Americans: Introduction

I have started writing this posting now five times causing me to realize how important this subject matter is. As it holds such great importance and I don't at this moment have the time to address this issue in its entirety I have decided to start a small series which I hope to conclude within the week. The series concerns things relating to Americans and French especially Parisians.

I listened last week to an excerpt from "Me Talk Pretty One Day" an essay by David Sedaris., In this essay he talked about being an American living in Paris and many of his observations ring true to me so now I will open up. As he says, "people are often frightened by Parisians but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than another American." We American critics of Americans in Paris are not a small group. There are lots and lots and lots of us. We walk by you on the street, we watch you from across the metro station, we cast disparaging looks at the way you dress, the way you carry yourself and generally the way you are. We despise you because we know that we are you and we can't stand it.

Let me illustrate from my experience. I know a number of americans that I am cordial with. That is to say that I humor them in the same way that they humor me. That is not to say that I haven't had actual friends I appreciate that are American while I've been here. The reality is that those that fall into the cordiality category are much more numerous. What defines the cordiality category? Well I can't stand them because they are so very American: loud, obnoxious, narcissistic,and oblivious. The problem is that when around them I exhibit similar characteristics. Thus I attempt to avoid them. I am certain that some that fall into this category feel much the same about me and that is alright as long as we keep away from each other.

exporting shorthand

On mondays and tuesdays I help the people from my work surf the internet. Today I was watching as one of the workers was chatting on some messenger service. He typed in "LOL" which amused me because it means "laugh out loud" in english. I asked him what it meant and he said "ça veut dire rigoler quelque chose" meaning approximately "it means to laugh or something."�

Stories: Immigration in Northern Ireland

I had been mildly nervous about going to Northern Ireland to visit an old housemate who is there as a Mennonite Mission Network volunteer. The issue was that I didn't have my french residence card but only my application expired receipt (another story). Technically you aren't supposed to travel on one of those as you might not be let back into the country if your visa has expired and you don't have the residence card.

I arrived at Belfast International, got off the airplane and followed everyone toward immigration. There were two lines, one for EU nationals and one for everyone else. I felt lucky as the line for the EU group was 70 or 80 people long and there were only a small family another guy, aged 20 and myself all of us American. The family was interrogated and past through after five minutes. Then the guy went up but had not filled out an address filled out on his immigration card. The immigration officer started interrogating him closely: asking who he was visiting how long he was staying; asking for his return ticket information; asking how much money he had on him and deriding him on not preparing enough to visit Northern Ireland. The guy was completely rattled. I wrote down an incomplete address. By this time there was no one left in the EU line.

None the less I received very much the same treatment. Including questions about how long I had known my friend what our relationship was and so on. After finding out that I was on my way to a town a ways from Belfast he derided me on not having a housing situation for that night as it was late and no bus would be going to there that night (I was going to stay with a couchsurfer I had never met but didn't want to complicate anything further so didn't mention it.). They then decided that they wanted to search my bag. Which they did as I stood by providing helpful comments.

Immigration: "what is this?" opening a notebook from my bag and indicating some taped together pages.
me: "it is my notebook and that is my journal from when I was in Guatemala and Bolivia"
Immigration: "we're going to take a look at it" cuts the tape and begins flipping through it. "We obviously can't read it all, what is it"
me: "it is just my thoughts and so on"
Immigration: "so nothing really interesting"
me: "to me yes."
Immigration: finding a picture of my family. "What's this?"
me: "that's my parents and my brother, we are at haystack rock in Oregon."
Immigration: "is that a well-known place?"
me: "Uh, locally I guess."
Immigration: pulling out a book from my bag "Hemingway, A Moveable Feast"
me: "A must read as a young person living in Paris."
Immigration: "well I won't have that opportunity now will I."

After a total of 45 minutes waiting and another 45 being interrogated. I think the officer was trying to make a point as he concluded with "You realize that if I had shown up in your country in the same state that you showed up here I would have just as much difficulty entering. I'm going to give you a level 3 entry, because you haven't completely convinced me. This means that next time you try and come in you will be interrogated just as closely. I said thank you and made my way to the couchsurfer's place on the very last bus from the airport for the night.

coffee service

"Can I have a coffee?" I ask while signaling the server with my hand.
"how many sugar packets?" the server responds.
I close my fist leaving the index finger out to signal that I would like one packet.
As the server turns I realize my error. The server brings the coffee and there are two sugar packets on the saucer. I tell him he can take one back and he apologises saying that he though that I had told him I wanted two. I had only raised one finger but I had raised the wrong one. If I only wanted one sugar I should have put out my thumb. The index finger should only be extended, to accompany the thumb, should I want two.

Why doesn't the US have fast trains?

This past weekend I went to visit a friend who is an Au Père in Germany. To get there I had to take a combination of trains which took about 8 hours going (that included an hour and a half of layovers) and 9 hours coming back (due to a delay). According to google maps the same trip by car should have taken just under 8 hours. While on this trip I rode a high speed train in Germany which toped 100 mph and a high speed train in France which reached about 150 mph. On the return trip my second of three trains was delayed causing me to miss the third. This didn’t really matter though as I simply caught the next one which left 20 minutes after I got in.

In the US I have ridden the train multiple times from Elkhart, IN to Martinsburg, WV which ends up being often a 14+ hour ride without a train change. The distances however are about the same as those of my trip this past weekend.

About a month ago the French broke the speed record on standard train rails with a very High Speed Train. This train will start carrying passengers at speeds up to 350 mph by the end of the summer.

The Eurostar carries passengers from the heart of Paris to the heart of London in 3 and a half hours. As you don’t have to show up early for security one could leave ones house in Paris and four hours later be at a friends house in London 4 hours later.

Re-teaching

At work on Mondays and Tuesdays I oversee 18 workers, three at a time, as they use the internet. I've been supervising this since mid October. The evidence of the workers' mental illnesses is most evident during this time. The workers have differing levels of ability when it comes to computers. Some have access to computers at home and there is clear evidence. Others however are sitting down in front a computer for the first time.

I have shown them, many of them on multiple occasions, how to use google for searches. One of the difficult parts of this is when having shown a worker eight or nine times how to make use of a search I find that they search, look at the search results page and then proceed to search for something else without having actually looked at a web-page. It seems as though some of them will never understand how to actually get information out of a search without help. Another difficult part is that for some of them after two or three weeks of no computer use they have to relearn how to do things they previously could do.

I should make it clear that there are also others who after months away from a computer can sit down and type up the weekly menu for the cafeteria. Some of the workers are more "lightly" handicapped than other. I doubt that I would necessarily notice that some of the "lightly" handicapped were even handicapped if I didn't know otherwise.

When you interact with people that do not suffer from degenerating illnesses you assume that they will develop abilities. However in my work I have had to get used to the fact that some of the workers' abilities don't develop and in a few cases their abilities are very slowly diminishing.

Why you can't fire people.

In many ways my work here feels like the factory that I used to work in in Northern Indiana. Really it is not remotely similar but none the less there are similarities. A big difference though has to do with the way Amis takes responsibility for its employees.

There is for example a worker who had some slight mental issues and was essentially with out a fixed domicile (SDF). Then a couple of years ago he had an accident where he fell down some stairs and his condition has worsened. I am not aware of all the issues he faces. I believe that he lives alone at the moment but apparently his living space is a mess. He has a fairly strong smell. Not a smell of sweat but generally one of not clean. He also has no family at all. The point being that he shows up late for work and then leaves at lunch though he is supposed to work till 4:15. This is not good. At the factory I worked in it would not be a problem because he would have just been fired months ago. The supervisors and organization though feels a responsibility to improve his situation. Thus they are trying to find him a living situation where he would have some supervision to make sure that his living space was in order and such. This is a many month long project. It has been determined though that to improve his work ethic his housing situation needs to be improved. We can't fire him because he will find no other work and then he will lose his living space and then he'll be on the street. Unfortunately it is also difficult to hold onto him if he shows up for 2-3 hours of work a day.

This is not the only case like this. How do you discipline workers who if they lose their jobs there is no question that they will be on the street? An organization like this can't operate without reliable workers. It is a business.