In a couple of weeks 22 students from both sides of The Pond will join together under the banner of Humanity in Action's 2008 French Program to begin a formidable schedule of study and research on minority rights within democracies. On this blog we will document the happenings and thoughts as they develop.
We invite your comments and response.
It's going to be a great summer in the City of Lights.
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Day 1, 06.11.08
Paris.
After the goodbye party in Tisvilde (Denmark) during the opening session which was very good by the way, the French and the US fellows heading to the city of love, Paris. As a normal thing in France’s public transportation, a strike of the national railways was waiting for us. It took everybody I believe a couple of hours to go home and to the US fellows to actually meet their hosting families.
The next day, the gather point was at the American University of Paris. Anne-Lorraine, the director of the newly created H.I.A. Center in Europe, introduced us to the current situation of France which I believe was very helpful for the US fellows to get in touch with what’s happening in this country.
After Anne-Lorraine’s intervention, we listened to the presentation of a video about the riots in France by a journalist from France 24, the French “CNN”. This video was pretty interesting because this journalist was the first one to get to the cité where the riots begun. Then, Tara did her presentation about the riots themselves.
Many of the fellows had lunch at Bastille, a non-typically but something that we can find almost anywhere in Paris, a kebab.
In the afternoon, we were all together at ACCENT, rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine. We had one presentation about the citizenship of the former slaves of the French colonial Empire by Silyane Larcher. After that, we had a very learning presentation about the Berbère culture in France and its origins by Selim Saadi.
The first day was a very tired one but we started to get to know each other and to learn more about the HIA French program which seems to be pretty interesting but exhausting at the same time.
José.
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