How many weeks do people get for maternity leave in the US?
How long do they get to stay in the hospital?
Because I'm pretty sure you get like 14 weeks off work as a mom and two weeks off of work as a dad if you have a kid, and like 18 for the third child, and you can get 3 years off to just take care of your kids until they're in school (PAID) with your job guaranteed when you get back. And you stay in the hospital for like a week, two if you want. They work 35 hours a week (well, 37 if you're pushing it) with at least 5 weeks of vacation and 1.5-2 hours for lunch every day (legal minimum being 45 mins). Our prof told us that last year she took off the whole month of August, went in for two days in September but the director called her in and told her that she had already worked too much earlier in the year and she was taking off all of September too. Uh huh.
Minimum wage here is like 1,200 euro a month--which is NOT MUCH if you do the math to convert it to dollars a year...but two parents making that much can reasonably support a family. If you're unemployed (with a house) you get 800 a month. If you don't have a house, well, the whole government system starts with an address to send things to and you're out of luck. Middle class is from 1500-4000 a month, a prof can expect like 2000 at the end of his/her career.
For lunch, Andrea and Laura came over and we had pasta (with sauce/ketchup!), salad with some yummy dressing Andrea mixed up and the carrots, bread of course and cookies/M&M's and coffee. YUM. And don't forget French conversation and good times. It was nice to talk about Jesus some--with Christians, for once. :)P
Class this afternoon got mixed up in what I just wrote about the morning because we talked about the middle class there too. Do you think there's a stereotype of the middle class in the US? Because what we concluded is that it's easier to tell that someone's NOT in the middle class than to look at someone and say, "They're so from the middle class." ???
After class, I came back here and tidied up from lunch and then Emily came over to hang out for most of the evening! It was awesome--we ate the frozen pizza and talked about her crazy host family and I made banana bread (with her help :)! There were three old bananas and I pulled out all the ingredients necessary for banana chocolate chip muffins except for oatmeal (which I forgot until my last checkover anyway) but it turned out fairly awesome! We used a cake pan so it wasn't too thick to bake through and I would enjoy it a little darker and crustier but it's pretty decent. :) Now I have something American to cook for my host family! =D I feel that this would qualify as cake in their world! I like being in the kitchen, even if I'm really illogical about timing sometimes (or just plain absent minded: "Ok so we need two cups of flour...*puts in one cup* ...and two teaspoons of baking soda..." Emily: "Didn't you say we needed two cups?" Me: "Oh yes. Yes I did.") and even if I have no idea how much pasta to make for three...more is better! haha! It was fun to just hang out and talk all evening, basically. Lots and lots of funny host family stories...her host dad is a CHARACTER. He could stand to be taken down a notch because the family is nobility (descended from nobility?) and he's done probably 90% of everything possible...like going to West Point, being in the French version of the Navy Seals, and taking third place in the British sailboat racing competition, working at a bunch of different companies, and having 4 kids. All in the last 50 years. So that makes for good stories because he's kind of bossy too. :)
Tomorrow is a long day with an awkward break in the middle...I'm ambivalent towards Wednesdays...but I'm looking forward to the Bible study thing in the evening.
So until tomorrow evening, dear readers! =)
I feel that the idealized stereotype of middle class is the suburban house, two cars, and two kids. Basically 50s sitcom. In actuality it ends up being lack of all other major stereotypes.
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