"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!