, and the love of my life waits for me in a city thousands of miles away.

I will see her soon though.

sentimentality strikes the American

I guess this is a post that is for me and the hundreds of people in France that won't read it more than it is for anyone back home, marking the first thing I've written written from this angle.  

Today is my last full day here in Calais, and though I've said it a hundred times already, I'm really sad.  Though I am an emotional person in general, there are few things in life other than songs and God that can really make me tear up, but alas, the country that turned me hostile to it within a few months of being here has now reigned me in and converted me, and I can say with complete conviction that I feel I am leaving the first place I call home since leaving San Jose, 6 years ago.

I have put off writing this, mainly because I felt there was too much to say, things that only existed in my head and couldn't be put out onto paper.  As I was telling the last class of mine yesterday, it's very difficult for me to have to come the conclusions to which I have come, because as someone who prides himself on his logic and mind, I'm not sure how I got it all so wrong.  Faith, in a lot of things, and in a lot of forms, has always been a strong part of who I am as a person, it has come a long way in defining me - just - believing things, or believing in things, even when I have no proof.  But science, logic, proof, equations - they have also been a huge part of me.  From the first time I took the Myers-Briggs personality test way back in the day (People Types and Tiger Stripes!) to when I just took it again a few months ago for fun, my "Thinking/Feeling" meter has always, always been right in the middle, give or take.  I think I have come to the conclusion that this is good, because instead of "wondering which one I am," I think I look at this now as me just being strong in both of them, and that being better than someone who is just "heart" or someone who is just "head".

I came here thinking that the United States was the best country ever.  It was the best not because I lived there - because that answer would be too simple and could be easily taken apart logically.  If someone had shown me evidence that this were wrong, I would have changed my opinion, but part of the reason why I held this opinion was due to ignorance, in that I hadn't really gone out and searched for the truth myself, relying more on others' opinions and the general word of mouth I got from others, but also from the promises I had heard for ages about how and why my country was so good.  In the same way that I made this gem of a quote, 

"They talk about France's long history, its art, its music, but when I ask them to name things that are going on right now, in modern times, that showcase France's talent and world class culture, they tell me it doesn't exist anymore.  I sadly, sadly agree.  I feel that the massively socialistic system is really failing the people of France.  Pardon if you're French as you're reading this, but I feel that socialism has destroyed the French."

I was doing the same thing with my own country and not even realizing it.  I had called America the land of opportunity, cited that for hundreds of years people have sought freedom in America, made millions, left the oppression of their homeland for a better one, but I never really stopped to think if that were still the case.  I tend to always say what is on my mind, and what I really believe, and I really believed that when I said it, so I'm not ashamed that I did.  I don't feel at all like a hypocrite, or stupid for thinking one thing so strongly only a few months ago, then completely changing my mind.  I think that makes me smart and humble, being able to really admit that I was wrong.  That's probably a good quality to have in life.  So I thought the US was the best, and I gave plenty of lectures on why that was the case - why our freedoms to be what we wanted to do what we wanted was better than the downtrodden socialistic system that burdened the French and made them all turn out the same.  I duno - I guess I was seeing what I wanted to, instead of what was there.  

I was thinking one night, about a month ago, along the line of "what is happiness, and how do we attain it?" and in the simple mathematical and logical way that I try to always think of philosophical issues, I tried to understand the question I was asking and the players involved in that question.  My logic led me to this.  All of the factors leading up to happiness in a society, (meaning the collective happiness I see from those around me, and the percentage of people who either seem content/happy in life, or actually are content/happy in life) is something that is easily observable.  It's not a perfect measure, but it's possible to see.  In a way, it's much more... reliable than taking a survey or doing a study, maybe, because you're witnessing people, over time, in their natural state.  Sometimes I talked to people about it, sometimes I observed conversations, sometimes I just walked down the street and observed society, the interactions between other people, the way parents treated children, children treated parents, strangers treated one another, bus drivers treated drivers, smokers treated non-smokers, drunk kids at 3am treated houses they walked by, rich men in BMWs (Bee-emm-doo-bluh-vay sounds SO much cooler than Bee-Emm-Double-You) treated people employed as street sweepers, and I came to the conclusion that the people I had first thought were so... overburdened by a heavy tax system and condemned to live in a society that was different from the US were actually happy.  You see - I had equated happiness with education I saw education, with richness, in the general sense, as i saw richness, as the size of one's house mattering, that having a front lawn was important, or being able to find Asian food in the grocery store, or being able to easily get Internet access.  I never stopped to think that my initial basis for judging happiness was off, or maybe even downright WRONG.  Let me continue this explanation using math for a second.  I had come to France, and spent a few months here drawing up that because the relative values of the following formula were higher in the United States.  While in reality, the values I used for my answer were probably ten old the size of this list, the example will still work. For example, I said that:

 a+b+c+d+e = f

where a through e are different things that make up happiness.  Let's say a stands for my ideas of personal freedom, b meant the possibility for wealth, etc etc.  To a, I gave the completely subjective value of 5, to b 12, to c 1, to d 4, and to e 3, meaning that

5+12+1+4+3 = 25

now when I looked at my perception of French culture, and their values in this, (note I say my perception because not only was I not using the honest values, I was giving a subjective weight to a perceived value judged through a bias...) I thought it looked maybe something like this:

4+6+3+5+1 = 19

Therefore, since 25> 19, America was better than France.  Obviously, as I said before, my theorem for this a lot more complex, but logically, it pretty much came out in my head the same way, as this mathematical formula where America had a higher value than France.

My formula broke down that one night I went for a walk and started thinking, and it hit me like a "f***ton of bricks."  I had previously come to the conclusion that because of the values on the left side of the equation adding up to a greater number, in a way, my logic was correct, and that the US was a much better country, but it hit me that French people are, in fact, happier than Americans.  I thought of my everyday encounters with shopkeepers, random people on the street, people at work, students, parents, children, mothers of friends, people who bum cigarettes off me, random people in the train station that I witness having a conversation with someone else - people. are. happy. here.  In fact, that are, by and by, MORE happy than the general population of the United States.  Therefore, I realized that my original analysis must have been wrong.  I was TRYING to keep my opinion that America was a happier and better country - or - that my chances of living a happy life were greater in America, but if in that equation, France's "happiness" value was actually higher, as I was observing, (so not 25 > 19, but rather 25 <>

Basically, I said that in the States, you can be happier because of this and this and this, until I realized that that and that and that weren't ever the reasons why I was happy in America before, and are definitely not really the things I want out of life in the first place to make myself happy, and that the things I really want to be happy in life are here.  This is something I realized I could never really SAY about America.  Of course, we SAY that one should follow the golden rule, treat others like you would want to be treated, but we don't actually DO it.  We might do it to our friends, or our families, or our neighbors if we're close, but it is not this general idea ingrained into the heart of society.  One of my teachers expressed it as "the catholic culture that has pervaded our society and still lives deeply within it, regardless of how many people are actively religious."  So, I can see how someone reading this might look and say "but wait, you said just a few months ago Brian that the United States was all these things that you're now saying France is!  You must just be finally liking the country, so you're seeing through rose colored windows," but that isn't it.  I made sure of that this time in doing my analysis.

Don't even get me started on how amazing the one month was that Rebecca spent with me here was.  The only thing I am missing here is my love.  I think that would make France complete.  The funny thing is, I can say that in complete honesty and still understand that France lacks things that the US has.  I realize, if at some point in the future I were to move back here let's say, I would have a really hard time REALLY learning French, not like "hey I can teach French kids English," but like "I can actually work at a job where my language skills do not prohibit me."  I would also never be French, I would always be a foreigner, and there would always be things I miss about the States, the food, the multiculturalism, maybe the prospect of making a lot of money, (because while that's not something I want NOW, I might change, and what better place to make millions than the States?) that I would never have here, but the strange thing that I find is that that doesn't matter to me, because of what I stated above - I am happy here! My equation for happiness had been wrong in the past, so SO many of the things I thought mattered to me just don't anymore... so many of the things that I thought I needed to be happy I don't anymore, and the things that make me happy seem to exist in this country.  I mean, I would miss my family a TON if I ever moved, but that has always been in the back of my mind since I started dating.. that last girl I dated..., you know, since she was always in love with France, i figured one day I might move there, and that feeling has become much more real since dating Rebecca, being from a different country and all, and having travelled the world and wanting to go back to it.  So secretly, in the back of my head, I've been thinking for a while about the world, and what it would be like to live "there."  After a few months here, you know, during my "dark" phase, I thought that France was definitely the end of my travel-the-world phase, and that once I got back to the States I would never want to leave again, but... I duno - this place changed me.  I am hungry for more now.  I don't want to come home.  I literally do not want to get on that plane and come home.  And it has nothing to do with my family, or my girlfriend, or my friends, or pho (no seriously, it's important.)  I guess if I could I would bring them all here, but I can't.  So I'll go home and I'll try not to be emotional, but logical, and really judge the two countries having now an experience in them both to decide whether or not I want to stay, or come back.  You know, after living here for 3 months or so I thought Amanda was crazy, or mentally-ill in some way to have been here for 5 years without wanting to claw her eyeballs out, or maybe I thought Bordeaux must just be a really cool city, but... now I see why she stays.  You know, it's interesting - I am not a person who is easily... wowed, and my heart, and my life, and... so many things about me were in such a rut, as many of you know, over the last few years with everything that happened to me.  Meeting Rebecca and starting to date her was the first breath of fresh air that my tired lungs had had since before I could remember, and that... learning how to breathe again... that came from here.  I can say that for the first time since high school, I am a genuinely HAPPY person, everyday when I wake up, I am happy, regardless of what comes my way, I am happy.  I have been trying, for many years now, to "get back to where I was when I was younger" in terms of my outlook on the word, not being bitter and cold and not impressed by anything and just.. so negative, but nothing has been able to do that to me, or for me, at home, until I met Rebecca, and what started with her has been completed here in France.  

I think this might have something to do with why I am at such a crossroads.  If only I could have both of them.  If I had to choose, I obviously choose her, because no country, no matter what it ,) does for me, can ever replace love, (and this love I feel for Rebecca is especially strong) but if I still feel the way I feel right now in a year, I'm probably going to steal her and fly back here, (which she's already told me is perfectly okay with her :) )  I mean, I want to keep an open mind, above all, right?  I might come back to the States and find that *I* have changed, and that that is enough for me to keep a piece of France inside of me and make a life and a future back at home, but I may not find that.  I may find that I want to move to Australia, or France, or who knows, maybe I'll want to try a new country in a year - I don't know, which is why I want to give it time.  

I think, at the end of all of this, when all is said and done, I can look back and say I am really, really glad that I did this.  Through whatever good and bad circumstances landed on me while I've been here, I am leaving the better, I am leaving with a much greater sense of life, of who I am, of what I want in life.  My constant quest to answer life's questions have become much clearer in the last month, and I have the 6 previous months to thank for that.  I have spent many many hours on the phone with Rebecca over these last few months, almost every day, and that has made such an impact on me continuing to keep a strong relationship with her even though I've been physically absent.  I think once I get back I won't have any difficulty talking to her about any of this, since she already knows exactly what's going on in my mind regarding all of this.  I guess we will just have to see.

So, I guess in another few days (I'm spending a few days in Paris,) I will no longer be in France, but my thoughts pertaining to the country will hopefully still resonate with me for quite a while, so.. I hope to keep writing on this and cataloguing my thoughts, on the chance I do come back.

to all those wondering...

i pwn at life.

Mexico and France

"I'm depressed now. I want to go back," was the sentiment that registered most clearly in my head in the months passing after I came back from living in Mexico for a summer. I remember feeling so at peace when living there, even if life was really hard and several times I wanted to call it quits and come home. That was nothing like this is - this is a walk in the park, a breeze, compared to what I endured in Mexico, but I have grown, slowly to love this place and call it home, and just when I have learned to call it home, I am leaving again. Woe is me.

I'm trying to cope with the idea that I spent five months not really liking it here only to grow to be fighting the desire to leave and question why I am going back in the first place. I have no idea what I want to do when I get back, and though I've applied for several jobs back home, I haven't heard any word back from employers - it's graduation all over again. I've worked on my resume, gotten feedback, reapplied, but still nothing. Since I was young, I had always had dreams of becoming a teacher, and I got my first taste of it last year during French class, when my teacher would be absent, I would ask people to stay so that I could teach class in her stead, and everyone would tell me that I was really good at it, and that they finally understood things they had not understood before. And now, that is happening again. Four of my teachers, at different times, have told me here "ce que tu as fait avant, il faut arrêter et devenir prof," whatever you did before, you need to stop and become a teacher, because, who knows, maybe it runs in my blood if the evidence of my father and aunts and uncles and cousins are any indication of who I am. I'm stuggling, because my last job before come here was so unfulfilling. I had so much potential and so many things I wanted to do in my work environment, but oh, young was I, and experienced were the lips I was speaking from, so though the employees listened to me and told me I was a great leader and had great ideas, they never rose up to the mountains of the managers, because - well, I don't really know why, because they were stupid I guess, but that job is my only experience of the software world, of "the real world," and it was not a very pleasant one, so compared to this job, which I absolutely love coming to, I question what I should do when I get home.

Should I go back to school and get my masters? Should I get a teaching credential? I don't know, I've always felt I wanted to spend a few years proving myself in the business world, just to show I could do it, that I could apply my intelligence to something and win, because that's what I do, I win at things, and afterwards, later in life maybe, become a teacher. Maybe I'll still do that, maybe I won't, but I need something to prove myself in first, and no one is calling. I spent a good amount of time talking to Rebecca about this last night, about when I come home, were I to want to get a master's degree, what subject would I choose? Economics? Psychology? Communications? Should I go for a law degree, or become a doctor? Maybe I could get it in French, but that's only really useful if I want to do something in French maybe. What about trying to become President? Go into politics, affect change that way. I've thought of it all, and I want to do it all.

And I keep coming back to the part of me that wrote the second to last entry here, about looking around and seeing people who seem content, much more so than where I come from. I went to buy some rice last night at the store, but it was closed, yet I remembered that about a mile away there was a little asian restaurant, and maybe I could score a hit of rice off of them, so I walked down there and the woman who ran the store was closing up, so I asked her if I could buy some rice, and about an hour later I left the store, after having a wonderful conversation with her about anything and everything - and this is commonplace here. Everyone has time to talk, everyone is nice. On the contrary, I remember going in and buying cigarettes in San Diego and I'd always try to say things to the person working there, "wow it's a beautiful day today, isn't it?" or "so how's business going?" and most of the time I would just get blank stares, or "$3.58," I mean, that's not how I want to live - those aren't the types of people I want to spend the rest of my life around....

I duno... the bell just rang, I have class.

addendum to what I said yesterday

I've been thinking a lot about what I said yesterday, and I've gotten a lot of responses on the subject. I wanted to maintain that what I said was purely conjecture, as I truly have not made up any opinion about the two countries yet. I love my country, and I think that in a lot of ways, countries like France are able to "care so little," maybe, about things like technological advances or the development of new things because other countries like America and Japan, highly capitalistic countries, do it for them. I mean, when was the last time a good invention came out of Europe? I can't think of any off the top of my head. So, because of the cultural atmosphere in the United States, the "gold medal or bronze medal" approach, the "make it or fall flat" approach, yes there is a lot more stress, yes there is a highly materialistic (in general) mindset, but it also allows us to kind of... see humanity to its fullest. We invented Google, Apple, Microsoft, a lot of modern medical technology, scientific discoveries and social initiatives, and I think still, and probably always will, that our government, in theory, run for the people and by the people, is by far the best system out there. My only big point in yesterday's blog was to address all of the things about European lifestyle that I really liked, and how, maybe if I don't want to live in a society that is "either gold medal or bronze," with very little room for someone to have a silver medal and be content with that, I could always move to a country where the bulk of people had silver medals, and everyone was okay with that.

I hope this clears some stuff up. I have come to the conclusion that both societies work for their respective citizens, and I think, if nothing else, I have found that there are a lot of points of view in French culture that I hope I keep with me for the remainder of my life, things that I think will benefit me a lot in the long run, things that I hope to take back with me and incorporate into my life because I think ultimately that Europe is too european and American is too american, and maybe the best person is the one who finds the balance in both.

Happy Happy France

I enjoy commas.

I realized today that I will soon be leaving France.  I have had this realization before, but this time it's real.  I'm sure it will also be more real in a few weeks when it's closer to my leave date, but at least for now, I'm really starting to reflect upon all that I've learned since getting here.

I remember getting here, after taking French for two semesters, a sordid mix between someone who was running away from something, (though the thing he thought he was originally running away from wasn't, in the end, what he found he was running from,) and someone who really was excited about the opportunity of living in France, the land of wine, bread, cheese, and l'amour.  I guess, what I found in the end, was, in many ways, what I had come here looking for in the first place, but what I failed to understand was that in order to enjoy that which I wanted to enjoy before I left, I had to first understand so many things about not only myself, but the country of France as well.  I wanted to experience a dream - a vision of a country that I'd had through old friends, movies, American culture, the past, maybe a book or a commercial or the way the French were portrayed in Monthy Python's Holy Grail sketch. (I faart in your generaal die-rek-shawnnn)  Even the videos that I watched in French 1 and 2 about a fake set of friends who went to cafés and spoke French while having dinner parties and sampling wines and talking about old French artists was somehow in my head as "the France" that I would experience too.  And I guess in some ways I have, but in order to realize that, I first had to spend 6 months getting over it.

When I came to France, I automatically realized how American I was.  I never though this before, since I have always tried to be myself, and always found that that self was almost always different from everyone else around me.  I know everyone says that, but... I was always the odd one out.  Whether it was in a bad way, at school, or a good way, at church, whether I was made the center of attention for the purpose of ridicule, at school, or the purpose of jest, at church, I was always, at least I felt so, looked upon as being "different" from all the other kids.  So I naturally came to believe that I was, indeed, not as American as my American counterparts, but instead I enjoyed a very brianpowellesque way of life, which turned out, to be a very brianpowellesque way of life with a heavy dose of Americanism in it.

My inability to be French, or maybe to become French, is partially a fault of the circumstances in which I find myself.  I am a teacher, brought to teach not English, but ME; I am the subject.  My culture, my views, my accent - everything, I am here to teach that one thing that I have that their teachers do not - authentic americanisms.  For this reason, I started really looking at what my culture was, at what it taught, at who it made us out to be.  I spent hours talking with French people, whether it was "what do you think about [            ]," or "what do you desire from [         ]?"  From my students, to my teachers, to my roommates, to random people I've met of all ages, I embarked on a quest to understand France, and it has taken me six months to realize that in all this time, I have come much closer to understanding them, but have failed to relish in them as well.  I spent six months with a microscope to their culture, their way of life, often critiquing how mine was better, how one is more free where I come from, where one can have a better life, which made me think about freedom and life all the more.

I ran into the problem of missing my girlfriend in San Diego, and spending more and more time thinking about her and talking to her, going to whatever lengths I could - walking a mile, (or some-odd kilometres,) just to find a phone booth at 3am so i could call her, and I never lost touch with America, whether it was because of facebook, AIM, WoW, American news, American music, my constant love for other countries too, my sudden increased interest in Spanish again now that my language center was being stimulated, I guess I just found an inability to truly lose myself in the culture, although i was trying to, or not trying to, depending on the day and my approach to how to best enjoy myself here.

Regardless, the last few weeks I have started to do what I came here for.  I've started walking around town, going into a café for a quick cup of coffee, and sitting there at the bar talking for thirty minutes to the bartender, for no reason - just to talk.  I've started trying to use frenchisms - words that mean nothing but still convey meaning.  Like how we say "like" all the time.  I've spent a lot of time listening, listening to accents, to words, trying to learn new things, new roads, new people, trying to get out of France what I thought i would get out when I decided to come here, and it has been working.  I have felt, for the first time since coming here, a sense of sadness that I will be leaving.  And not just a sadness of leaving, but the sadness of losing something that I enjoy.  There are many, many pieces of French culture I enjoy, but it's so hard to put down in words, because I feel like they are a conflict in my head.  

• I enjoy having big houses, lawns and fences, but I like what small, compact houses, everywhere, does for community, how everyone walks everywhere because - well, driving here is kind of a hassle, and they have amazing mass transit, (a simple system of buses that hold to them no socioeconomic ties as I think our buses do,) and everything is close because everything is compact.
  
• I enjoy the freedom to be who you are in America, the idea that I, above all people, could be exactly who i want, that even though me and John Smith are both Americans, we resemble each other only slightly, in that maybe we both hold the ideals of our parents' parents' generations important, that freedom, progress, and free expression are important, however, sometimes having everyone be in the same boat is really nice.  
• I know a few of you reading this think of me and see the bp that you knew whenever you knew me, but I have changed, as people do, in many ways, and yet I remain the same, as they do as well, in many others.  I do not really pride myself on my arrogance anymore; I do not like to argue really, or prove points by shoving my answer so deep down someone's throat that they can no longer argue back.  People argue so much less here, they get along, they take their time with everything - as though LIFE, and the living of it, really mattered.  They don't see this of course because for them it's normal, daily life, but there is so much less stress about money, about the future, about good colleges or retirement funds or what their neighbors have or what car they drive.... the best way I can say is that people, by and by, seem much more content with life than those I see in the United States, and I live in a pretty crappy town which most people want to leave.
• This next one is tough, because I have seen, truly, only a small part of European culture, or French culture, or to be more specific, northern-French culture, but from what I've seen of youth, while they seem to lack what American youth have in terms of a desire to invent, be rich and famous, make the "next big thing," they make up for in being more well rounded and happier.  I don't see that kids here have as much a problem obeying authority.  They seem to understand that teachers are there to help them, that they're smarter, that adults should be listened to, and that they should try to be normal and fit into society.  While this doesn't give them the freedom of expression and freedom to be "who they are," as we have in the States, it makes everyone a lot nicer, and makes everyone fit into society a lot easier.  I don't see any kids who want to kill themselves, who cut their wrists, who dress in all black and hate the world; and while I would not say that these things are common in the US, there is definitely a big subculture of high school kids that feel lost, feel like they will never amount to anything, that they can't follow their dreams, and are kind of depressed.  I mean, I was never like that in high school, but I knew a lot of kids who were, and I know that a lot of kids NOW are, at an every increasing rate.  Maybe the freedom we give to our youth backfires in a way, giving them too much freedom to "be themselves" as they go through life,  and these ideas, propagated by our media, our television shows that are all about sex, violence, kids disobeying parents, our music, especially rap and hip-hop, that is all about sex, making money, fulfilling sensual and carnal pleasures, and our movies, which always tell stories about people who spent 95% of their lives completely screwing up, then work hard for a thirty-minute music scene and seem to have everything figured out - I can't help but feel like that leaves a vast majority of kids feeling like they've failed when they figure out that they're not like those stars in the films, that they will never become a famous music star, or a basketball player, or come up with the next Google or Apple.  I don't know, maybe resigning your kids to just "be content with having less than everything makes your society better in the end... who knows?  That leads me onto my next point
• I came here thinking that capitalism was better than socialism.  Coffee black and egg white, right?  I spent several months here thinking that, finding allllll the myriad problems that socialism creates, and spent hours telling my students why their economic and political systems left them in the dust.   Last week, something finally dawned on me - that I hadn't asked the original question, ever.  To what end does an economic system perpetuate itself? Does it exist to foster a country where someone has the greatest possibility of becoming rich if they work hard, is its aim that consumers always have the latest and greatest products regardless of who is put out of work to get it, or is the GOAL of the system to make as many people in society have "good enough lives," and to assure that most of your society has its basic needs met?  
  
  I'm kind of at a loss for words as to which is right.   I realize that because of capitalism being so strong in the United States, I have all these possibilities ahead of me in terms of work, I know that I *could*, if I wanted to, work my ass off day and night and become super rich, but what if I don't want that?  If I only want to work 40 hours a week am I resigned to a life that my peers will deem "second-class" because I can't afford the BMW, the nice house, the authentically-made hand-carved table shipped to me from a remote village in Africa or stock my wine cellar with wines that come from grapes that you've never heard of?  
  
  Or instead would it be better for me to be like my neighbor, to not have to worry about who drives a better car, because no one seems to care about that.  To live in a society where "excess" wealth is discouraged, but since more of society is at roughly the same level, people spend less time worrying about college payments, car payments, house payments, debt, and all of the........ extra baggage that seems to go along with the American dream?
  
  See, I don't mean this as a joke against myself, but I've always been a little bit stubborn.  I've always kind of thought I knew best, and I don't think this ever stemmed from arrogance or selfishness, but of an earnest and honest attempt to discover the world around me, live the best way I could, and be smart.  So an honest look at economics and lifestyle led me to fully believe that the more capitalistic a society was, the better.  Lazy people should not get anything, and kids should be encouraged to follow their dreams - I know I was, and I know it was one of the best lectures I gave while being here in France as to why the United States was better - because people have dreams and can pursue them.  I didn't like the fact that kids in France seemed so resigned to boring lives without a lot of materialistic pleasures and couldn't really choose between all of the various paths that we can in the States, but then part of me looks back now and says "well, I know in theory my system seems SO much better - but, but..."  But people seem happier here.  Everyone seems happier here, and this is freaking CALAIS.  It's a piece of crap city.  It's cold, there's "nothing to do," there are two supermarkets, not a ton of selection when it comes to organic food or things from other countries.  There are a few token Asian restaurants, and you can get to the mall in 15 minutes on the bus, but overall, it's a very underwhelming city - or...... it should be.  This place is against everything that I thought I wanted in a city, in life.  It seems that the idea of "keeping up with the Joneses" is SO ingrained into our psyche that we can't live without constantly judging our neighbor on what they have, and judging ourselves on whether we are doing well enough, stressing constantly over it.  Everyone I know seems to be in debt, except a few people who really are doing well and making lots of money.  Everyone here in turn seems to be so much more content, even if they don't have the moon and the stars tucked under their belt.  I see people talking a lot more, people walk everywhere, going through a grocery store checkout line takes forever because everyone talks to the cashier.  Nothing is rushed, there is no one telling you that you're going to be a failure in life because you only got a 3.8 GPA in high school, and to top it off, it's cold and dreary here most of the time - so why is everyone happier?  I see it in kids, I see it in youth, I see it in adults, I see it in people who have jobs we would consider crappy in the United States.  The dude who picks up my trash is always smiling, the woman who runs the fry stand a block from my house is always in a good mood, the teachers i work with seem to be pretty happy, and my kids - a great indicator of honesty - are always polite to me, nice to me, teachers, and other kids, they come to school and they have a good attitude, even if some of them don't give a crap about school or English, and - I don't know - I feel like i am repeating myself, but my overall conscious is that the vast majority of people in a crappy, cold city are happier than almost everyone I see in beautiful sunny San Diego.  There is no debate as to whether or not this is fact - it IS, I just don't know why.
  
  Is it the economic system?  Is it the culture?  Is it the way of life?  The much-less-stress life, the idea that having "enough" is actually something that MOST people believe, that spending time with people and friends, having dinner parties, drinking and smoking a lot more than we do in the States, and believing that life was meant to be enjoyed something that exists all around you?  I duno.  I look at friends who work 60 hours a week, have beautiful houses and cars, but whose only end in life seems to be to have more, and I ask myself "is that what I'll become someday?  If I choose to work in a career that I feel makes me happy, but only makes $35,000 a year, will I be crushed under the guilt that I feel all around me that I've chosen the easy path, the slacker path, the lazy man's path?"  When I look around me in the US, I feel like no one even KNOWS how to be happy sometimes, because everyone is so full of stress, so full of themselves, so full of what the next hottest trend will be.  After living here I don't WANT to spend money to buy a car anymore, I don't WANT to spend $50/month for a cell phone, I spent $250 a month for rent, I MAKE $650 a month, and I live fine!  I'm not rich, but I'm happy.  I can buy food, drink with friends, play WoW, go out a few times a week and play pool, ($2 for 30 minutes?), get a beer at a pub, (another $2), I can buy some new clothes when I need to...... everything just..... seems to work here, and it frustrates me because it hurts my pride, thinking that I came here thinking that France was so much worse than the States and finding in the end that there are a ton of things here that I really LOVE, and maybe if i were to spend another year here, I would come to the conclusion that I never wanted to go back, like Amanda did.  Who knows?

I have plenty more to say, but I think I'll give it a few days of reflection and end this post just shy of a novel. :)