people get ready, there's a train a coming...

Bonsoir tout le monde! so I've been going a little crazy since midterms week with work, especially since I'm heading to Paris this weekend. I got back my Arabic midterm and got an A on it, and I got an A on my journalistic portrait for French Linguistics. Still waiting back on the other 4 midterms - hopefully I'll know tomorrow.
Let's see...I went to see a WWII movie with Camille, my host sister, last weekend. It was wicked fun, and it was actually one of the better WWII movies I've seen. I'm going to recommend it to Madame Wixon when I get back to use for her 20th Century french course. I went to see another part of the Callanques with my host dad yesterday (he took me in his car) and also this really cool park. I think I'll try to get my friend Nora to go there with me sometime - there was this island you could swim to, which just seems perfect and picturesque to me.
I've been struggling with some of the generalizations made in class by the professors here, especially the director, so we had a whole discussion today about the difference between stereotypes and generalizations and which ones require context and which ones can move and be more flexible and change with more points of view. It was interesting, and I think I understand more now the "French" way to look at generalizations, which is to imply context and understand that it's all just tenancies and that it doesn't apply to everyone. The American style, which I definitely prefer, is to add qualifiers, like "MOST people do this" or "People OFTEN do this" or "IN GENERAL, this". I prefer that to just an inference in my head, and I find it intriguing that a culture that is so rooted in structure and language wouldn't value precision of words as much in this case. I guess it's more of a precision of the definition of a generalization, and the precision of how the word "generalization" is internalized and conceptualized by the French. Anyways, it was a little bit of a tense discussion since all we American students have been struggling with the generalizations proposed to us, so I'm glad that discussion cleared things up a little bit, and I hope that it makes the class discussions more fruitful.
I did a presentation this morning on everyday life in Israel during the Gaza War from Dec 2008-Jan 2009. I've never really studied the conflict between Israel and Palestine, and we started a 3-week unit today in my Middle Eastern Political Developments. My preliminary analysis says both sides are crazy, but I'm pretty sure we're studying this in a really neutral fashion, which I'm very grateful for. We're studying both sides, so another student did a presentation on everyday life in Palestine during the same time period, and it was amazing how different the information was. There's so much emotion and energy surrounding both sides that I imagine it's difficult to sift through, but our professor is awesome with staying neutral and explaining complicated situations, so I'm excited.
Anyways, heading to Paris by TGV (train) tomorrow night - leaving Marseille at almost midnight, arriving in Paris at 7:30 am. I'll be spending all day Saturday and all day Sunday, then taking another night train to come back Sunday evening, arriving at 5am Monday morning and hopefully sleeping and showering before class at 9. Woo! Should be NUTS, I'll update with pictures and everything!