« Je ne sais pas si c’était le but recherché, mais ils ont gagné : nous quittons ce pays qui ne veut pas de nous. Nous irons créer de la croissance et des emplois ailleurs. Je refuse d’être traité comme du bétail. » 

Almost word for word what I said when I left France. Lovely place, but fuck that noise. Enjoy the euro !
This is a favorite point of mine. Scale is tricky ; I’ve found that most Americans, when asked, can’t list the ten largest cities in America — most get tripped up between Phoenix and Philadelphia and nearly everyone neglects San Diego. Size matters, and people forget that El Paso is bigger than Boston, Seattle, or Denver. That said, I’d much rather live in Bordeaux, which is lovely, than Kansas City, which is not.
« I'd figured out the e-mail system and how to remap my keyboard ; as long as I didn't look too closely at what I was doing, it would perform like a QWERTY layout and communicate my intentions. Perhaps this will become a metaphor, I thought. » 

The American-in-Paris shtick of gawking at the French and drawing confused conclusions from manners and language is pretty hackneyed, but this made me smile because I’ve never learned to type with AZERTY either.


