Admittedly, politics and history have never been my thing. As such, my knowledge of Europe and the EU, prior to this semester, was limited to remnants of a semester years ago that left me recognizing words like Charlemagne and the Ottoman Empire but not much else. Additionally, economics is another subject that I have little background knowledge in. I’ve always naively assumed the Euro (and by extension, Europe) was strong simply because a dollar is less than a Euro. I think this semester is going to be enlightening, to say the least.

I live with a host-mom here, an older Lyonnaise woman, and she asked me about this class at dinner last week. When I told her that we were examining the European Union, she suddenly had a lot more to say, beginning with:

 “The EU is well, but maybe, not so well, too.”

She continued by saying the unemployment in France was rising and that suicides were increasing in number. While a lot gets lost in translation between us, I am under the impression that while she doesn’t oppose the idea of the EU, she opposes the current consequences (or what she, at least, sees as consequences) of its state of being.

My host-mom is just one person here, though. I have yet to hear anything about Europe or the EU has a whole in any of my classes or from anyone in passing. But with that in mind, the idea of European pride versus national pride in one of our first reading assignments has stuck with me. I’ve noticed since coming here that the French very much identify with their home-town. They carry a lot of pride for their city, first, and their nation, second. The EU, from what I’ve witnessed so far, is not of drastic importance to anyone.