Modesty in the United States

I wanted to approach a topic that's been in the back of my mind for most of the time I've been in Europe: Modesty.

The majority of Americans know that nudity is not an issue in Europe (e.g., topless beaches, naked art) but there are other immodest qualities that give Europe its charm that also seems to make Americans uncomfortable.

Other than nudity, one example is the use of cuss words.  This seems like it's not a big deal, especially for the younger generations in the states.  Most people cuss after every other word (guilty!) and that's becoming normal vocabulary.  However, how many cuss words are allowed on television?
Don't strain yourself, I've comprised a list.
It is acceptable to say:
1)A** but NOT a**hole. Not sure why.
2)Damn
3)Hell
4)Bastard

It is not acceptable to say:
1)Sh**
2)F***
3)C***
4)P***y

If you're wondering why some of these are deemed acceptable, ask the FCC, because I have no idea.
Not only are the words on television censored, but also every song on the radio!  Is there a single radio station that doesn't change or bleep out words? That song by Cee-lo Green about his gold-digging ex-girlfriend was definitely NOT titled "Forget You."  Seriously, think about it!
However, the point of this exercise was to direct attention to the fact that songs on the radio are NOT censored in Europe.  I don't watch t.v. here but I'm willing to bet that it isn't.  There are also no mom's causing ruckus over it either.  Kids will hear bad words.  It's inevitable.

My second example of the prudence in the United States is strangely enough the lack of use of the word "toilet."
This sounds hilarious but it's SO true.  If I was to ask someone at a restaurant where the toilet was, it would make me, and the person I'm asking, feel very uncomfortable.  I feel like the only time you should use the word "toilet" is to tell a plumber that your toilet needs fixing.
Actually one time at a restaurant in France, my friend asked for the "salle de bain" or "bathroom" and the waiter laughed at her and was like "Why?  Do you need to take a shower?"  Why do we try to avoid saying the word "toilet?"
The room with all of the toilets is called a restroom...why?  You're not taking a nap in there.  Everyone knows what we're doing, yet we feel weird saying it.  Heck, my french professor last semester would just be like "Je dois faire pee-pee."  What professor at home would blatantly tell you that she has to pee?

These are only two examples but I think they make my point.  Why is it that Americans are so uptight?  Or are Europeans just very easy-going?  I guess you can form your own opinion.

Don't forget to do what you love

Recently I decided to start going to Catholic mass every week again.  Something made me miss the community of it.  It's comforting seeing the same happy faces every week, doing the same things as you.   I also always liked going and hearing the homily...basically getting advice on how to be  a good person is needed in my life I think.
This blog is definitely NOT about me becoming some born-again christian who was "saved" or to tell you all to go to church because "ya'll need JESUS."
I started going back because I wondered why I ever stopped going in the first place.  I liked going. Why would I have stopped?
While in Mass last night, listening to the choir sing every hymn in perfect harmony, I was reminded of the large portion of my life I spent singing in my own church choir.  We had a nun who ran it at Sacred Heart named Sister Gloria-- sweetest woman EVER-- and she would give me solos to sing during communion and praised me as if I had the voice of an angel.  Trust me, I wasn't that good, but I had so much fun with it!  After graduating high school and moving out of my parents' home, I rarely found time to sing.  I didn't want to in my dorm because my whole floor would hear me.  Sometimes I'd belt out my favorite song in the car, but really I just stopped singing altogether.  It took me until sitting in mass last night to realize how much I missed it.  So do you know what I did?  I sang in the shower.  LOUDLY.  I was a little nervous that I'd irritate my neighbors...but if they are allowed to scream and run down the hallways at 3am on a Tuesday, I think I should be allowed about 20 minutes of bad singing every night, don't you?
And there are other things that I stopped doing that were once things I loved.  Like writing poetry for example.
Why do we stop doing the things we enjoy when we get older?  Is it because we don't have the time?  Everyone is so worried about wasting time but I think if you're filling your days with satisfying activity, your day is not wasted!  Therefore I'm going to take more time out my day to sing horribly, do the time step, write a poem, cook something interesting, and love each day a little bit more.

6 months down, 2 months to go.

Clearly I haven't kept up with my blogging every week thing.  I apologize to all two of you whom actually care about and read my blog...seriously how do you go on without reading my witty takes on life in France every week?!  Bless your hearts.
But seriously,  it's been a while since I've written about Aix-en-Provence so I thought I'd summarize a bit now.  Today marks the 2-month countdown to my return to the states.  Nuts, right?  It's going to be so hard to leave this beautiful town but alas, I cannot live in my fantasy world forever.
Over the past 6 months I've spent here, I've grown to love many-a-thing as well as create a deep boiling hatred for another.

Something I love:  Eating lunch outside on a breezy spring day in a park or on a majestic fountain.
Something I hate:  The swarm of exactly one million pigeons that surrounds you whilst you eat your lunch.

Something I love:  The smell when you walk past one of the many Savon de Marseille shops or Lavande boutiques that makes your nose ever so happy.
Something I hate:  The cigarette smell that automatically re-enters your nostrils after you've passed said shops, which is created by the crowds of oh-so posh young Aixois who look so damn cool but smell so damn strongly of Marlboro.

Something I love:  The "Joie de vivre" attitude of the French.  Who doesn't love wasting time drinking a shot of black coffee talking over deep tormenting issues?...or just starting class late everyday?
Something I hate:  The "Joie de vivre" attitude when trying to get something done.  Oh..the poste has a 2 hour lunch break today...how sweet..I guess I'll just sit here and get swarmed by flocks of pigeons for the next 120 minutes because waking all the way home is NOT happening.

Something I love:  The fact that the university trusts that I'll retain my knowledge without giving me 3 hours of homework everyday..instead they give me zero.
Something I hate:  Oh wait..I actually hate that because guess what, Sciences-Po? NOT RETAINING ANYTHING.

Something I love:  The temperate weather here in the south of France.  While everybody is freezing back at home, it's a nice 60 degrees in Aix.
Something I hate:  The fact that now if it's 50 degrees or less I feel obligated to wear a heavy coat and scarf because otherwise I'll just freeze to death.

Something I love:  HAVING AN H&M RIGHT HERE AT MY DISPOSAL.
Something I hate:  Spending all of my money at H&M...

Something I love: Baguettes.  Seriously what is life without baguettes? I don't think I can go back to that squishy stuff we call bread at home.
Something I hate:  The fact that baguettes are stale after a day...so when I buy it, I have to eat the whole thing that day.  Either that, or suck it up and get lock-jaw tomorrow.

Damn, I love France.
And I hate that I have to leave in two months.

How I Recovered from Homesickness Abroad

Over the holidays I felt a SERIOUS type of homesickness.  I honestly wanted to drop everything and go home. I'm assuming I felt this way because most of the friends I had made for the semester went home AND it was Christmas...the happiest holiday filled with family and laughter and tradition and food..and I spent it sick in a hotel room in London.  If that doesn't make someone homesick I'd wonder whether or not that person even has a home.
However after about 3 weeks of legitimately HATING France and everything about it, I started school again, made new friends, and remembered why I loved Aix-en-Provence and on a larger scale, Europe.
When I was freaking out about my desperate need to return home, my friends and family got the worst of it.  I'm apologizing here for my constant complaining and not believing you when you'd say, "once you start school again, I know you'll be happy again."  You know who you are. Thank you for dealing with my melodramatic ass.
Also, I received gifts from my best friend Alyssa for my birthday/Christmas that were basically the epitome of Zoë in a box and those presents meant so much to me!!  Knowing that I still have friends back home who love me and think of me (even if we talk much less than usual) gives me the strength to see the world in a positive light and make the most of my time abroad!
I just got another package from home today that was my mother's Valentine's gift complete with gummy Krabby Patties and a Nerds Rope (my favorites).  Also inside the box was a LOT of gifts from my sister Haviland for my birthday/Christmas that were highly reminiscent of my childhood.  There was a DVD of The Pagemaster-one of our favorites growing up- a black tattoo choker with a mood stone, and some vanilla hand cream and soap.  However the best gift of all, and I'm not sure how she pulled it off, was an EXACT replica of the white blanket I slept with every night as a kid.  I stole my original white blanket from my mom when I was like, 3, and slept with it up until it was a bunch of tatters with patches and a backing so it wouldn't fall apart...I think I was maybe 7 or 8.  That thing was my lifeline.  To make this gift even more perfect, she had my Mamanana wash it and keep it at her house until it was shipped to me so it would smell like her house.  If you know me at all, you know that my grandparents' house is my absolute favorite place to be.  The 5-year-old Zoë inside me is crying with happiness (and the 21-year-old Zoë on the outside cried quite a bit too).  As juvenile and silly it seems to receive a "White Blankey" for my 21st birthday, it was exactly what I needed as a reminder that even though I'm over 4,000 miles away from home, I have an amazing family that loves me to return to and I couldn't be more blessed!

In addition, I'm completely over all the homesick feelings so thank you again to everyone who supported me. Actually I want to stay in Europe forever now.

"You're not having a heart attack."

Okay I want to address a very large personality flaw of mine, not for condolences or advice, but to mainly get it all out there and hopefully someone reading this will feel less crazy after doing so.
I am a hypochondriac. Probably the worst one I know.  For those of you who do not understand this term, it is easier explained as "health anxiety."
I know exactly when I became a hypochondriac actually.  I was a normal, careless, happy child until one day I passed out while serving in Catholic mass in the fifth grade.  I'm not sure what triggered the fear, because I had passed out before that incident and it didn't scare me.  However, after that happened I was basically unable to attend mass without feeling like I was going to pass out.  I danced all my life and performed in front of people every year but after my fifth grade year I developed this awful case of stage fright, making me think I was going to faint on stage.  It started out as a severe irrational fear of fainting, until a month or so later we read, The Hatchet in class.
If anyone has read The Hatchet, you know that in the beginning of the novel, an airline pilot has a heart attack and crashes his plane in some unknown territory, setting up the plot of the story.  When we read that chapter aloud in class, we also talked about the symptoms and signs of having a heart attack.  Literally every night of my fifth grade year after we read The Hatchet I gave myself heartburn from worrying that I was going to have a heart attack.  Then the heartburn made my fear so indescribably horrifying that I couldn't sleep!  I'm sure I about drove my mother nuts waking her up at night thinking I was dying.  She'd just give me Tums and tell me to relax and eventually the heartburn went away and I'd get over it..until the next night.
In my health class that year, we had to write 2 papers over diseases or disorders, but if I thought about a disease for over a minute, I automatically had it so I bent the rules and wrote my papers over dry skin and chapped lips.  I'm not sure how I got away with that.
Another thing I remember is watching something on television about a schizophrenic and then forever being afraid that I would go crazy.
In the sixth grade, we read a book about a blind person and then I was terrified that I was going to lose my sight.
In the seventh grade, a girl in my town became paralyzed from some sort of disorder and then I feared that I would one day wake up and not be able to move.
My sophomore year, a friend of mine told me her dad got in a wreck with another woman who had a seizure while driving on the highway. Aaaaaand guess who was afraid to drive on highways until last year?
The worst part is, I still fear that the same things are going to happen to me! I STILL have fits of fear when I get chest pains or something goes numb.  I also have a problem with searching illnesses on webMD, thinking it would make me feel better, but it always makes me feel MORE like I'm dying.
Another thing is that I always know I'm just being anxious, and even if I tell myself "Zoë, you're fine" a million times a minute, I still think I'm dying!
I have to message my sister or best friend usually every time I freak out just to have them tell me, "You're not having a heart attack/stroke" and distract me from my thoughts to get over it.
I'm going to be honest, even typing about these things is giving me anxiety.  I know that my sister has this problem and I think my uncle as well, though I'm not sure how severe.  I wonder if this is something hereditary and it was bound to happen, or if the whole thing was triggered by fainting one morning because I didn't eat breakfast.
If it's not hereditary, I REALLY regret not eating breakfast.
However, there's nothing I can do now except try to freak out less (which I really have improved a lot since the fifth grade).  I hope the other hypochondriacs out there got a laugh out of this because you know you're just as ridiculously obsessed with your health as me and you can't help it.

Here's a clip from the film The Switch with Jason Bateman and Jennifer Aniston that I found particularly humorous concerning hypochondria.

"Will you regret not buying this?"

During my two-and-a-half week long Christmas break, I traveled to Switzerland, London and Dublin with my boyfriend.  To my surprise, I ended up spending ALL of the money I had saved for living this semester in Aix.  I came home with 71 USD, having left with 850 USD.  That means I spent almost 800 bucks in 2 weeks.  I couldn't figure out what I spent all of my money on because most all of my food was paid for and all of our planned activities were bought ahead of time.  I was severely confused until I was talking to one of my friends here in Aix about it and she asked me, "Did you buy a lot of souvenirs?" No..I really didn't buy many souvenirs. Then it hit me. The reason why I returned to France with an overstuffed suitcase and an empty wallet - Shopping.

When we were in Dublin, both of us got pretty sick and couldn't do much and we wound up on the shopping strip two days in a row.   Naturally I went a little bezerk...I mean there was a two-story TopShop that was connected to a Mango, next door to a two-story H&M and River Island.  It's impossible for me to talk myself out that kind of situation.  

And that's what I'm focusing this blog entry around.  While I was knee deep in piles of unorganized, 50% off clothing in TopShop, I overheard a couple of girls trying to "talk themselves out" of their future purchases.  It made me crack a smile because of how truly often we say the same old phrases to each other (or to ourselves) while contemplating in a shopping center.  The conversation went as follows:

"Do you REALLY need another pair of shoes?"

"Well..no I don't NEED them, but I don't have any in this color."

"Do you have room for more shoes in your closet?"

"No..but I can make room."

"Will you regret not buying these shoes?"

"They're half off!"

"In that case you might as well buy them!"

"You're right these are a good deal...lets go look at the dresses."

And the same thing repeats itself ten minutes later when something else catches your eye.

The girls conversing were humorous to me because I had literally just asked myself the same questions about a long sleeve romper I'd found (which by the way, I bought).  I have come to the conclusion that this thought process of trying to talk yourself out of buying something is actually more like a ritual to make yourself feel better for spending money on something you don't need.  Why do we even kid ourselves?  I know I'm not only speaking for myself when I say that when I enter a store I'm absolutely there to buy something.  What's the point of shopping if you don't leave with new clothes? That would just be a torturous waste of time.  So quit fooling yourself.  Asking those same questions again will not change your mind.  

I know I'm obviously the pot calling the kettle black, but if you honestly don't want to spend money, don't go shopping where the mannequins and the advertisements tempt you to spend money.  It's that simple.  It's silly to think we have to reassure ourselves that buying something for ourselves is not a bad thing to do.  We deserve a little something every once in a while!

Personally, I probably don't deserve new clothes anymore but..what can ya do.  An addiction is an addiction. 

Another chance to get it right

As I believe I've mentioned in previous New Year's blog posts, resolutions are just cliché ideas that people get in their heads to make them feel better about themselves for the first 3 weeks of the new year.
However.
I have had the same resolution every year since the 8th grade and I think it's time to actually put it in motion.
What is this resolution in which I so badly have needed to achieve for 7 years?
TO GO TO THE GYM.


L O L NO. Never. Just kidding,

It's also not to eat healthy or to read more.  It's much more difficult.

You see, I have this problem of focusing on negative things.  My life can be seemingly perfect and yet I find reasons to be upset. I'm a pessimist, I said it.  "Being positive" is way harder than it sounds.  I can't just wake up and decide to ignore the negative stuff.  I'd need some of Lisa Simpson's smiley face pills to achieve that.
If anyone has any ideas or methods that work....please share. And help me look on the bright side of life.