We’ve recovered from our late night out on Monday. Tuesday it was back to the language school, and more disorganization. Will wasn’t assigned to a class, the teacher for my class never showed up (although her replacement was excellent), the teacher for my class is different this week from the teacher last week, even though most of the class is the same, which I don’t understand, and the material seems too easy (for everyone, not just me). Suzie is taking a class at the Alliance Francaise that is very difficult for her, in part because she says that it is populated by many young anti-American students who seem to her to direct their displeasure at the US toward her. They had better watch it or she may go off on them, or her husband may come to class one day and fait des coups on their ill-mannered little tetes.
Tuesday was the first day that it really felt like summer. The sun was out, and it was warm and slightly humid. After classes on Tuesday Will and I played tennis at the municipal court where I’d made an on-line reservation, which once again required me to venture out to transact business in public with my limited (but, I should add, rapidly growing) oral French ability. We found the sports center and eventually found our way to the tennis part of it, paid our money for an hour’s time, and had a fun, if sweaty and hot, time. The court was in excellent shape, its only real drawback being its proximity to the Peripherique, the large freeway that encircles the whole city of Paris. One odd thing we’ve noticed is that there are a large number of very large sports centers that seem to be quasi-public and yet private also; for example, the center where we played tennis also had a beautiful soft all-weather synthetic track that no one, absolutely no one, was using (which says to me it is private, given that at the same time there were many runners pounding the uneven concrete pavement of the Parc Montsouris). One of my assignments I’ve given to myself is to get to the bottom of this mystery. By the way, Will whipped me good in tennis, no big surprise given the fact that I don’t really play tennis, but it was still humbling when he’d hit shots that all I could do was stand and watch whiz by.
The boys have been driving me and Suzie progressively crazier and crazier. They have come to believe that they are entitled to anything they want, anytime they want, without regard to cost, or whether it interferes with anything Suzie and I are doing. It’s mine-mine-mine, want-want-want, now-now-now, gimme-gimme-gimme, and it is starting to wear. Any “no” is met with one or more of (1) insolent anger, (2) hurt feelings, (3) argument, or (4) guilt-inducement. Andrew, in particular, has gotten the gimme bug bad, and has no inclination to ever take “no” for an answer. I suppose we’ll survive, but it is grating on us more and more.
Ah — my CC friends and perhaps others as well may find this story, which made the headline today in Le Parisien newspaper (my current newspaper of choice, since it is easy to read [typically I can get the sense of every article without a dictionary] and also has a lot of local news, not surprisingly)interesting: The French Conseil d’ Etat issued a ruling that upheld the denial of an application for French citizenship made by a woman from Morocco because, among other reasons, she wears a burka, saying that she “had adopted, in the name of a radical practice of her religion, a life in society incompatible with essential communal French values, particularly the principle of equality of the sexes.” The decision noted that she lived the life of a recluse, and had no idea of secular institutions, or that she had the right to vote. “She lives her life in total submission to the men in her family,” the decision noted, a circumstance showing that she does not adhere “to certain fundamental values of French society.” The Conseil d’Etat is the highest tribunal in France in matters of administrative law.
Fadela Amara, a Secretary of State in charge of “la Politique de la ville” (I have no clue), said in an interview that the decision was “excellent, legitimate, and particularly credible,” adding that the the burka “is a prison, a straightjacket, not a religious symbol but a visible symbol of a totalitarian political plan preaching inequality of the sexes and containing a complete absence of democracy. It is a castration of freedom.” Strong words.
I suspect you could not have such a decision in the US, given its history of religious tolerance, even post-9-11. Interesting the difference between the two countries in this regard.
Categories: Travel -- France