Long time away; tons in the kicker

Sorry I've been away. I was moving around a lot but now things are settled and I can come back to this. I've done a lot since I last wrote, so I'll just summarize.

Went to Paris again. Went to the Louvre. I ate at a nice restaurant that looked like it was made by elves. I got a phone. We did Halloween. I was a soldier. Mariane was a vampire. I've been doing better in school, which is nice. I have some pictures, too.

I got to see/go inside the glass pyramid at the Louvre. I didn't know there were two other smaller glass pyramids on either side. I took pictures of some paintings I liked.

Halloween was fun. We carved pumpkins at Margaux's house and then went to a party at Mariane's.

That was my pumpkin. It had two faces and was actually pretty good, considering I had no tracing paper.

So all in all, I had fun. Things are kinda slowing down now. I've been gearing up for the winter. I wrote a song for my parent's but I don't know how to put it up on here. I'll figure something out, I'm sure. Keeping my head high for Christmas. I think I know what I'm gonna get! :D

I did it.

I went to Paris yesterday. Like PARIS Paris. It was awesome and beautiful and it rained and I was with all my friends and ashjshkjfhksjdhkjhazd. I went to a Doc Marten's and a café. We walked around and talked and had fun. Gosh I like it here.

It was actually surprisingly confusing to get around. The streets don't seem to have a lot of order or reason on the ground. I know that Paris was actually very carefully planned out and is actually really impressive city-wise, but still.

The café was expensive as hell. Six euros for a mug of hot chocolate. Like why. It was good, though.

I'm on school vacation for two weeks. I'm staying at Margaux's place right now, but I spent last weekend at Vincent's.

He has so many guitars I may actually cry. So beautiful. Margaux has some too. And a bass. Prepare a eulogy, friends.

I've actually been playing a lot of music lately. Like a LOT. With other people. And we sound pretty good. I guess I'm better singer than I previously thought. Then again, I thought I was a terrible singer. Huh.

After yesterday, I feel a need to see the rest of France. More of Paris. Normandy and Brittany. The south of France and the Alps. All of it. And maybe other parts of Europe, too. There's so much more to see than I previously thought. I can't wait to discover more.

Also, I'm living in a guest house. I've gone from sharing a room to my own room to my own house. It's nice, too. Really nice. Everything's nice. Every thing has been nice. I'm so happy to be here.

I feel like living here is so much more different than visiting. I get a more intimate experience of the country. It's sucked me in and made me remake my image of the world. My image of home is starting to blur and shift.

It's the strangest feeling I've ever had.

Sorry for the inactivity

I'm in the middle of some big changes, but I'll be back in action very soon. Promise. In the meantime, please enjoy this photo of a baby Red-Capped Mangabey.

Joyeux Anniversaire Raphael!

Mardi dernière était l'anniversaire de Raphael. Nous avons fait une petite fête, juste la famille. Je pense que c'est mieux q'une grande fête avec beaucoup d'amis. Elle était bien, sauf q'un petit accident avec la champagne. Les verres la sont du Rum and Coke, mon nouveau boite préféré.

J'ai passé un peu de temps avec ma nouvelle copine, Marianne. Le temps passe vite ici. Déjà un mois. Le français est difficile, mais ça va mieux. Je parle beaucoup et maintenant j’écris en français. Ma famille me manque.

Aussi, je lit des livres en français. J'ai déjà lu Lovecraft, Poe, Bierce, et Doyle. C'est génial. Je dois acheter plus de Lovecraft. Peut-être Bierce aussi.

Oh! My half-hour is up! More to come later!

                  

I miss Ian.

Not that I'm picking favorites or anything. I just miss him in particular. Let me explain.

He and I shared something nobody else really did. We watched the same youtubers, played the same games with the same friends. Now more than ever, I'm realizing how freaking awesome that kid is. For a few years, we fought a lot. Like a lot. Now I have trouble remembering any recent big fight we've had. I kinda like that. And now I'm gone. Right when we were starting to become actual friends.

Alright, I'm gonna talk to you directly now, bud. So listen up.

You get me. We've shared the same room for like seven or eight years. Now I'm alone. I don't have to move your stuff off my bed anymore. I don't have to look for my shirts in your drawers anymore. And I don't haveyou bugging me to use the computer anymore. I never thought I'd say this, but I miss it. I miss you. No one gets my references. No one understands why I make dumb faces. And NO ONE recognizes the Jerma voice.

For twelve bloody years you've been in my life. The most in my life out of everyone in my life, if that makes sense. When you were little you followed me everywhere and copied whatever I did. Now you're starting to go your own way, and I find a part of myself not wanting you to blaze your own path. You were just always there, whether I liked it or not.

And now that you're not here, I've never felt more alone in my room.

I feel likethere's a piece of my life missing. The stuff on my bookshelf isn't mine or yours. The solitary set of drawers holds only my clothes. My hangers only have two jackets, one I brought over and one I bought here. The only indication that I was ever related to you is a little corkboard with a couple family pictures pinned to it. Thomas is on there too.

I bought you something at a swapmeet the other week. Let's hope I don't lose it during the year. I don't think I will.

Keep your head high, kiddo. You've got a lot going for you. I'll even admit that you are, in fact, cuter than me. You little snot rocket. Good luck for whatever you do. Take care of the family while I'm gone.

I miss you so much, but I love you even more.

Duncan.

Why History shouldn't be labled a "Social Science."

I had three hours of history today. One of those hours was a unique class of history in English. For the past two weeks, we have been studying an oil painting be C.R.W. Nevinson (Among the nerves of the world, to be precise.)

The teacher has been forcing, or at least heavily implying, a certain interpretation of this work, namely the abandonment of past values and the fusion of present and future in the industrial age. All that in a 75.3 x 50 cm space. 

I don't see it that way. For me, it's representative of the change of technology in people's lives while they try to hold on to past values (e.g. The church in the background, above all the industrialization). That's just how I interpret it. Nothing wrong with that, it's art. Art is open to interpretation.

She went on to say that during the late 19th century, Britain had an "edge" over the rest of Europe. A blonde kid, probably sixteen, raised his hand and asked what "edge" meant. The teacher then looked at me and asked for a synonym for edge. I offered "advantage." She dismissed that suggestion and decided to go with her own word: power.

Britain had power over Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

That sentence has a lot of implications. She defined power, in this context, as being able to make other countries do what Britain wanted. I tried to explain that saying Britain could make other countries do what they wanted wasn't exactly correct, because they never tried it. At least in Europe. I'm pretty sure I would've known about a British invasion of Europe or a proud European country submitting itself woefully at the boots of all-powerful Britain. They had colonies elsewhere. And colonies weren't really nations. 

But she kept pressing the "Britain had all the power then" conclusion, which was a little unnerving. I knew it wasn't  really correct. My mind then went to an earlier history class, when the teacher was explaining the same thing: Britain had all the power. He also said that during the early 20th century, all of the U.S. was very very religious. Again, I felt like this wasn't completely true. Robber-barons and the highly industrial North were focused on business more than God. Just look at Andrew Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth. That part of the U.S. was all about money. I knew he wasn't completely correct, but I didn't say anything.

So I mulled it over for a while, and came to the following conclusion:

Their history isn't the same as our history. What I'm sitting in class learning is a different interpretation of the socioeconomic situation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

History is like art more than science. It's open to interpretation. What I think happened may not be what Louise thinks happened. It may not be what Isabelle thinks happened. This was pretty troubling to me. I always thought that history was about finding out what really happened by synthesizing different viewpoints of the same event. That's why it was a social science. Now I can see that my understanding of what history is as a subject was wrong. It's so much more personal than a science. I could never convince my teacher that she was wrong. There's too many contradictions and inconsistencies in both our arguments. History is inexact and unbelievably subjective.

Science is about finding the truth. Scientists gather as much data as they can, analyze it, then come to a generally accepted conclusion. But most importantly, if scientists are wrong, they admit it and find the real answer. History lacks that.

The account of what happened, and especially how things were, varies nation by nation. When I'm told a different account of what happened, it completely throws me off. Originally, I felt like I had to find the real, true story, which would involve mind-numbing ammounts of analysis and research. But I really don't have to find out what really happened definitely completely. For me, now, history is just a series of events that people have agreed happened in that particular order.

We think.

From now on, I'll treat history like art. It's my interpretation that matters, and sometimes there really isn't a right answer.

And that's okay. 

If you made it this far in my post, congratulations! You made it to the end! I'm so proud of you. Have a complimentary Far Side comic strip.

       

Why Europeans picture Americans in the way that they do.

Okay, so this one is just gonna be a big wall of text because I ran out of pictures on my iPod. I promise it'll be worth the read, though.

WARNING: ANALYSIS INCOMING

So I noticed something at school the other day. The administrator, Mme. Rousseau, took me to class herself. I can't remember why, I think I was lost or something. Anyway, when she came into the classroom every single student immediately stood up. All eyes were trained on her as she walked over and explained my situation to the teacher. When she left, everyone sat down. Similarly, whenever we started class, everyone remained standing until they were told to sit down by the teacher. Both of these aspects befuddled me, and so I asked my friend Adrien about it. He said that it was a show of repect for the adults. I replied that in America, you don't do that. Kids walk into class whenever, sit down as they please, and don't stand up when another adult walks in. He was shocked, needless to say.

That's when in hit me: Americans don't add anything. It's always "Oh, you don't have to stand." or "You can sit down when you want." European kids are born into a society that puts a focus on respect and formality. Kids are taught at a young age to stand when an adult comes in, and wait to be told to sit, and so on and so forth. But in America, that formality is absent. We probably look like improper delinquents, comparitively.

France is a place that holds on to it's past values. There are social norms that have been there for hundreds of years. People act in relatively the same way they did in 1714. America, by contrast, is young. We have a completely different idea of how to act and what makes a good kid good.

If anything, we could learn a thing or two from these people.