A Walk in the Countryside

Yesterday, I went for a walk. I set out about half past ten. It was the perfect weather, probably around 72 degrees, the sky a clear, cloudless blue. The road in front of the house meanders through wide, open fields, gently curving left and right, but always flat. It’s a single lane road, but the grass to either side is cut short, so that cars can pass each other when the need arises. Some properties have a few trees, and in the shade, it’s cool. But mostly the immediate horizon is uninterrupted by trees or buildings. A slight breeze gusts through from time to time.

Leaving the house, I turn left. Right next to the house is an open pasture with two cows. Their pasture sits right against the side and back of the house, so we’re on a first name basis. Today they’re deep into the field, so I can’t tell if they moo or flick their tails at my passing. I’m sure they didn’t. I’ve never merited any excited mooing, even though they seem to moo all the time.

After being snubbed passing the neighbor’s cow pasture, I’m surprised when I get to the next field on the left. It was all brown when I last walked a few days ago, but now plants have sprouted. As far as the eye can see, the long, wide field is populated with little bunches of green, a perfect trifecta of three oblong leaves that have pushed their way to the surface. Each sits about two inches from the other in long columns down the field and up over the rise. Spring has sprung, and planting season has begun.

I continue down the road, passing a few bikers along the way. I nod and say bonjour. I pick up the pace – I’d like to make it to the bridge and back within the hour. On the right, a vast field of green sways and dances in the breeze. I’m no farmer and have no basis for my judgment, but for some reason I’m certain they’re an older, wiser, mature version of whatever young sprout was growing on the left. At knee height, the fronds sprawl from the road back as far as the eye can see, a deep, healthy green that rivals the dazzling blue sky in its intense color. The sun, its power unchallenged by trees or buildings, beams down fiercely on my skin. The air is cool, but my skin tingles warmly under the unfettered rays.

About half a mile onwards, I take a turnoff on the left. Here on this new road the vegetation thickens, and the sun and I play hide and seek. We’re nearing the Gers, the river that gives the region its name. The road dips down, towards the river, finally ending in a low bridge. There’s a warning – pont submersible. When the river runs high, the bridge becomes completely submerged underwater, lost in the current. The narrow bridge has no rails – it’s like a concrete slab perched over the water – so I squat down, leveling myself only two feet or so above the water, and look for fish. The river ebbs and flows lazily, clearly moving towards a destination, but not rushing to get there. I can’t see anything within the murky green depths. Further up, in a large town called Auch, I had been able to see a silver fish or two dart along the banks – but today, my slippery friends choose to hide.

The bridge is my turn-around point. I’ve come about a mile or so, and with any longer the sun will start to beam down with full intensity. That’s not to mention my aversion to exercise. I climb back up the dusty turnoff road and soon have made my way back to the main road. It occurs to me, as I look back at this turnoff, that the field I’m facing appears so untouched – it looks like it could have looked a hundred years ago. Apart from the white streaks of passing planes in the sky, there is no shopping mall in the distance, no candy wrapper tumbling along in the wind, not a single human footprint in the field. This image in front of me is frozen in time.

Back on the main road the foliage has thinned, and the sun floods the road with light. I stride along confidently, until a movement to my right makes my heart pound. A small snake had been coiled at the edge of the road, sunbathing languidly. With my approach, he unravels himself and, to my relief, starts to slither into the grass. He is small enough not to be a major threat, but my heart continues to pound as I scamper away.

A similar moment happens with a bumblebee. A fat, mostly black bee circling clumsily in front of me seems not to notice my approach and, like a big fat oaf, crashes right into my chest. I’m not particularly afraid of bees, but I’m stunned by how hard he lumbered into me. I’m afraid he’ll blame me for hitting him and seek revenge. I break into a brisk jog, as far as my asthmatic lungs will allow, until I’m sure he and his brethren are long in the distance. To my left, a cat sunning himself in the middle of a small house’s front yard watches me wheeze. His gaze is somehow aggressive. Alone in the yard, he watches me like a guard dog, threatening me as a German Shepard would. Probably taking my wheezing for the weakness that it is, he feels it’s safe to let me pass with a warning. I’m not worth getting up for. He blinks.

I’m nearing the house now. There’s the field with the little green sprouts, and next the pasture with tufts of lush green grass. Then comes our house and the yard. I round the house towards the other side where I see the chicken, pacing idly by the pool. We first saw her Easter morning. I woke up and looked out my window, and there she was, watching me. She has hung around the house ever since, afraid of humans, but in our midst nonetheless. I say hello. I realize my error and hastily say bonjour instead.

Like all the other animals on my journey, she doesn’t do much to acknowledge my presence, turning her back to me as she rustles around in the bushes. I go inside.

I like to imagine someone 100 years earlier seeing a similar thing.

Arachnophobia

Adjusting to life in the countryside

Everyone's got fears. Heights, confinement, death, small children, birds - there's a lot to be afraid of. A lot of the time, our fears aren't really rational. Roller coasters don't normally break, but there's a chance this one might. The probability of dying in a plane crash is much lower than the likelihood of dying in a passenger vehicle, yet most people fear planes more than cars. It's hard to talk ourselves out of fearing something scary, even when it doesn't make sense to fear it. Anyways, this is an unnecessarily long and abstract lead in to describe one of my main fears... spiders.

I've just completed the first week of my stay here in beautiful Fleurance, France. Fleurance is located in the Gers, about an hour or two from Toulouse. It's the real countryside; beautiful rolling hills of farmland, flowers, tilled earth, cows idly grazing, birds and horses and lots of fresh air. It's nothing like any of the places I've lived. The most rural place I've lived is the suburbs of New York City, and even then, I did my best to spend as little time outside as possible. To make it clear, we're dealing with a girl whose least favorite season is summer, because it means spending time outside.

My very first day, a friend of the family I'm staying with picked me up at the closest train station, in a nearby village. Train station probably isn't the right word - it was a place where the train happened to stop, but there was no station in sight. The parking lot was just a dirt cutoff right off the tracks with room for three or four cars to park. That's when I thought to myself - Lord, where am I. And, more importantly, why do I put myself in these situations?

****

My room is built into the main house building, but it's separate and has it's own entrance all the way on the other side. The third night, the father walked me from the side of the house where the family stays over to my room, since the walk is very dark without a flashlight. I get in the room, turn on the light, everything looks okay. But when I really look, I see a spider has weaseled its way in during the .2 seconds the door was open, and jammed itself up into the corner right by the door.
"Okay," I think to myself. "He's playing it cool. He's bunched himself up. He doesn't want to be seen. Let's just wait to see if he causes problems."
I hastily don my pajamas and, after thoroughly checking the rest of the room for unwanted visitors, climb into bed. I mentally set the timer for twenty minutes - if the spider doesn't move in that time, I'll go to bed. I turn off the main light and leave the bedside light illuminated.

About fifteen minutes goes by, and I'm starting to feel comfortable. I'm exhausted from all my travels, even three days in, and lying in bed has made me sleepy. I've been staring at the wall with the spider so hard that my eyes hurt. I start to think, hmm, maybe I should close my eyes, when...
I see a single dark brown leg inch its way out, testing the waters. Then another. The spider is slowly moving its way along the wall. He's out. He's active. And it looks to me like he's heading towards another spider nearby, one I'd deemed small enough not to be troublesome. He's stretched out to his full length now, huge and menacing and ready for dinner. Unfortunately, his dinner plans put him on a straight path in my direction.

Now. I know, as the rational person that I am, that no real harm can come to me from this creature. He's not going to eat me... not by himself, at least. The worst he can do is bite me, or crawl on or near me. (I've heard some of the horrifying things spiders can do like crawl into your mouth or ears and lay eggs inside your head, but that's not even the kind of thing I'm worried about. My fears are more basic, more of the genre of a spider just being in my general vicinity).

I start to panic. He's up too high for me to reach with anything. And he's also pretty darn ginormous. To hit him with a shoe, I'd have to use a work boot, and I'd have to be extraordinarily accurate because he's fast. I'm trapped in the room with a monster, and there's no way out. I can't get to sleep with him hovering over me, I can't stay up all night watching him either. Every scenario seems to lead to eight hours of misery to come. Everything is terrible, life is miserable, I should have stayed home where we have svelte cosmopolitan city spiders. This country life is not for me.

Suddenly - a flash of brilliance! The bathroom door is just slightly ajar. It forms a triangle of sorts. I'm at the top, the bathroom is along the wall adjacent to me, and the spider is on the opposite wall. His trajectory is sort of on the hypotenuse, if any of this geometry nonsense makes sense. If I could dash in the bathroom, I'd have a completely spider-free area and could potentially get a little sleep.

A major thank you to my mom who has talked me through many of these situations.

Now for the logistics. I get up slowly, so as not to startle the spider into attacking. I lift the mattress. Too heavy to carry to the bathroom alone (not to mention the fact that it probably won't fit. This is a normal sized bathroom we're talking about). Okay, that's fine. I gather the comforter, blanket, and pillow, and a couple shoes just in case I have any surprises while inside my safe zone. I look up - the spider seems poised mid-stride, as though unsure what I'm about to do. This is it, my only chance. It's go time.

I grab my giant bundle of bed things, sprint to the bathroom, and immediately close the door. I put a towel down on the very cold tile floor, stuff the bathroom rug under the door crack so nothing would get in, and settle in for an awkward but safe next couple of hours.

The next morning, I gathered my courage and opened the door (the spider was immediately visible, thank goodness, so I could keep tabs on him) hastily put on my clothes, and stepped outside. I requested some assistance with the spider. The dad just came in, grabbed the spider with his hand, and tossed it out the door. Real simple.

I'd be mortified if anyone knew the lengths I went to because of a (very ginormous) spider. If you're not scared of spiders, it seems over the top. If you're from the countryside, it seems downright ludicrous. If the family knew I'd spent the night in the bathroom, they'd very quickly question my sanity. When I showed up at breakfast the next morning with bags under my eyes, I was so embarrassed I blamed it on bad dreams.

But that's the thing about fears. They only really make sense to you. And in the heat of the moment, sleeping curled up with your head tucked between the toilet and the sink just makes so much more sense than the remote possibility that a spider may crawl near you.

So. This story is a pretty good summary of my adjustment to rural life. But I am so grateful for the way the family has welcomed me into their home, and the time here has been lovely. And just think how seasoned and tough I'll be by the end. A real outdoorsy type.

If not, I always have the safety of the bathroom.

Open Road

My first driving excursion in France

I’m here in France. No fanfare this time, no dramatic “I’m leaving my comfortable home in the US for the Great Unknown” farewell blog post, no “I have arrived in the land of sweet buttery pastries, my own form of heaven” arrival post. Just… well… here I am.

It’s day 3, and it hasn’t sunk in yet. I feel like I’m in another big American city, where, rather inconveniently, no one understands what I’m saying.

Anyway. Today’s adventure:

Pretty much my sole job while here will be to help drive for a family who, for medical reasons, find themselves driverless. Now, this family seems pretty darn perfect, and the work involved sounds pretty minimal, so I definitely wanted them to like me. That’s how I ended up exaggerating my manual transmission driving skills via email, when said skills were, at the time, nonexistent. See, automatic cars are practically impossible to find in France, much like manual cars are few and far between in the US. I knew the basic theory behind driving a manual car, as in, I knew *cognitively* what it takes, but I’d never had a car to practice on. And since the sole qualification for this job was to drive the car, I set to learning ASAP.

I took two lessons with a guy out in New Jersey who wasn’t exactly the model of professionalism. Basically we’re talking about a guy who happens to have a stick and is willing to give you the most basic hands-off advice on the cheap. You may wonder why I chose him, and I’ll refer you to the previous sentence, where I said: on the cheap. After two lessons I was able to ease into first from a stop and change from 1 to 2 to 3 (but not back down again). That’s it. I wasn’t willing to have another incomplete lesson, and I was only a few days from leaving, so I decided to rent a car in France instead and just throw myself into the fire, so to speak.

Not to spoil the story, but I’ll give you a hint: It was hell.

The thing no one really talks about with the old “sink or swim” adage is that while you are trying not to sink, you are miserably inhaling water and trying desperately to remain in the dear world of the living. It is not pleasant.

So. Let me set the scene for you. I’m in Lyon, the third largest city in France, where I’m spending a pleasant four or five days of vacation before continuing on to this job. The Enterprise car rental agency I chose is the closest one, at the train station. This train station is in the absolute heart of the city, Lyon Part Dieu. It’s the same kind of scene as Union Station in DC or Penn Station in New York. It’s messy.

The car is on the sixth floor of the garage. After checking out the car with the agent, I’m ready to go. Out of nowhere, a large group waiting for their car begin to fan out into the driving area, just as I’m putting the car into first. I’m self conscious about them watching me and also know there’s a high probability I’ll hit them, but I guess my terrified face was apparent enough through the window because they scattered very quickly as I pulled off. Down the tight spiral ramp to the first floor. And bam, we’re in Lyon downtown.

Everything was great from here on out. I have trouble, but the car hasn’t stalled. My biggest issue thus far has been stopping, but my menacing look was enough to stop pedestrians from crossing and I didn’t actually have to really stop the car all the way up to the highway. And then it was all open road. 

I drove two, two and a half hours to Dijon, had a pleasant lunch (unfortunately not featuring mustard) and got back in the car.


Now, my rental car was due back at 8pm. I didn’t want to push it too late, because I absolutely didn’t want to drive at night.


So instead, I ended up in rush hour traffic, getting to the Lyon outskirts around 6:30pm.


Traffic on the highway outside Lyon was bumper to bumper, but I felt pretty good about myself for navigating it. Shift into first; ease off the clutch, add some gas. Foot back on the clutch. Brake to a stop. Do it again. Up into second now. Okay, it’s slowing down. It’s stopping. Put it into neutral. Come to a complete stop. I continued like that until traffic let up and I could ease on into downtown, which was slightly more predictable.

Until.

Within three blocks of the train station, there was one of those underground tunnels that dips down under a street or two and comes back up. They have a ton of them in DC. This one seemed to have a particularly steep uphill at the end, with a traffic light right at the very top. I knew it would be a problem before I even got to it. Traffic slowed, and I had to stop at the base of the hill. The light was remarkably quick, enough for 3-4 cars only, so the pressure was on. Another green light cycle. Now I’m at the middle of the hill. That’s where the trouble started. The next time the light turned green, I was trying to start on the hill and hurry up so that I could make it through the light. I guess I popped off the clutch too quick. The car stalled. I turned it off and back on again. In the rear view mirror I see the driver behind me raise his hands in the air in exasperation, because by the time I’m finally able to get the car on again, the light’s red. I inch up a little higher on the hill.

The light turns green again. I’m the second car to go. Or I should be. But I stall again. The driver behind me starts to swear. I get the car on again and I stall. Yes. A third time. It seems impossible. I’m swearing too. The guy behind me is shouting, because it’s rush hour, and only a few cars get to go at a time, and the light takes forever anyway, and he’s tried to swerve around me but there isn’t enough room. I’m sweating.

Finally, the light turns green again, and finally, I successfully manage to make it into first and up the rest of the hill. I see the car rental parking garage, but it’s on the other side of the street. Around the block in tight traffic I go. I cut into an alley which has the shortest traffic light cycle of them all, and… another round of stalling. Twice. Another upset French man is swearing behind me. I just need to get into this impossibly tight garage and dump the car there so I can go home and feel sorry for myself. I get the car going in first and beyond, round the block, get into the garage, up the six stories, and pull into the first space I see.

Hastily, I rub the sweat off my brow, gather my things, and step out the car.

Tout s’est bien passé? The car rental guy asks me. Or whatever the proper phrase is in French.

Oui, I said. Parfait. Merci. Voici les clés.

And I stumbled my way home.

Winter

A short note on grief and loss

In mid-October 2016 I was sitting in my little single room in the apartment in France. I had a little box of French cookies next to me on the bed, and I was beginning to read “Qui Es-Tu Alaska” (Looking For Alaska), which I’d been putting off for awhile. I was bored. While there was wired Ethernet internet in the apartment, I hadn’t managed to connect yet, so I was on my third week sans-internet. My roommate was out, and it was early evening, too early to begin thinking about reheating last night’s chicken cutlet and lentil ragout on the stove.

Then I got a phone call from my mom.

I’d known my mother wasn’t feeling great when I left for France. I had spent the summer living with her in suburban Connecticut, where she’d been struggling with issues related to her gut. She had been seeing doctors, trying to get the myriad of intestinal-related problems under control. But it wasn’t so serious back then, to me at least, so I hadn’t left with any grave concerns. This phone call changed that. She had been to a doctor who told her the issues were far more serious than previously believed. She may not have long to live.

Lot’s of things happened in the two weeks that followed. I came home. My mother had a sixtieth birthday party. She was hospitalized. We met with funeral homes and lawyers and doctors. Family and friends poured in. And I had a choice to make – whether or not to go back to France and complete my gap year teaching English. It was one of the hardest choices to make, given very limited information, a stressful environment, and what at the time was a life or death scenario. So, while my mother was in the hospital, I made a 48-hour trip back to France to collect my things and close my French bank account for good.

I got home prepared and expecting to spend the next few weeks as the last weeks with my mother. I got a part-time job at a grocery store so that I wouldn’t constantly be hovering over her day after day. I tried to settle into life, this sort of “new normal.” People brought over home cooked meals and came to visit with my Mom. She rested, and greeted visitors, and made her preparations. Time passed. And yet as time passed, something remarkable happened – it wasn’t the end. My mother wasn’t feeling stellar, but no longer was she on her deathbed. Other possibilities came to light – perhaps the doctor was wrong in the prognosis, or at least in the timing of it all?

As we toyed with this notion, my mother set Valentine’s Day as her Victory Day – the day she would definitely decide that the prognosis was not a perfect fit for her illness, and that she thus needed to move on. It’s not that she’ll never kick the bucket – it’s that it probably won’t be in the next few months, so it’s time to move on with life.

The time between early November and late February was not easy. It was a tremendously stressful period not only for me and my family, but for so many of my friends and support network. I can truly say I learned what it means to be a friend – what it means to ask for and give support, and the true power of love. I learned about grief and loss. How we can feel loss for a person, or for an idea; loss of a future; a lost opportunity.

At the beginning of my gap year, I said I wanted to use the year to grow and learn. The universe has a funny sense of humor. But I did grow. And I did learn. Though it has been a roller coaster ride we’ve exited safely to the right with all of our belongings, and life goes on. I wish my mother had not had to go through what she did, but I am so glad she’s okay and that I was in a position to be here with her.

Now, in the face of my mother’s temporary recovery, I’ve decided to end my gap year in France the way I began. Though I wanted to return to the school where I was set to teach, I never received any word about returning. So instead I’ll be helping out a family a little farther south, about two hours northwest of Toulouse. I’m excited to write about this adventure and more in the coming weeks.

I thought the greatest misfortunes I’d write about during my stay in France would be weight gain from eating too many croissants or getting lost trying to speak the language. I’ve encountered quite a few more trials and tribulations than that during this year. But I would be a very different person without this journey I’ve been on.

And isn’t this travel blog all about the journey?

Au Revoir

Returning to the US

Due to a family emergency, I have decided to permanently leave France. While I loved every part of living in Mayenne, this decision is the best one for my family, which made it extraordinarily easy to make. I'm so grateful for everyone who made my stay in France so enjoyable. Even though I won't be physically there, I will continue to post blog posts on my experience thus far, because there is so much more to say! I'm happy to reflect on the wonderful time I have there, and I know I will be back some day. And to everyone on the US side, thank you for your kind notes of support. They are appreciated.

Two Weeks in France

Our Guest Today Is: Nicole

Hello all,

Today marks the end of my second week of work in France. These first two weeks have been primarily a time for observation, as stipulated by my work contract. Essentially, my goal these two weeks was to observe how classes run in France, and to introduce myself and get acquainted with the students.

There are six English teachers at my high school, and each of them teaches a couple classes. In most of their classes, I came in to introduce myself for the full 55 minute period using the slideshow below. The students had a chance to ask me a number of questions both about myself and the US. For these classes, I will take a portion of the class and teach my own lecture each week. I also sat in on “Euro” sections, which are where students take math and science in English. I’ll be assisting in these sections with pronunciation and vocabulary. I also got to see other classes just for fun, like history.

Even though I presented this same slideshow like twelve times, I still had so much fun doing it.

Here are some excerpts from the slideshow I showed the students:

This map shows where I’ve lived. I had students guess how far it is between the stars, and they were shocked by how big the United States is. Yes, it really does take 6 hours to fly from New York to California!

God I hope Mr. Pratt never reads this, but each time I presented this photo in a particular English teacher’s class, she would say, “well it might have been an all-girls school, but that history teacher doesn’t look too bad!” *wink*. You’ve got admirers overseas, Mr. Pratt.

Every time this slide came up there was this unanimous audible gasp around the room. Students were shocked and amazed to see the university, and kept saying “are you sure it wasn’t a castle beforehand?” I told them that this is just the front entrance and there are several other quads but usually they all looked at me in annoyance like “why is she lying about the number of quads? Surely there cannot be more than this.”

Students would stare blankly at this picture until I clarified, “that’s me.” Then they would look from this picture back to the real-life me like “wow you’ve really let yourself go.” I would say, “this picture was taken just a few months ago, in May,” and they would send me pitying glances at the apparent downfall of my beauty regimen.

One of the English teachers really had students study up on my presentation, and they had to take this quiz afterwards! Others had to write a one page essay about my life. It was so bizarre (weird, cool, touching, awesome!) to read about myself from their eyes. (Nicole likes horse riding; she went to Madeira; she lives here in Mayenne!).




Throughout my observations, I was weirdly proud of knowing the answers to questions in class… even though I have already been to high school and have in fact already completed college. In observing a science class, I was so proud of myself (I got Question #2 right… it’s True – people in industrialized countries do often eat more processed foods than in developing countries!!!). Even in English class I kept giving myself a mental pat on the back… for knowing high-school level foreign language vocabulary in my own language. It essence, the two weeks of sitting in on high school classes have just affirmed my nerd status – I really like school. I love being presented with fascinating new ideas every day, I love getting questions right, and it is such a meaningful experience when good teachers guide you through the whole process.



I hope to be one of those good teachers.



All the best,

Nicole.

First Five Days

Five Tools I Used to Survive the First Five Days...

and how they were all essentially to my detriment



I have had the most wonderful beginning of my stay. People are all very nice and helpful; the area around Mayenne is very rustic and beautiful; I ate four croissants last Thursday. I've had to adjust quite quickly to only speaking French all day everyday, but already I can tell I've improved (last week I was not so optimistic, but today I have a positive outlook).


But anyway, here are the things I've done to get by my rocky adjustment to French language and life.

Smiling and Nodding

I have done a ton of smiling and nodding my first few days here. It’s mostly a combination of 1). People being very nice and friendly, and 2). People telling me vital information that I’ll need for my stay. Thus… smiles. Head nods. The main problem is everything is happening so fast, and I understand very little of what’s being said to me. In trying to seem agreeable this first week I’ve kind of smiled to get by, but at the expense of people thinking I have any clue what they’re talking about.


Example:

The school secretary handed me some papers, told me some things, and thing offered a lengthy description of where my mailbox was (the personal one, for the apartment), how to open it, what mail would go there, what address to use for it… lots of things I’d very much like to know. I smiled the whole time, nodded along, said, “ah, oui, okay,” the whole time. And she smiled and left, having definitively given me all I needed. But truth be told, what I got from that conversation was “mailbox… words, words, words,” and not much else. Perhaps if I had looked a little more confused and less like an enthusiastic lottery winner finding out how to collect her prize, I might know how to get my mail.


Blank Stares


Ah, yes, blank stares. The opposite end of the “pretending to understand what’s being said” spectrum. To me, blank stares are reserved for when you’re so confused you can’t even fake it. It’s when you’re so overwhelmed that your brain cannot even compute a logical response, and goes into shutdown mode, essentially abandoning you in your idiocy.

Example:

At lunch at the teacher’s table, someone asked me what I planned to do that afternoon. I had no clue what she’d said, so I asked her if she could repeat. She did, slowly, and yet I still had no clue what she’d said. I couldn’t ask her to say it a third time – that’s just too much. So I just stared at her awkwardly. Panic engulfed my brain. I looked next to her, to Claudine, an incredibly kind English teacher who has shepherded me through these stressful times, even taking me into her own home. My look was kind of like, “Mom, help.” Like as a kid when you go to the doctor and you know exactly what’s wrong, but still rely on your mom to describe your symptoms to the scary stranger.

Claudine did me a solid, saying “this afternoon.”

I had hoped she would translate then answer the question for me, but of course, no one knew what I was doing that afternoon but me. “La banque,” I finally got out in embarrassment.


Ca Va



It’s one of the most versatile phrases, and I’ve used it to my advantage, essentially to avoid having to elaborate or use any foreign or unnecessary words. I’m not sure if I’m using it right, but, hey, ca va.

As in:

How’s it going? Ca va. Do you have everything you need? Oui, ca va, merci. I can arrange for more pillows if you like. Non, merci, ca va. Let’s plan your first lesson tomorrow! Ok, ca va.



“Je ne parle pas francais”

I’m not proud of this one. Pretending you don’t speak French when you flew thousands of miles just to practice the language is, really, a low move.

Example:

I was with Claudine finding some sheets for the Spanish language assistant to use. The woman who we borrowed them from noticed I had smiled and nodded but not said a thing during the whole encounter, and finally she turned to me and said, “tu ne parles pas bien francais, alors?”


And Claudine’s back was turned, so after thinking about it for a minute, I simply shook my head and said…. Nope.


Claudine turned sharply back and said, “no! She speaks French well! Elle parle francais!!”


Hide


It’s all been a little overwhelming. Although I went abroad before, I mostly traveled with a pack of American kids to big tourist cities where many people speak English. I’ve never been immersed this way, and the first couple of days were very confusing and a little lonely. My first day on my own, I bought a big pack of cookies and hid in the apartment until it was time to go to bed.




Things have been tricky, but also really rewarding too. I’ve been shocked. Despite the fact that what I’m doing is moreso speaking words that resemble ones in French rather than actually speaking French, people understand me. I set up my French phone number. I opened a bank account (and signed a million documents to do so). I hung out in the teacher’s lounge, went to the grocery store, chatted with the bank manager – I say words and people take them to mean something. Magic.


Nicole