Strasbourg, France

Before I begin, please let me tell you that, overall, I enjoyed my day. Strasbourg is a very, very beautiful city. It houses the European Parliament, and all that good stuff. The city itself is very beautiful. Lots of water and flowers, and beautiful buildings. Now, to get some stuff off my chest:

1.) I probably shouldn't go here, but the girl I live with really annoyed me this morning. Our host mom was nice enough to drive us to the station, but 20 minutes before we had to be there, she decided we needed to pick up her friend. Long story short, we were 10 minutes late. One reason I have learned I do not like traveling with other people. I never had this problem before.

2.) This is the main point of my blog today. So the European Parliament was pretty cool I have to say. Very quiet inside. We were going to steal their coat hangers :) Anyways. If you want to lose the respect of 16 Americans in about 2 sentences, I mean, by all means go for it. The Parliament gave us a tour guide, and we were with one other group of Germans (I think they were studying French). She was obnoxious! Here we are studying German, and the whole time she kept making insults about how Americans always expect everyone to speak English, and how English was such a stupid language. Really lady, if its so stupid, why do so many people speak it?! When we first arrived, I thought there was going to be a cat fight between her and my teacher because the first words out of her mouth were insults on Americans and then that Americans are so stupid because they only learn one language. Really she made herself look stupid, because we were standing evidence that what she was staying was wrong. She continued to ask every 5 seconds if we understood. Honestly I didn't care to listen to her. The last thing she was upset about was the fact that "most Americans have no clue about how the European government works." Well duh. How many Europeans have a full understanding of our politics? How many Europeans have a full understanding of our history? I have a friend here that I asked if she had heard of Lewis and Clark (which I would say is a big part of American history), and she asked if I was talking about Superman.

France has kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. Metaphorically and literally. I don't find the crepes too appealing to say the least. But for the towns we have visited, I wasn't really that impressed. Yes they were absolutely beautiful, don't get me wrong, and I had a good time at both. But there are definitely other places I think better to visit.

I found myself laughing last night. I was complaining about having to get up early, when my friend asked why. I continued to ramble about how I had to get up so early for France and so on, and I started laughing. Really, how many times can you say...oh, I have to go to France today for class on the European Union. Anyways, that's all for tonight. Early day again tomorrow!