Arrival in France

So while I deal with some apartment shenanigans, I've got some time to kill writing a blog post. Anyway, France has been a nice mixture crazy fun and just plain crazy. It's been evident to me from the start that France is a nation out of its mind. I say this honoring the fact that I hail from the most insane nation on the globe: the united states. Simply in lieu of "America's Next Top Model" and the French have chosen luis vuitton. That aside, France has been great. The most glaring difference between here and Burkina is cool weather. My first 5 minutes after my arrival at Charles de Gaule marked the longest I had gone without sweating in about 4 months. I was actually quite chilly the other day on my walk to the Sacré Coeur. Besides that, France has been a nonstop visual delight since my arrival. When I landed at CDG I actually felt like I had been catapulted about 200 years into the future. The stainless steel glass structures of the airport were a welcome departure from the mud brick, thatched roofed house of Burkina. I say this with love in my heart, but Burkina is not a pretty place. The burkinabé people are physically beautiful and their culture is a paragon of hospitality and warmth, but it would be quite the kind lie to say the country they live in is anything but ugly. Honestly I had forgotten just how rich countries in the developed world are. I walked through a cemetery on my first day in Paris and it was remarkable how just about every sepulcher was more elaborately ornate and all together pleasing to the eyes than any given building in Burkina. When a nation can houses its less than outstanding dead people in dwellings more elaborate than the kings of another country, you know there is a wealth disparity.
Another thing I might note is the culture shock. Parisians and the denizens of my community are quite different. That's not to say that Parisians seem to fit the stereotype of being overly pretentious, arrogant elitists- They just seem 'modern'. They listen to their ipods on the metro, they don't say high to people on the street.... they live highly individualistic, private lives. As a tick from my time in Burkina I can't pass someone on the street without saying hi to them (even if it's 10 people in 30 seconds) and yet no one seems to seems to say high to me back. Well I shouldn't say no one- The black people say hi to me back. I can only imagine that this is due to the fact that many of them are probably immigrants or decedents of immigrants from west africa and thus carry on some of the cultural traits of that region. I've actually chatted up quite a few of them and met a few Ivorians, Sénégalese and even a Burkinabé.

Its funny that while I met a couple Americans at the hostel, I definitely feel like I related more to the west Africans I chatted up. Maybe Its just because I'm at a different point in my life than many of the Americans I met- maybe it's because the idea of "OH SHIT BRO EURO TRIP WE'RE GONNA GET TANKED" doesn't really appeal to me. Anyways this was kind of a hurried blog post but I've got a phone call to make. more updates soon with a picture dump.