Day 33 in Paris
I often joke about how old I am, or feel: an affinity for watching history documentaries, warm beverages, wool clothing, drinking campari. But having been in Paris now for over a month, I realize now that I am actually old--at least in the eyes of the French.
As I mentioned in my previous post, France has a lot of support for students. However, as I am finding out, most of it only students under a certain age. The young adult age bracket is 18-25, similar I suppose to the United States. The difference being that there are actually perks to being in this age bracket in France. These perks include: free museum/exhibition tickets, discounted plane and rail tickets, special bank accounts, etc. But being 26 now, I don't qualify for any of those things. I barely qualified for the discounted Metro pass. The only reason I qualified was because of a technically that states that the holder must be under the age of 26 on September 1, 2012, which it turned out I was by a couple of days.
Aside from officially being too old. I am even more old in relative terms to the people I'm surrounded with at school. My master's programme is fairly young, given that its about 80% French. All the French kids come directly from finishing their undergrad studies and as a result, they're all five or even six years younger than I am. When I found out that one of them was still twenty I nearly spit out my Cote du Rhone. In the States she wouldn't even be allowed to have Cote du Rhone at all.
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