This year, I decided to take a break from campus and opted to study abroad in Tours, France.
For those of you who don’t know, Tours is a city about one third the size of Toledo that is situated in the middle of France.
Contrary to what you may have heard about the French, I have experienced that they are, for the most part, very nice people, and the family with whom I am staying treats me like one of their own.
Any preconceptions I had about them being standoffish were promptly dispelled. A few weeks of living here have shown me just how different our customs can be from theirs, but I can appreciate most rituals or traditions.
After dinner every night, it is the tradition of my host family to watch the nightly news together; something I’m sure many of us, if not most, can appreciate.
Subjects have ranged from the recent, horrific shooting in a Nairobi shopping mall to a new increase in taxes for French citizens. Most nights, I simply listen to the newscast, and then discuss the topics with my host family afterward.
But one night not too long ago, the inevitable segment about the then-looming government shutdown came blaring across the screen, and my host father turned to me and said jokingly “This one is just for you, Ian.”
Being the seemingly well-informed man that he is, I’m sure that my host father has his opinions about the U.S. and its politics. I had long been wondering what he thought about the painfully obvious problem that Americans seem to have with compromise, among other things. Out of politeness, my host father simply watched the segment and said nothing, but strangely, neither did I.
Later that night, I felt a twinge of guilt at the fact that I had let the French TV reporter let loose a very frank analysis of the circumstances surrounding the government shutdown without saying a word. Then it hit me. I have the linguistic faculties in French to express a wide range of opinions, and I would’ve felt quite comfortable doing so in front of my host father.
It wasn’t that I had been afraid to say something. The sobering reality was, and is, that the impotence of congress is as indefensible as the ruins of the old Roman walls sitting at the edge of town. There was nothing to be said.
Make no mistake, I am very much enjoying my time in this beautiful country, and I am very lucky to be here, but the idea that going abroad as an American equates to a carte blanche to do whatever one pleases is simply not true. I have found that the contrary is true, and that the stars and stripes here can be a scarlet letter of sorts; not because the French themselves are disdainful or mean-spirited toward me, but because the shameful antics of congress and the violent reputation America has earned for itself have the potential to haunt American travelers all over the world.
I am proud of my heritage, and I am proud of where I come from, but day by day, it seems I have less and less to be proud of. America was once known for her wisdom, her grace, and her prudence. It is time to reclaim those values, or cease to believe the naive idea that the world has a poor opinion of us for no reason at all.
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