la rentrée

So my ingenious plan to hand-wash my clothes overnight didn’t work. Both the shirt and the underwear were still damp in the morning. Long story short, I ended up wearing my swimsuit under a sweatshirt, and prayed no one would notice, which thankfully, no one did. The next day, I got a chance to buy the infamous jetons and claimed victory over my dirty pile of clothes.

Since then la rentrée, or the official commencement of classes, has begun! I’ve been quite busy with fiche techniques and dissertations — short essays and papers — here and there. I’m taking five classes here at Sciences-Po: French and Spanish language, Great Questions of Law (in French), Latin America in the XX century (in Spanish), and Foreign Investment and Human Rights (in Spanish).

It’s so cool to see how subjects are taught in another country, from another perspective. I remember being in my Great Questions of Law lecture, listening to the professor talk about human rights and her remark that even in the United States, pregnant women were given maternity leave after having a child. I sat there in shock with my mouth open – did Europeans really see Americans as such rabid workaholics?

I also was surprised — and embarrassed — at the frequency with which the United States popped up in my Latin American History class. In the beginning, it seemed like every other sentence from the professor’s mouth was “the United States intervened in such-and-such country” and “the United States supported such-and-such dictator.” Every time America pops up in a class, I still cringe and feel personally responsible for anything the country has done. Which is ridiculous, but I still feel that way–I can’t ever remember feeling so American before in my life. Ironically enough, back in the States I tend not to feel like a full-blooded American because both my parents are from Trinidad, and I’ve never really practiced American customs like Halloween and always thought that the tradition of putting a wreath on your door was pretty odd.

That identity is definitely being challenged here. I feel like the resident American spokesperson in all my classes. In law, I’ve been interrogated as a reference about the Supreme Court system, while in Spanish I was told to illuminate the class on the usage and general reception of contraceptives within my country. Needless to say, I had to bite my tongue to prevent from laughing in astonishment when asked the second question- but I answered the best I could, language barrier and all. People were so surprised to learn that in the high school I went to, we were taught to practice abstinence before marriage. I had never given it a second thought. But seeing as vending machines selling condoms are a commonplace presence in the mall and street corners here, it is easy to see how my classmates were incredulous. There are so many little things that I’ve never thought about as odd, or unusual, until I’ve came here.