The United States of France

Hello all,

It has been on my mind for the past couple of months, how much France reminds me of the US. Well, more to the point, how French people remind me of Americans. Both parties would throw up their hands and complain, and this is one of the reasons why they are similar.

Other reasons:
- Both secretly want the others way of life, and end up traveling to each others countries.
- Both are fiercely nationalistic, but will be self deprecating about their country (you're not allowed to be though)
- When you move to either country, you have to assimilate to the culture
- Both like to talk a lot without backing it up
- Both can be obnoxious tourists
- A lot of people (for each) have only traveled in their respective country, and consider themselves well travelled.
- Both love Canada, but know nothing about it

There's lots more I've found, but can't remember at the moment. Don't worry, they aren't all negative.

There is one thing that really inspired this for me though, it was Friday at the bar. I was invited by some French people to go out for drinks, and of course I'm going to join them. We went to a bar surrounded by all these American people. Ok, whatever. Anyways, I was listening intently to the French conversation, but I realized it was really boring. Just kind of discussing nothing, going over minor, minor details that I personally didn't care about in the slightest or would have thought to discuss as talking points. So, my ears wandered to all the English conversations going on around me. And after two minutes, I realized the same about those ones! This hasn't been the first time for either case as well.

Now the point of this isn't to demonize French people and Americans, because there are good people I've met of both nationalities. I just find it funny how that when they both fall into their natural groups, they have so many damn similarities. I feel that Commonwealth countries have stronger ties in culture than I initially thought. Brits, Aussies, Indians, Malaysians, South Africans, and Kiwis are all people that I have generally got along with quickly, or we share the same ideas of culture and conversation. We end up talking about similar things, and in a similar fashion. It's strange how these things happen.

In any case, life is good otherwise. UFC 89 was very entertaining and I'm glad I got a chance to go see one live. Not a whole lot on my mind right now. Just lots of geophysics, aaaaaand fighting.

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