"Now you parlez-vous français"

It sounds obvious, but one of the biggest differences about being over here is being surrounded by French. I've been taking classes all in French for years, but once you leave class you hear people speaking in English and you see English street signs, you know? Being around French 24-7 is completely different, and better. Normally, it takes my brain a second to switch into French mode. Someone asks me what this word is in French and in a second it comes to me. Or I need to pick up a contextual word before I know what to listen for. But here, when I'm pouring milk on my cereal in the morning, it's from a bottle labeled lait demi-écremé. The signs and the billboards and the random conversation in the street are all in French.

Frat row?

Of course, again, this sounds obvious. They speak French in France. But being in France and living with a French family have made the language so natural, sometimes I have to sit back and really wonder at it. I have complete conversations in this language without even thinking about it. Words I learned back in beginner French and never used again suddenly come back to me without warning. "How do you like your burger?" my host mom asked me the other night. (She asked me in French--she doesn't speak English--but that's not the point.) "Assez bien cuit," I replied immediately. Last time I used bien cuit in any context? Quite possibly the food unit in eighth grade, when you learn about pomplemousse and nobody adequately explains what steak frites are.

So I have my moments of successes, like the movie I saw last night with Cara and Kyle. It was the last night of the Cinema Festival in Aix, so all week if you went to see a movie they gave you a pink card and you used it to get 3-euro tickets the rest of the week. We saw L'élève Ducobu, which was just grand. It's based on a comic strip, so there were tons of cute exaggerated moments. It's about a kid who puts unlimited amounts of energy into scheming up ways to be lazy in school. He's finally in the last school that will accept him, and if he doesn't pass the year then he has to go to a remedial place. So of course this means he comes up with more elaborate plans to cheat, like pre-recording music that plays on his recorder, or having a friend whisper the multiplication tables into an earpiece that he wears. Hilarity ensues. It was just great. And, like with Omar m'a tuer, it's exciting to understand a French movie all the way through without subtitles in any language, but it's also not really a challenge. You get into the story and everything just makes sense, and that's how I feel about the blockbuster movie that is my daily life.

There are some moments of failure, too, like when I couldn't communicate to the person working at my favorite sandwich shop that I also wanted that thing of yogurt with raspberries in it. It's yaourt aux framboises, which I fully know and was trying to say at the time, but how are you supposed to pronounce yaourt? Seriously? Even more frustrating is when people just go straight to speaking to you in English. I went into a Tabac to buy a new phone card, but they didn't sell cards for my network. In response to my very polite and grammatically correct "Est-ce que vous vendez des cartes Bouygues?" the guy said in French that no they didn't, but they sold them at the post office and I thanked him and turned to leave. But then he felt the need to say "the post office; it's over there" in English. Um, I know. You just told me in French. And really, the word in French is la poste so it's not like it was complicated. (Plus, shouldn't I get points for speaking in French?) I have tons of stories like this and, while I know the intention is innocuous, it annoys me nonetheless. It's a matter of pride.

My delicious dinner from this Vietnamese restaurant last Saturday night.
No, Mom, I didn't eat the mushrooms because they are gross.
However, I did use my sweet French skills to tell the waiter that
there were peanuts in Kevin's meal and he was allergic.
Sad times, but awesome for my language abilities?

My archaeology professor does this a lot, too. He lectures in French, but translates a lot of what he says into English to make sure we understand. I've learned that if he says something in French that you understand and then pauses, you need to nod or he'll repeat it in English. I guess it's good to ensure maximum comprehension, but I do like hearing nothing but French. I've noticed that my French note-taking has increased tremendously, mostly in my ability to hear the gender and spelling of a word. The Provençal accent is much slower than the Parisian, which is definitely in my favor!

A final observation on language: since being here, I've found myself making so many more unconscious mistakes in writing English. I catch them right away, but I've typed homophones that just don't make sense with what I'm saying. My fingers muddle up the order of words, or add in extra letters that similarly don't make sense. Some of my friends (I initially typed 'frei' before catching myself!) have experienced these woes. I guess being more attentive (first typed 'attention,' ironic) to one language makes you more lax in another. Or maybe it's just the summer talking.

Future blog posts that I've already written in my head and am therefore not likely to want to write out again in real life considering that I just confessed that typing takes me a little longer now that I don't fully understand the English language: a recap of my glorious Saturday spent visiting Picasso's house north of Aix; classes; what my cereal box is telling the world (this is a good one); a day in my life; all the flavors of ice cream I've eaten so far!

This week in review

I'm finally blogging again! There are so many things I thought about writing that I can't remember anymore, but we'll go over everything day by day, starting with Saturday.

Saturday I went hiking with Cara and Eliza! We tried to hike Mont Sainte-Victoire, the mountain that Cézanne painted. Unfortunately, we had a few mishaps getting there. First we missed the 10 am bus because we were at the wrong stop, and then once we got out to the mountain we tried a few wrong paths before finally getting on the right one. But then... instead of going across a reservoir we ended up going around it? Long story short, we didn't go up the mountain. However, we did go around this beautiful blue reservoir... making our own trails, sliding down rocks, wading through prickly vines... what an adventure!

Sunday I read Jean de Florette for class all day. It's by Marcel Pagnol and takes place right in Provence. It's actually really depressing. I'll tell you more when I write the obligatory post I've been meaning to do about my classes and daily life. But my daily life, while awesome, is not as exciting as...

Monday night, I went to see a movie in town with Clara, Brooke, Kyle, Kevin and Lez. We saw Omar m’a tuer, which was based on the true story of Omar Raddad, a Moroccan gardener who was accused of killing his boss. They found the woman’s body in her basement, where “Omar m’a tuer” was written on the wall in her blood (bad French for “Omar killed me”). Although the police arrested Omar immediately after the discovery, the circumstances were pretty weird. There was a lot of evidence that he hadn’t done it—his continual protestation of his innocence, but also the fact that the woman’s body was found in a weird contortion and it didn’t seem likely that she could have written that in the dark with her last energy. The police were pretty brutal toward Omar, because he was not French and because he didn’t speak French very well. And yet there were no other likely suspects for the murder. Omar was found guilty, and then pardoned partway through his sentence, and they don’t know any more even today. The movie itself covered the story of Omar at the same time as the story of a writer trying to prove Omar’s innocence. It provided commentary on the immigration issue, which is a big deal for France right now, and also on the justice system of course. It was very intense—graphic at times, emotional at other times, but ultimately very compelling and fascinating.

Other notes: French movie theaters don’t have the big popcorn poppers. That’s what I want! I bought a little tub of prepopped salted popcorn, which turned out not to have butter. It was actually pretty good and certainly healthier, but still a disappointment. French movie theaters also don’t have previews, which is pretty cool. And I understood the entire movie all the way through so I was really proud of myself.

Tuesday there was a free concert on the Cours Mirabeau (the main street in Aix) with excerpts from La Traviata. Every summer Aix has a big opera festival, and La Traviata is the headliner this year. I’m going to see one, possibly two other operas while I’m here. But anyway, for the free concert they set up chairs in the street facing the statue of the Bon Roy René, the good king René who supported education and arts in Provence during the Middle Ages. If you’d gotten your ticket online, which Cara had done for us, you got to sit in the chairs; if not, you could still stand around and listen. It was really amazing to me how they were able to close off the busiest street in town for opera. You go, France!

I don’t know a whole lot about opera or La Traviata, but it was beautiful. We were sitting kind of far back, so I couldn’t see particularly well but I just listened and thought and found the whole thing very soothing.

The least blurry picture I could take.

Wednesday I procrastinated for most of the day. It's hard to motivate yourself to do homework in the summer. I had a big presentation to do for today (Friday) in archéologie on the Battle of Alalia, so I was supposed to work on that because the past two nights had been so busy. I didn't really do much of note, but you'll be glad to know that I gave my presentation this afternoon and it went well!

Thursday I was planning to focus on my presentation, but my host mom told me that we were going to her friend's house for dinner. This is the friend who's hosting Kate and Elle, two other girls in the program. So I finished my presentation after class, wandered around downtown with Kyle to kill time and met my host mom around 7. Dinner was delicious and really fun! One of my host mom's friends from the barbecue the first day came too. We were there until about 11. So late! Oh France you have such silly ideas about dinner.

And that brings us to today, Friday, and I'm probably going to go to the movies with Cara and Kyle, and then maybe go out. It's been a long week but a good one!

Being impulsive

I’ve been trying to identify some sort of theme around which I can assemble the various things that have happened since Friday, when I last wrote. Of course, the longer I wait the more keeps happening, which makes this task even harder. But I think I’m going to write about impulsivity—être impulsif (impulsive,  if you are a girl). It’s not going to make a whole lot of sense but just go with it; I worked it all out on my walk home from school.

I think I’m a relatively cautious person. Well, I make snap decisions, but they’re always right. For example, the fall of my senior year of high school I visited Washington and Lee, a school that I liked but had not considered too seriously, and decided to apply early decision. Within about a week, if I’m remembering correctly, I had applied; and I never finished the common app for my other schools. A year later, I rushed and joined Pi Phi, the sorority that took me on my very first rush date (Sweet Things with Shreya and Erika!). A year after that, I was sitting in a French class with another Pi Phi, Stephanie, when she told me to study abroad with the Institute for American Universities, and I didn’t research any other programs. My Meyers-Briggs type is ENFJ, which means that I feel what I should do based on my intuition and then judge—just go with it. (Well, that might not be the full story but the internet’s down right now and by the time I’m posting this tomorrow I won’t want to do the research, so let’s just assume that’s what it means.) Basically, I applied early decision to W&L for the same reason that I write in brightly colored pen and sometimes cook dinner without a recipe: I don’t make mistakes. I like making decisions quickly and I like them to be right.

But I do make mistakes, as anyone who’s tried to decipher my notes can tell. I’m terrified of failure and of not being sure about something. That’s the part of me that isn’t impulsive at all. A lot of the time, I’m completely sure. This is the school for me; this is the sorority I want; this is the right amount of vanilla extract for chocolate chip cookies. But if I’m not sure, I’ll hold back. If I don’t know how to respond to a tricky email, for example, I won’t. It’s not good, but it’s what I do.

That’s why I can’t fully explain why I applied to this program so late. I was so set, as of January 2010, on studying with IAU for summer 2011. I even had the date they opened applications (February 2011) marked on my calendar. But I didn’t apply until May. I know what you’re thinking. How can waiting until two weeks before the application deadline for a well-established, prestigious, school-recognized academic study abroad program, to which you had been planning to apply for a year, and that is in a stable Western European country you’ve already visited twice and whose language you have been studying since you were fourteen possibly be impulsive? But for me, waiting that long to know for sure what I was going to do that summer was positively reckless.

I like to blame it on winter term. I’ve had plenty of rough times at W&L, even though it’s perfect. There was fall term 2009, when I had a parasite that went undiagnosed for over a month; and there was spring term 2010, when I was devastated about Andrew graduating and Eleanor being in Ireland. After all, the only perfect term ever has been spring term 2009, and even that had a few rainy days. But nothing can possibly compare, in both scope and in number of truly awful things, to this past winter term. Even though it was the semester I got engaged to the love of my life, when I think back what I remember is being overwhelmed all the time. There were daily challenges and annoyances, and there was true tragedy. I’m not going to go into the details, because most people reading this know already, but it was terrible.

So the short story is that I didn’t apply to IAU earlier because I didn’t have time. The long story is that I didn’t apply earlier because everything was busy going wrong. Plus, I think part of me expected not to get in and to be home doing nothing all summer, so I wanted to prolong my ignorance on the matter. But ultimately, just like surviving winter term made me come out stronger, this program (and even the fact that I applied to it at the last minute) have made me grow up a little more.

Because I did get in and I went, knowing absolutely nobody on my program or even in the city. Whenever people asked me if I had a friend who was going with me or anything, I would laugh it off, but of course I was scared. I hadn’t really given myself the time to mentally prepare, to make lists of what to pack, to read books in French… instead I’d just basically packed and left. That’s what it felt like, at least. But I’m not the kind of person who just up and leaves the country! This was a solid decision based in fact, right? After all, I’m going to speak French; I’m not going to ‘find myself’ or anything like that. I know myself! Polonius would be proud of how true I am to mine own self!

Well, I do know myself, but I think coming on this program in the circumstances I did has helped me to know more about myself. My dear friend Cathryn’s mom—my other mom, really—told me that I would grow up so much while I was here. At the time, I thought I was perfectly grown up, but also I’ve been thinking that since I started kindergarten and decided not to go by Kate anymore. Basically, Cat’s mom was right. All the new things that I’ve done and tried here have pushed and pulled me in various directions, and I’ve been able to be open to all of them. (I even tried lamb—which I decided to hate in elementary school. I still hate it, because as we know I am always right, but hey, I tried it.) I like to think that if I’d applied in February like I’d planned, I would still be willing to keep hiking even though I knew I was on the wrong trail up the mountain, but maybe I wouldn’t have taken it in stride as well. (Pun.) I don’t know, but another enduring characteristic of mine is persistent, overthought optimism, so we’re just going to keep going with this. Almost missing a deadline has made me a better person. There we have it.

Impulsivity was supposed to be the theme and I was going to tell you, dear reader who probably has no interest in being my friend anymore now that you know I’m actually crazy, about all the exciting things I’ve been doing since I last wrote. But this is certainly long enough, especially for a post with no pictures of pretty Provence. ("And what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?") So I’m going to call it quits, and in the next entry you will get the full stories on the hike, the movie and the free opera concert!