"Un grand ouf de soulangement"

Here's the very very very good news. In the first round of elections on Sunday, the French recorded their lowest rate of abstention EVER - 15.2%. (Sidenote, i originally typed abstinence, and didn't catch it until after i'd published the blog. lol. that would put a WHOLE new spin on the elections. Tho it would be understandable, the sight of Jean-Marie Le Pen does have the same impact as a cold shower). This is awesome, given that the first round of the 2002 elections were marked first and foremost by the fact that people "stayed away from the polls in droves." Whatever other hang-ups French voters might have, they seem to have gotten over their apathy.

So the horror scenario - Sarkozy-Le Pen - didn't happen, and French voters now have two weeks to choose between Nicholas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal. Wow, wouldn't it be amazing if a major Western nation had a female president? How cool would it be (even tho i prefer Obama to Hillary) If the United States, France, and Germany all had female heads of State by 2009? Dream about it for a few minutes...


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ok, now the reality. Sarkozy's going to win.

And let us now all take a moment to mourn the La Gauche Française (i had originally typed "the french left" and then realized that it sounds MUCH better in the original). In this election there were about 5 candidates that could be classified as "extreme-left." All their first-round scores added together don't equal up to that of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the representative of the extreme right. Add to that the fact that "centrist" François Bayrou pulled a very significant 18%, and the one thing you have to admit is that the American stereotype of the french as cigarette-smoking, coffee-sipping, near communists no longer has any basis in fact. This makes me sad.

In other news, today Vanessa and i failed to fly a kite. Oh, and i put up more pictures, so look at them.

love y'all.