"I can, you can...Yes we can!"

Thursday night, a large group of us headed to Carr's Pub in the 1e arrondissement to watch the VP debate. CNN International was projected live onto a huge screen, and the pub was completely packed – mostly with college students studying abroad. Of course, because of the time difference, we had to wait til 3:00 in the morning for the debates to start (let no one say us college kids aren't invested in the political future of our country).

I thought it would be very hard to be across the ocean from all the pre-election craziness and excitement no doubt going on at Colby, but France is more invested in the U.S. election than you might think. The first week I was here, a construction worker working on our old apartment pulled me aside for a fifteen-minute discussion about Obama versus McCain when he realized I was American.

The French are very aware of and look very favorably on Obama. He even appears in the local advertising here (see left)! My host sister was telling me that whenever the verb conjugations of “can” come up in her English class, all the students chant “Yes we can! Yes we can!” McCain is another story…the same host sister thought the race was between Hillary and Obama!

Of course, they look on the last eight years with rather less enthusiasm: