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.

The paradox of language choice

I love Wednesdays here. My only class starts at 5pm, so I get almost a mini-weekend in the middle of my week. I wake up late and usually spend the day cooking, cleaning, running errands or just sitting around listening to French radio.

So today I was walking around the downtown taking care of some stuff (getting cash for rent, obeying the French dentist's orders that I buy new toothpaste, etc) and I passed a store with South American jewelry and boxes calling to me from behind the glass. Luckily, my mother recently sent me all of my jewelry but couldn't fit the jewelry box in the package. A perfect excuse to feed my box habit, I figure. Plus, my birthday was a week ago. So I went in.

Little did I know that there would be major language complications waiting for me on the other side of the door. I have to admit that I've been bad the last few days; I've started hanging around a group of people of mixed nationalities, the key players being American, Irish, and Scottish. The problem, you see, is that all of these people speak English. Thus when I walked into the store I was surprised to find that my capacity to speak French had significantly dwindled since last week. The store owner was trying to explain something to me about the glass on a box that I was looking at and it was just not getting through. I was forced to explain that my French is terrible and that I wasn't understanding a word he was saying. He just sort of nodded and walked away, and I thought that would be the end of it.

After looking for a few more minutes I decided to buy the box with the mysteriously special glass and wordlessly indicated to the store owner that I had made my choice. As way of checkout chit-chat, he asked me if I spoke English (which, I might point out, is a ridiculous question. I can't even begin to describe to you how obviously American I am). I responded yes, and a bit of Spanish as well. This got him pretty excited, as he was from somewhere in Central or South America (the next few minutes confounded me enough that I didn't think to ask). He immediately switched gears on me and asked:

-Ud. habla espanol?

To which I replied:

-Erm, un poquito, oui.

That's about how the rest of our conversation went. It didn't help that he'd throw in a sentence or two of English every now and then. I somehow managed to stumble through about five minutes of conversation this way while he fought with the paper in the credit card machine. I'm still not sure how I accomplished this, it wasn't until this moment that I fully appreciated how disorienting it is to have someone speaking three separate languages at you simultaneously.

I walked out of the store absolutely braindead. A few hundred meters on the way back to my house I ran into a friend from class, a Taiwanese girl, and didn't have the mental capacity to understand that she was asking me where I'd been and whether I'd be in class later today. I still can't fully comprehend today's goings-on.

Lesson learned: Humans are meant to speak only one language at a time.

"Oh, salut."

Here's a cultural tidbit for you: in France, nobody knocks on bathroom doors; they just try it and see what happens. Consequently, the cleaning lady got a lovely view of me in my birthday suit the other day, much to both of our surprise. I guess it's a good thing that I don't have much modesty to speak of.

Note to self: lock doors more often.

Culture shock?

I've been feeling fairly isolated the last week or two. It took me some time to recognize that I was feeling this way, and once the word "isolation" came to me, a bell went off in my head: "DING DING! CULTURE SHOCK!"

Before we left the states, all of the study abroaders were given an informational packet by the good folks of CIEA, including a Book of Rules ("Please don't make all Americans look like idiots..."), contact information should we run into a crisis we can't handle, a list of everyone who was going abroad, yadda yadda. Hidden inside of this packet was a cheery green leaflet entitled "The Intercultural Adjustment Cycle". It has listed, step by step, 8 phases that every single person who travels abroad for an extended period of time will apparently experience. Of course my initial reaction, after briefly looking it over, was to think "Oh, so glad that they've figured out in detail every emotion that I'll be going through while I'm over there," and immediately banish it to the bottom of the pile with the rest of the silly, non-important documents. However, reading over it now there are a few passages that are fitting pretty well. Look:

...the novelty of a foreign culture wears off after a few weeks and most people enter a decline known as initial culture shock. Characteristics of this period are possible changes in sleeping habits, disorientation about how to work with and relate to others, and probably language dificulties and mental fatigue from speaking and listening to a foreign language all day.

And then, later:

At some point, however, the novelty wears off completely and the difficulties remain. Frustration increases, and a new and more pervasive sense of isolation can set in. Many times this period is accompanied by boredom and lack of motivation as the individual feels little stimulus to overcome the deeper and more troublesome difficulties he may be facing...

Disorientation: check. Language difficulties: check. Frustration, isolation, lack of motivation: check, check, check.

Of course, these passages come from two separate "stages", the first from "Initial Culture Shock" and the second from "Mental Isolation", separated by a positive period entitled "Surface Adjustment" which I just can't say whether I've encountered or not. I guess it was nice of them to try.

The thing is, the words "culture shock" imply to me that I should be having a negative/frustrated reaction to the culture. This doesn't appear to be the case--other than the fact that they let their dogs shit all over the sidewalks, I'm pretty okay with the French. Nor do I feel like these negative emotions are coming from living in a completely different culture--let's be honest, French culture isn't COMPLETELY different, it's all still pretty Western. If I were in Japan, maybe I'd buy it. I just don't feel like it's France that's doing this to me.

My difficulties seem to lie more in interpersonal relations. Never in my life have I felt this awkward. Sure, we're all a little awkward sometimes, some more than others, but now I feel as if I've taken it on as a personality trait. Granted, this is the first time that I've gone anywhere for an extended period of time without knowing a single person. I feel like I wasted too much time at the beginning being shy, and now that I've had enough of being alone to where I'll actually put myself out there, everyone's already formed into their own little cliques that I'm having a hard time breaking through. And that's just with the other Americans--I would absolutely love to develop real friendships with people who don't speak English, but it is just still so hard for me to communicate with them. Which, of course, makes me more uncomfortable and our interactions more awkward. Now, if I were looking at this situation from outside, I would tell myself to go for it, to be uncomfortable because it'll probably build character. But it's just that it's like this every single day. It wears down on a girl after awhile.

I'm trying to relax and let friendships develop at their own pace, but it's going slower than I'd like it to. On one hand I feel like I'm trying too hard, but on the other hand I feel like I should be trying harder. I can't remember ever being this unsure of myself.

Some days are better than others and I'm trying not to let it get me down too much. I'm sure that someday I'll look back on this as a wonderful learning experience, right?

Language?!

Language, as we all know, fascinates me. That a child's developing brain can automatically pick up, sort out, and reduplicate any language completely blows my mind. You don't even think about it, it just comes out naturally. And that linguists can map out the progress of language back over thousands and thousands of years is ridiculous--they've figured out the basic features of a language they call Proto IndoEuropean, which birthed a crapton of languages (in India and Europe, imagine that) that are spoken today. They're working towards a Proto-World. Maybe I'm just a nerd, but that completely blows me away.

You don't really realize what an essential tool language is until you're somewhere where you can't use it very well. After puberty, a person loses that magical ability that they once had to pick up and sort out languages. That's why someone can fail a foreign language class as easily as they can a math or science class, the information just doesn't stick as well. This little biological tidbit has caused me endless amounts of frustration; four-year-olds can speak French better than I can. Maybe it's just the American in me, but I feel like a person who can't use a language very well oftentimes comes across as less intelligent. Think about it: if you don't have language, how else do you convince someone that you're perfectly capable of higher thought? I say this not because I often think this of people who can't speak English well (I've tried to modify my perceptions of these people since starting to learn foreign languages), but because I feel dumb when I can't get basic points across in another language.

Interestingly enough, I haven't found the same attitudes towards foreign speakers here. Yes, the French make fun of me daily, but I feel like it's all in good spirit--instead of feeling belittled, I'm more inclined to laugh along with them. Maybe they're just more understanding of how difficult it is to learn a foreign language, since it's more common over here. It has to be--Europe is so compact and diverse; you have to learn at least a little of one or two extra languages unless you want to be stuck inside your tiny country for forever. Imagine if the East Coast, West Coast, Midwest, and Southern United States all had different languages--you'd be more inclined to learn them, because really, who wants to stay in the Midwest all their lives? (Well, lots of people actually, but that's besides the point.)
Maybe America's disinclination to study foreign languages and cultures is geographically-based. It's a fairly sizeable country with only two bordering neighbors, and other than that we're pretty isolated from everyone else. If there's so many distinct regions and cultures inside of our own country, why put up with the hassle to go somewhere else?
I still can't fully understand it, personally. In my book, Americans are still lazy and need to get off their asses and go experience the rest of the world.

Big tangents aside, I'm feeling more and more comfortable here with my terrible French as I get used to the fact that this culture doesn't think I'm (very) dumb for not being able to speak their language. I'm trying, right?

Another thing that's ridiculously interesting to me is speaking French with non-native, non-English speakers. First of all, it's interesting in its own right to talk to someone from the other side of the world; they tend to see things radically different from the way you do. But there's something else: just listening to the way they try to construct and pronounce the language gives you insight into how their native language is structured. For instance, when I speak French many times I'm translating in my head directly from English. If I'm speaking with my American friend, she'll understand me even if I'm making horrendous grammatical errors and my pronunciation is anything but French, because she's inclined or once was inclined to make the same mistakes that I do. However, if I'm talking to the Japanese girl that sits next to me in class, and neither of us have mastered French very well yet, there are big gaping holes in the conversation where I can't understand at all what she's saying, and vice-versa. I'm starting to figure it out--Japanese French, Chinese French, Arabic French--what grammatical errors they make, wrong sounds that they substitute for the right ones, etc. The first couple of weeks were pretty intense; I couldn't understand what half the people were saying in class. Now that I've started to figure it out, the linguistics nerd in me has started to piece together what might be some features of Japanese, or Chinese, or Arabic. Whereas up to now I've only been interested in Romance languages, I have a feeling that might change by the end of this trip.

I think that's enough of pouring my brain onto the internet for one day.

Better late than never...

So, I've decided to start a travel blog for the following reasons:

1) I now have two American friends that I know of who write regularly about their experiences here, and thought it might be a good idea
2) I often find myself with interesting observations about what's going on, but no one to share them with
3) I figured I'd probably regret it later if I didn't start one, as when I was in Costa Rica I didn't journal at all and now regret it.

So, I've already been here for a month, but I think it'll be nice to have somewhere to put all of said observations. Let's see how it goes, shall we?