10 Days and Counting-The Preamble

Someone suggested that I begin blogging a week or so before I leave on this trip. I thought 10 was a nice round number, so here we go...

On January 7th 2009 I will be leaving on a 6 month journey in France. I have never really travelled much up until now so this next chapter is sure to be full of adventure.

I will be living in the city of Tours, France:

(Apartment 305 if anyone is interested, phone number will follow in a later post)

View Larger Map

I will be attending L'école Supérieure de Commerce et de Management

http://www.escem.fr/Default.aspx?tabid=1144, where the semester begins on January 12th and ends on May 18th. My return flight is booked for June 18th allowing a month of traveling after I finish exams.

I guess a good place to start would be why I am going on this exchange. As a Canadian, I have always felt proud of our distinctive bilingual heritage. I have studied French for many years, but sadly, my grasp of the language is far from perfect. I would say I have advanced conversational skills but my lack of immersion has seriously limited my ability in this regard. So my primary goal in traveling to France is to enter into an intense practical study of French as well as immersing myself in the country's incredible history and culture. It is also my hope to travel to a number of places in Europe that are culturally, historically or politically interesting to me. I hesitate to create a list of these places because I want to be free to be spontaneous in my travel choices, rather than risk failing to check off all of the places that I write about today. Also, it would spoil the surprise for those of you bored enough to actually read my dribbling through this blog. Anyway, perhaps I will continue later on about some of my other reasons for going on this exchange in later posts, but for now I want to leave you with some of the things that I have been doing to keep myself occupied in the days before my departure.

One thing I enjoy about Canada (and I know some of you are going to hate me for this) is...The CBC. Even if you hate the CBC, there is something distinctly Canadian about it. Whether it's the comedy shows like Rick Mercer, or Hockey Night in Canada, Stuart Maclean or just listening to random Canadians calling into CBC Radio 1 to give a piece of their mind on whatever subject happens to be the topic of conversation that day; the CBC reminds me of home. And besides, who doesn't get that warm fuzzy feeling inside when they think about Don Cherry saying something inflammatory about the French during Coach's Corner (the truth is I don't know anything about hockey, nor do I care, Don Cherry is the only reason I find "the bread and butter" of CBC television entertaining at all). Anyway, I am thankful for the invention of podcasts and will probably download some of the staples of CBC radio during my journey if I ever feel like I need a taste of home. Today I was listening to Rex Murphy's Cross Country Check Up which air's on CBC radio 1 from 4-6 EST on sundays. Random Joe's (probably not the plumber...sorry) were calling in to tell him who they thought the "Person of 2008" was. Basically about a thousand people called in and said Barack Obama except for this one guy...I'm pretty sure he was speaking with an arabic accent and he said that his pick was none other than George W. Bush. Now most of you know me as being pretty committed to the George Bush is a giant incompetent douche dogma so, as you can imagine, I was pretty interested in what this guy had to say.

Basically, his thought was that, no matter what you think about "the dub-ya" when he went into Iraq, he promised to bring democracy to that country. Slightly less than 5 years after the beginning of the military operation in Iraq, and to much of the World's amusement, a journalist in that country was able to throw a shoe at Mr. Bush at press conference during his latest trip to the region without getting thrown in prison, tortured, executed, and bringing the same fate upon his entire family. No matter how much I want to scoff at this man's call for Mr. Bush's praise, I cannot deny, that if a journalist had behaved in such a way towards any foreign dignitary during Saddam Hussein's rein over Iraq, it would have resulted in horrific consequences. The fact is, no one would have dared.

Maybe, that is the beauty of democratic freedom; to live without fear? Being able to behave like a fool getting a proportionate slap on the wrist, then going home to your family and eating tabouli. The truth is that I believe democracy is much more than that and Iraq is far from a healthy functioning democratic state. Unfortunately rendering this story merely a mildly humorous anecdote to the hope that we have for the people of this embattled land.

In closing, listening to the CBC, with the goal of taking in as much of Canada as I can before I leave caused me to hear this man's opinion which forced me to acknowledge that any very strongly held belief should be challenged every now and then, even if it is just for the sake of intellectual exercise. I think that this is a pretty good premise on which to start a journey.