An american student in France

[patard]

 
just a little difficult question. I have a sister who was a teacher of english at the university. She is now retired. A few years ago she told me that her students dreamt no more  to go to the USA. They no longer loved america.
More recently , a little after the beginning of the war in Irak , I met a girl, she spoke perfectly french , without any accent . But very soon she told me she was an american student in business , spending a year in a business school in Clermont Ferrand.
I had not much time , but I gave her a small gift , telling her : it is for the friendship between France and US.
She immediatly cry,  and told me it was not very easy to be american student in France at that time .
Thomas ; have you any comment ? Is it a problem to be american in a French university now?

[Thomas]

Well...honestly, this is a difficult question to answer. Really, I would say that no, I don't think it's more difficult now than it would have been 10 or 20 years ago. However, there are always people who do not like Americans, and that is sometimes a problem. I have, luckily, only had a few difficulties, but it does happen!

I think many of the supposed problems between Americans and French people are just misunderstandings. I plan on doing an advanced lesson about this at some point in the future, but it's difficult to talk about because there are many different factors! Over Christmas, many people would ask me "So, what are French people like?" because they didn't know, and giving that answer was also quite difficult! It's hard to give a general description of an entire country, really...and that's the same problem with answering this question. I can only answer from my personal experience, which has been mostly positive. But I know for a fact that some people have negative experiences, too.

[patard]

It was obvious that it was  a difficult question.
An american soldier story is a true story.
So I can think that Bush is a dangerous man , but love america too. I think that sometimes people don't make any difference beetween the american president and every american citizen.
Anyway I was very surprised a few years ago. I thought that american people  were racist .
One of my niece fell in love of an american student three years ago. My niece' mother is black.The parents of the student are white republicans, and my niece went to her boyfriend parents'house each small vacation . These people introduced her as the girlfriend of  their son to there friends, without any problem.
I think that american people are less racist than they were , and french people are getting  more  racist than we were twenty years ago. Infortunatly.

[Flo]

We must not generalize and tell, French people are so or Americans are different...
And politic ? The Americans and Britishs give a great help  in the second world war to the western Europ.
And about Irack ? If the war would be a success and be shorter, perhaps we said : Bravo Bush...
It's not so easy ...
It's a big progress that more and more students can travel and spend  a part of theirs studies in a foreign country ...
See you! Flo