So here's the thing, France

I've been lagging in my blog posts, so this might be a long one. I just cleaned my room, which felt GREAT. You would think that with as little stuff as I brought with me, it wouldn't really be possible for all of it to create a massive clutter in my bedroom. Wrong! Apparently I am capable of that, even with one suitcase's worth of stuff.

So last weekend I went to the southern coast of Bretagne with my host parents and some of their friends. That basically consisted of three days of zero English, tons of food, and tons of wine. We were in Quiberon, which you should look up on a map because it's pretty funny. It's just barely hanging off the edge of France. It's called a presque'isle, or an almost-island.
The weekend, which was mostly spent having like five-hour meals, created many interesting conversations. One of which was me trying to explain why I'm a vegetarian. FAIL. Not only did they not get it, but they very strongly disagreed with me. Oh well. So much for that. Culture clash, I guess.

Another interesting conversation I had with them was about being a woman in France.
Let's just talk about this for a minute. It's been on my mind because I have recently had many a conversation about my other fellow American women who are here in France, and we all have had the same experience here. Honestly, it is hard to be a woman in France. For one thing, women have a defined role here...it is not unusual, in fact I would say that it is common, for women to have all cleaning/cooking/child-raising responsibilities in a household. For example, when we were at the beach house last weekend, there were two women, plus me, and three men. The women literally did EVERYTHING (cooking, cleaning, dishes, etc.) and the men did NOTHING except sit around and drink whiskey. It was completely absurd. But also, I realize, part of the culture here.
Another thing about being a woman here: French men are awful, disrespectful, abusive pigs. There, I said it. Now I will say that that is a huge generalization. But the truth is, I have been accosted by strange men many times since I've been here. And so has every other girl I've talked to. I've come to expect it, because it happens to me virtually every time I go out. Sometimes it's fairly harmless...some guy trying to talk to me or asking me if I'm lost. But other times it is outright harassment. And no one here does anything about it. Whereas, in the U.S., if a man was harassing a girl that way, you could call the police on him, no problem. If I called the cops because of a guy doing that here, they would probably just laugh at me.
Don't worry, I have learned what to do/say when they approach me to get rid of them. And I know where not to go at night, etc. But I'm really sick of it. They shouldn't be able to get away with that! Ughhhhhh!!!
In addition to all of that, in daily life, there is also the fact that women are not very present in politics, nor in the professional world. And in France, women didn't have the right to vote until 1944!
So all of you American women out there, you've got it pretty good. Just remember that women in other places in the world are not as free as you are. Take advantage of that freedom.