Jackasses!

I don't know if I should hang out with English speakers anymore. Tonight after class we went to James' place for dinner and among other things proceeded to rant about all the things in France that pissed us off. And there are so many things these days. Among other things, the half-English half-Moroccan girl is appalled by French racism problems. That said, she gets a real kick out of telling people that she went to Cambridge, now studies at Sciences Po (the French pseudo-equivalent), and is, yes, Moroccan (though she was raised in Brighton). The Irishman is sick of explaining to people that Ireland is actually not England. Since I'm a petty American and of course don't really give a shit about what anyone else thinks, I'm just annoyed by how lame the library is.

They crow about having 1 million documents (not just books) in what they say is one of the best research libraries in Europe (in 2002, Berkeley's library had 9 million BOOKS), but you can only take out 4 items at a time. Unfortunately, they don't give you a receipt or any way of checking due dates online, and you can't renew books. And if you return it late your loan privileges are suspended for a period equal to the lateness of the return (would have been nice if they explained this important detail). I'm returning three books tomorrow about a week late. Good thing they don't suspend me for a week per book!

The point is, despite how great the classes are and the opportunities I'll have during my studies (and those are really strong points), the administrative support is such shit. I'm disgusted.

Oh, and in two of my classes there are these jackasses that piss me off every time they even think of opening their mouths. One is an American who makes me look so bad by association -- idiotic questions, annoying enthusiasm, and a terrible accent -- while the other is from one of the former Soviet -stans: today as a guest from Turkey in the class struggled to explain his research in French, his third or fourth language (after Turkish and excellent English), under his breath this asshole was correcting the guy's grammar. And he kept interrupting the professor with pointless comments and ranting about the difference between saying Turko-Iranian and Turko-Persian in the class title. We got the point, mostly irrelevant as it was (the French generally say Turko-Iranian, even if it's technically incorrect), the first three times the guy repeated himself.

Sheesh.

p.s. Yes, I know I abuse parentheses.