Les tatouages?

I always have a hard time sticking to a tattoo idea, which is why I like to wait for quite some time before considering actually getting one. Consequently, I have no tattoos. However, an idea recently struck me.

I'm thinking about starting a collection. Since it looks like I'm going to be traveling quite a bit, learning languages, etc, I think it'd be cool to get a tattoo for places that I've been, or languages that I've learned, or something. Life experiences, that sort of thing. This idea came to me while I was in Costa Rica as well, but all the tattoo parlors I saw down there were sketchy as hell. Since I only have a month left here, I should probably more deeply consider this idea.

If I got one here, it would be something like this:

With the words "On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux." somehow worked in. Not sure about body placement. Inspiration comes from Le Petit Prince, perhaps my new favorite children's book/piece of philisophical litterature of all time.

Thoughts?

A rut.

I'm in a rut. It's less than two weeks before the semester ends, a little over a month before I leave the country, and I find myself sitting around here most of the time. Although I'm sure my French has greatly improved over the last fourish months, I still feel really limited in what I can express and understand. On one hand I wish I had more time here to learn the language and absorb the culture. On the other hand, I am so ready to go home. This is an attitude that I think I've picked up from a lot of the other students, most of whom have been here since October. That I can understand. I think it's a combination of everyone already finishing up their semesters back home, and the fact that most people will be leaving here as soon as exams end that make me more ready to leave. After my exams, I'll be staying around here a few days to say goodbye to everyone, then hopefully doing some traveling until I'm joined by my mother for a little over a week, then finally heading home. I'm sure that those last couple weeks of travel will reignite my passion for foreign cultures, just in time to go back to the good ol' US.

I need to get my idealism back sooner rather than later, wherever did that go?

A weekend in the countryside, no biggie.

This weekend I allowed myself to be bullied into going to a three-day birthday gathering somewhere in the countryside. The Frenchies were many, outnumbering the Anglophones at least 2.5 to 1 at any given time. Following are my thoughts/insights that have come from this little adventure:

1) The French countryside is beautiful. Taking buses/cars there and back, I got to see more of the landscape than I have on the 200+ mph TGV train. When I wasn't hanging on for dear life (the French manner of driving in the countryside is quite different than the American city driving that I'm used to), I couldn't help but stare out the window the entire time. The property on which the party was held was beautiful, too. Lots of open space. While I'll admit that I'm not really an outdoorsy person, it was quite nice to get out of the city for once. You don't really realize how clausterphobic city living can make you feel sometimes. The weekend was spent more outside than inside; lounging in the sun, watching the boys have silly masculinity-affirming competitions, barbecuing, dancing, drinking. At night we had a makeshift bonfire consisting of scrap wood, branches, and a bathtub. Although I have never in my life eaten so many sausages in such a condensed period of time, it was mostly an enjoyable way to pass a weekend.

2) Group dynamics were interesting to observe. It was a bit difficult for us to integrate with the Frenchies, mostly due to linguistic difficulties. I found it easier to talk to one or two of them at a time; that way, it was easier to focus on what was being said and they could more easily adjust their word choice/talking speed based on whether it looked like we knew what was going on. This method worked out quite well for me. I even spent an hour and a half talking to a guy about Romance language linguistics, after a few glasses of Soupe Angevine (a testimonial to the fact that I've chosen the right field of study: I still want to talk about it when I drink). Sitting with a group of more than three Francophones, however, did not go so well. When French people talk to each other, I find it frustratingly difficult to understand what's going on. I laugh the loudest at the simplest jokes, because they're the only ones I can understand. I feel like most of us had the same problem, which resulted in a lot of us-and-them separation. We acknowledged the fact that it was awkard for us to be sitting in one place while all the French people were somewhere else, but there seemed to be not much we could do to fix the situation. For my part, when I was feeling too separated from the rest of the party I'd walk around and try to catch a Frenchie alone, with varying degrees of success. This whole situation is another one that would have frustrated me a lot more had I not been having so much fun analyzing it. Nerd.

3) On a related note, France is making me realize more and more that I am not a people person. In a discussion on which family role we all play in our group, I was designated the "shy little sister" that just tags along on everything and doesn't say much. That's fairly accurate. It was mentioned several times over the weekend: "elle est très timide". As I said earlier, I had to be bullied into going to this thing, because the prospect of a three-day party, with 50 people, in the countryside sounded absolutely horrendous to me. It's not like I could have just walked home when I didn't want to be there anymore, a tactic that I use quite frequently in my normal partying experiences. Thankfully it was not nearly as bad as it could have been and was actually a mostly enjoyable occasion, but there were a fair share of instances where I wanted to crawl into a hole and not interact with anyone. I'm working on finding a balance where I can still be pleasant and conversational, even if I'm not the life of the party. It's a process. In any case, I'm looking forward to the next two weekends, where I'll be traveling to Paris and Normandy to see a couple of touring bands from the States. Alone. By myself.

4) Still in the field of social interaction, it's odd spending such a long time with people that you usually only see in several-hour increments. You get more sides of a person when you're with them for more than 24 hours. The good, the bad, the ugly. How they act in a big group versus one-on-one, right after waking up versus the middle of the night, drunk versus sober. I feel like I got to know a few people a lot better, and generally I like what I've found. Conversely (and this could also just be my distaste for social interaction), towards the end I found myself much more easily annoyed. Perhaps short time increments are better with some people.

All that aside, I think we could call this weekend a success. Made some new friends, practiced my French, and successfully integrated elements of a dance party and vacation-like R&R into a single weekend. My life's not so bad.

Putain de temps de merde.

I have been absolutely flabberghasted at how much the weather has been affecting my mood lately. I first noticed it in Spain, I think. I suppose you tend to take note of the weather more when you're walking around in it, traveling through it, and only have a limited supply of dry clothes and shoes. Unfortunately we got about half rain in our travels. Most of Barcelona was rainy, as well as almost all of Granada. As my travel buddy will tell you, I am much more optimistic and cooperative when I'm not cold and wet.

Exhibit A: Wet and cold in Granada. Jillian the travel buddy on the left.























Exhibit B: Our one sunny day in Barcelona.

























It seems to have held upon my return, as well, and I'm wondering if it was always like this or if this is a recent development. Spring can be beautiful in Angers, when it wants to be. There is an abundance of flowers everywhere you look, and it just has a really positive energy to it. The week I returned it was gorgeous, in the 70's at least, not a cloud in the sky. No matter how much drama was going on around me (and believe me, there was plenty), I was not phased. I was on top of the world.

As I look out the window now, it has just finished a 30-second bout of hail and is looking quite surly indeed. It's been raining for the last few days and is supposed to continue off and on through the rest of the week. Although the people-drama level around me has decreased significantly, I must say that I'm feeling lower than I was at this time last week.

Europe does rain differently than the Midwest, at least what I've gathered from my experiences here and what I've heard about Ireland. There are no storms; I have not heard thunder once since being here. I wouldn't actually mind a warm summer storm right now. At home I love standing by the back door, taking in the scents, watching the sidewalks flood. But here, it's just kind of cold and slow and miserable. On the upside, rain here seems to have more holes in it. If it's a rainy day in St. Louis, I will not see one patch of blue all day. Here, it will rain for ten minutes, then some patchy clouds will blow over, then it rains for twenty, then it hails for less than two minutes, then the sun peaks out again. Some geographical particularity is at play here. A weatherman could explain it to me, I'm sure.

I'm trying to analyze the situation and figure out why this has all of the sudden come to light. I've come up with three possible solutions:
1) It's genetic. My father is affected by moderate seasonal mood changes, although to my knowledge this has never been seriously diagnosed by anyone but my mother.
2) After being subjected to Mother Nature's disaffection for two weeks, I have become more aware of the weather and it continues to affect my mood regardless of the fact that I can now more easily escape from its effects.
3) I was so delighted with the warmth, sun and blue skies upon my return that it's now just that much more a slap in the face to once again be a victim of the cold and rain.

Whatever the case may be, I consider myself fortunate to have access to fixin's for onion soup, red wine, and streamable films on the internet.

Bad attitudes

Venting time.

Coming to France, I was looking forward to meeting tons of people from all over the world who share the same ideals about intercultural and international exchange with me. I've found plenty, don't get me wrong. But there are more people here with negative, ethnocentric, and indifferent attitudes than I thought there would be. I met more interesting people in less than two weeks of traveling Spain than in my first two months here.

It's most evident in my French classes. In every class there's at least one or two students (usually Americans, but not always) who speak only their own language, don't pay attention to what's going on, and at times seem almost annoyed to have to sit through another class. I can understand that, every once in a while, you'll have a bad day and going to class is the last thing you feel like doing. But all the time?

There's one girl, an American, who will only speak French if she's responding to a professor's question. She speaks English to everyone else. Even students of other nationalities--if they speak even a little bit of English and she knows it, she will refuse to speak French with them. And all through class, I'll hear her talking to her friend about how much this class is a waste of time, and so on. Not particularly helpful in an oral comprehension course to have the people sitting next to you constantly blabbering out negative energy. It's all I can do to put a mental wall between myself and them, so as to not allow my mental images of jumping up and stabbing them with a pen be realized.

I am here to learn. Sure, sometimes I'll be with English-speaking friends and, in casual conversation, it's easier to switch to our native language. Towards the end of the day, French gets tiring. But why on earth would you come to France and enroll in a language program, if you're going to put no effort into learning the language? You can hear the difference when these people are, goodness, forced to respond in class--it's atrocious. Two months here and you're still speaking like you would in a high school course?

It really just serves as a reminder for me of why I'm here, and as an incentive to try even harder. Maybe they don't have the same goals that I do. In any case, I am intent on making the best of the two months I have left. Game on.

Mezclando des langues

More about language, Anna? Golly gee, you are so creative.

Seriously, though. Traveling around Spain the last two weeks for break, my poor brain has been fried. I'm not sure how people come to be fluent in 5+ languages, I can't even handle two.

Upon arrival to Barcelona, my travel buddy came to meet me at the bus station with two Spaniards she had met at the hostel earlier that day. This girl is ridiculously fluent in Spanish (although she won't admit it herself), so on the walk back to the hostel she had no problems keeping up a conversation with them, joking around about her Mexicanized Spanish or marveling at the quantity of prostitutes on the streets as we made our way through the red light district. I, however, did not have such an easy time.

Every. Word. Came. Out. French.

I've decided that at this point in time, I have two language modes in my head: English mode, and foreign language mode. The latter seems to be completely overloaded with French at the moment; Spanish is packed away in boxes in some dark closet, cold and forgotten. Upon trying to call it back to use, I've found that entire chunks of my Spanish knowledge have seemingly disappeared. I can't produce the language as easily anymore. Although I could understand it perfectly well, there would be words and verb conjugations and syntactical constructions that would come out completely wrong, if at all.

Although it got a little easier as the trip wore on (my first success being able to semi-fluently negotiate my way into Easter mass at the cathedral in Seville where my friends were already seated), I don't feel like I ever got back to the level I reached while in Costa Rica. I'm highly considering taking an upper-level Spanish class upon my return next semester, to force myself back into it. I'm hoping I haven't lost it for good.

This has me really wondering how things will go for me in the next few years. I'd like to go to Brazil for at least a year after I graduate, but will I lose my French while I'm down there? I suppose it goes to show that if you don't use it, you lose it, but how exactly does one keep up more than two foreign languages at a time? Although my career plan is fuzzy at best, I see myself doing something involving translation/interpretation somewhere down the road, after a few years' travel getting some more language experience under my belt. How best to gain new languages without losing the older ones in the process?

It'll take more dedication, I think. More motivation to seek out opportunities to practice, less shyness and fear of making a fool of myself. This is what I want to do, right?

Right. Go team.

Dîner à la française

A couple of times now, I have been invited to dine with the family of a good French friend on Sunday nights. Before the first time, I was a bit wary. Having had a few iffy experiences with French family dinners before this, along with my recent bouts of social anxiety and awkwardness, the prospect of throwing myself into the lion's den and making a fool of myself yet again hardly sounded appealing. However, seeing as this was a good friend, and that I wouldn't be the only English-speaker there, I decided to give it another shot.

A typical French family dinner is a bit different than those in the States. Generally (and I think this is all over Europe), they'll eat a couple of hours later--8pm seems to be the average time. This particular family starts eating dinner at 9 or 10, which from what I understand is a bit later than most. Notice that I said "starts eating", that's very important.

The French typically follow a specific set of courses more strictly than Americans do. First there will be something light--bread, pâté, mayonnaise, asparagus, and slices of ham are all things that I've seen so far. This may also be substituted or in addition to a soup course. Next comes the main course, usually some sort of meat (I've had chicken, beef, and veal) and potatoes, or a quiche, or whatever. I'm sure there are plenty of options here, this is just my own experience. After that's gone (be sure to wipe up any remaining sauce/gravy/crumbs with your chunk of baguette), there will often be a small cheese plate, and then a dessert. This all comes with a glass, or two, or three, of wine.

The trick, you see, is to not completely stuff yourself by the middle of the main course, which is what I always seem to do. I just cannot eat that much food in one sitting. It gets to the point where it's painful to finish what's left on my plate, which, at the beginning of the meal, looked like a reasonably small amount of food. I have not yet had a family meal here where I was able to finish my food. I would have succeeded the other night, had an older friend of this family not decided that I needed more food and plopped another hunk of meat onto my almost-clean plate, despite my jumbled protests. I do count myself lucky that this family has stopped after the main course both times I've eaten with them.

My sweet tooth laments the fact that dessert has to come so late in the meal, however.

This entire process takes around two hours, average. I like this. While my previous dining experiences here had been a bit awkward, with this particular family I feel completely at ease, even when I don't understand exactly what's going on. Because it's such a close-knit family, and because both of the kids are basically adults, it seems that no topic is off-limits. I can't say whether this is normal for the French or not. In any case, it's really quite an enjoyable way to pass an evening, listening to them tell stories and banter back and forth. Even the smoke from the constant chain of cigarettes doesn't bother me too much. (Side note: the first time that I came over, the mother was almost shocked to learn that I didn't smoke. "Really? Not at all?")

Even after the food is gone, the merriment continues. The other night, for example, a guitar was brought out and at least another hour was passed drinking wine and playing songs in French and English in the kitchen. "Hotel California" seems to be a key player.

I got home that night at around 1:30, an hour and a half later than I needed to go to sleep to wake up for my class in the morning. Usually this would bug me, but I was really just ecstatic to have had such a wonderful evening. I hope there are more to come; the mother has promised to have me over earlier next time to show me how she prepares the meal, and to write down the recipes for me (in French, of course).

I'm pretty okay with the way things are going.