On Monday morning, we had to be at Sciences-Po university building at 10 a.m. at 27, rue Saint-Guillaume. (Try pronouncing that one!)
Click “read more” to get a load of the speakers Medill lined up for us today. Hit “back” on your browser to see the rest of the blog entries.
I stopped at a café for a croissant and saw Kris Vera sitting outside with a coffee.
Then inside the café,
Me: “Je voudrais un . . . un. . .”
Man at counter: “croissant?”
Me: “Si, uh, I mean oui.”
The first speakers were Jocelyn Gecker of the Associated Press and Thomas Fuller of the International Herald Tribune. They were a married couple!
Jocelyn reminded me of me in 10 years. Although I don’t have as much travel in my blood as she does. Her quote of the day came after hearing which countries we were all traveling to: “Wow, Columbia J School has nothing like this. This is amazing."
Next speaker up: Jim Bitterman, a CNN correspondent in Paris. The Academy Awards generally gets 42.9 million viewers, while CNN has about 1 million on a good day. I loved this speaker because I’m a CNN-addict. I’m actually going through depravation right now, along with Internet-withdrawal-pains.
After Bitterman, I ate lunch with Akua, Kris and Sara in the courtyard in the grass. Ementaler cheese, tomatoes and egg on a baguette – mmmmm…But ordering was really frustrating. Even though almost everyone at Sciences-Po speaks English, the cafeteria woman did not.
I felt horrible because I was unable to communicate. And she was trying to ask me which juice I wanted, but I couldn’t understand. And even though I said in French that I didn’t speak French, she kept repeating herself, in French.
I’ve memorized about 20 phrases but “Desole” is my new favorite word. It means, “sorry.”
After lunch, a woman from Doctors Without Borders spoke about refugees in France. Ignorant moment here: I was fascinated to learn that refugees and immigrants flow into other countries besides the United States. Yes, I always knew there was immigration all over the place, but I guess I always saw the U.S. as the one with the big open door. France’s system is really different from the U.S. though, according to the guest speaker. She said that France doesn’t have an immigration policy, but a closed-border policy. Compare that to “Bring us your poor … ”
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