Aero: Hannah Miller – France 2018 – History and Culture

Aero: Hannah Miller - France 2018 - History and Culture

Aero: Hannah Miller – France 2018 – History and Culture

Hannah Miller

Hannah Miller

Culture and History is everywhere in France. Every building, road, word used in a sentence has some history or piece of culture attached to it. Is Paris, especially, there is architecture that I could stare at for days with so many stories behind it. There as monuments everywhere to signify a specific event that took place their hundreds of years ago. You can tell by walking through the streets of Paris how much the French value where they come from and what they have gone through to get to where they are today.

The amount of churches and cathedrals in France says a lot about their history and culture. Church was and is very important to them. Religion was once and some will argue still is being fought over. Many monarchs in France built cathedrals for themselves and the bigger and more extravagant they were they better. These churches were absolutely magnificent. The churches that we saw took from a range of six to two hundred years to completely finish building. While we were in France we saw so many cathedrals that I was totally cathedral-ed or church-ed out halfway through the second week.

Along the same lines the architecture in general in France was very thoroughly planned and thought through. All of the buildings in the main section of Paris are not built very tall and this was done on purpose. The roads are also not built very narrow because when Napoleon was the ruler of France he wanted to be able to get his troops through the streets of Paris without anything getting thrown onto them from the nearby buildings. Napoleon built a lot of buildings in France and the French have kept them all because of how much they admire him. Most of Napoleon’s pieces of architecture that he built were tributes to what he had accomplished as the ruler of France. Because the French have kept many of these beautiful pieces of architecture in their city, it really helps Paris keep its historic look and feel.

France looks to the United States for a lot of their entertainment aspects. The music the French listen to is mostly American with some Spanish and very little French. The TV that they watch are shows that are American or based off of the American version. While I was with my host family every time that we drove somewhere the music was on and it was music that I would listen to on the radio in my car back home. The music was not censored though so it would say every word in the song whether it was a word that the radio in the United States would play or not. They whole family would be singing along to the song that would be saying really bad words and they had no idea what they were actually saying. As for watching TV I did not do a lot of this while with my host family but when we did we watched a version of Don’t Forget the Lyrics in America but with French songs and we watched the news.

Hannah Miller
Study Abroad – France 2018 @ FLCC

World Languages @ FLCC: France Study Abroad 2018

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