Bad attitudes

Venting time.

Coming to France, I was looking forward to meeting tons of people from all over the world who share the same ideals about intercultural and international exchange with me. I've found plenty, don't get me wrong. But there are more people here with negative, ethnocentric, and indifferent attitudes than I thought there would be. I met more interesting people in less than two weeks of traveling Spain than in my first two months here.

It's most evident in my French classes. In every class there's at least one or two students (usually Americans, but not always) who speak only their own language, don't pay attention to what's going on, and at times seem almost annoyed to have to sit through another class. I can understand that, every once in a while, you'll have a bad day and going to class is the last thing you feel like doing. But all the time?

There's one girl, an American, who will only speak French if she's responding to a professor's question. She speaks English to everyone else. Even students of other nationalities--if they speak even a little bit of English and she knows it, she will refuse to speak French with them. And all through class, I'll hear her talking to her friend about how much this class is a waste of time, and so on. Not particularly helpful in an oral comprehension course to have the people sitting next to you constantly blabbering out negative energy. It's all I can do to put a mental wall between myself and them, so as to not allow my mental images of jumping up and stabbing them with a pen be realized.

I am here to learn. Sure, sometimes I'll be with English-speaking friends and, in casual conversation, it's easier to switch to our native language. Towards the end of the day, French gets tiring. But why on earth would you come to France and enroll in a language program, if you're going to put no effort into learning the language? You can hear the difference when these people are, goodness, forced to respond in class--it's atrocious. Two months here and you're still speaking like you would in a high school course?

It really just serves as a reminder for me of why I'm here, and as an incentive to try even harder. Maybe they don't have the same goals that I do. In any case, I am intent on making the best of the two months I have left. Game on.