First Days

Posted on June 3, 2019 by A French American Life

I’m writing a series of posts on a trip I took to France 15 years ago. This is the second installment. See the introduction here and the first entry here.

My flight arrived in Paris the next morning, my third visit to Charles de Gaulle airport. The first two visits had brought me to tears, so excitement over my arrival was tinged with a touch of dread. I’d splurged on hiring a driver through the school for transportation to my host family’s flat. I exited the one-way doors into the waiting room where people clustered near the door, several of them holding signs. I spotted the sign with my name and the name of my school, held aloft by a large brown man wearing a dark suit and a broad smile.

I smiled back and approached him, then nerves got the best of me. My brain was muddied from lack of sleep and the sudden realization that now I had to use my French. And I couldn’t, in that moment, remember anything. Even the basics. So I pointed to the sign and then pointed to my chest, Tarzan-style minus the grunting.

He nodded and his grin broadened. He said something in French that I didn’t get, then took my two huge suitcases (packing light was a skill I had not yet developed) and led me to his car. I settled into the soft leather back seats and watched out the window, eagerly scanning for my first glimpse of Paris. Early morning grey skies hung low. The two-lane freeway heading south toward the city could be a freeway anywhere, yet was distinctly French with all the Peugots and Renaults, the squishy little vans (camions), the narrow long license plates with the large “F.” France.

“Parlez-vous Français ?” The driver tilted his chin to peer at me through the rear-view mirror.

“Oui. Un petit peu.”

“D’où venez vous ?” He asked me. Where are you from?

“Je viene de Californie.”

“California! Arnold Schwartzenegger!” He laughed a deep, rich laugh.

I couldn’t help but join him. We were all still laughing about our recently elected Terminator-turned-governor. Our Governator.

“Et vous? D’où venez vous ?” I asked him. His language was sing-songy – not the typical French accent.

“Vous parlez bien ! Avec un accent tres jolie !”

It was fun being the one with the pretty accent, and being able to understand what he was saying to me. I could feel myself blushing, though, because in that one sentence, I’d just spoken one of the easiest phrases, one of the first every French student learns, and had now nearly depleted my arsenal of French conversation. I knew a few hundred random vocabulary words and a handful of phrases, but no one ever responds to your textbook questions with the textbook answers, leaving the typical traveler stranded before a conversation can begin.

“De Martinique.”

Huh? “Où ?”

“The Caribbean. My family move here when I have three years.”

“Oh! You have a lovely accent.”

He laughed, again that rich, warm laughter. We passed over another small rolling hill and the industrial outskirts of Paris came into view.

“How long in Paris?” he asked me.

“Three months.”

“Three months! Your French will be completely current! Completely current!”

I smiled. “Couramment” was a French word for “fluent,” I assumed that was what he was getting at. It was an endearing mistake and an easy one to make. I wasn’t laughing at him – his English beat my French by far.

“I hope so,” I said. Fluent in French. What would that be like?

We entered the outskirts of the city. He pointed out Sacre Coeur perched on a hilltop and I caught a glimpse of the tip of the Tour Eiffel before he could point it out to me, jutting out of a maze of narrow streets and tall buildings. I sat up straighter in my seat. Paris unleashes a vitality in me. And here I was.

He exited le Périphérique, the freeway that forms a circle around Paris, and we dove into the city’s streets. It was still early on Saturday morning and the streets were nearly deserted. We sped through the seventeenth arrondissement, past brownstone buildings that hugged the narrow streets and drew me into an intimate welcoming embrace. I quickly lost all sense of direction but I knew we were heading in general toward the center of the city. I scanned the street signs – placards on the corners of the buildings. We moved from the seventeenth into the eighth arrondissement: getting closer. He turned onto Boulevard Malesherbes: my street. I leaned forward to better see the place I would be calling home for the next few months. I willed the car to keep going, wanting to be closer, closer, closer to the center, the heart of the city. The further we went, the closer we would be to the Paris I knew: The Latin Quarter, the Louvre. Keep going, keep going…. The numbers continued to count down and then the driver slowed and stopped. He pointed to one of many sets of wooden double doors embedded in the walls of the buildings.

I was early. Very early. I’d told my host family to expect me between ten and eleven, anticipating trouble at Charles de Gaulle. The thought that things could go smoothly there had never occurred to me. But here I was, and it wasn’t even 8:30 a.m.

“I’m really early,” I said. “I told my host family 10:00 or 11:00.”

The driver looked at the clock in his car. “Yes. You are early. A minute or a minute and a half.”

He put my suitcases on the curb and flashed a brilliant smile. “Welcome in Paris.”

I thanked him and he left. There was no way I was going to barge in on my host family that early; not the first impression I wanted to make. So I settled onto a bench near the building’s entrance with my backpack tucked under my arm and my suitcases pulled close to me. There I sat, exhausted, but unable to keep the smile from my face, for this wonderfully strange street was to be my home. Soon it would be familiar. A woman walked by with two tiny, white, curly-haired dogs on leashes. She wore a long wool jacket and a shimmering scarf around her neck. She gave me a curt nod and eyed my suitcases.

A few minutes later a man walked by, cigarette pressed between his lips. He, too, eyed my suitcases. I began to feel self-conscious and wondered if my host family could see me from one of the windows overhead. Children with backpacks ambled by, some accompanied by adults. Many French schools – lycées – don’t hold classes on Wednesdays so the children go to school for part of the day on Saturdays. I saw a jogger, which gave me hope that I might find a place in the city to run after all. I could see that I was in a quieter arrondissement populated with locals, families, and no tourists.

It began to drizzle. The people on the streets quickened their paces or pulled out umbrellas. My umbrella was buried somewhere in one of my bags, along with my jacket. Funny how the same weather back home would make me cold and irritable. But here – I was so excited that even the drizzle seemed novel. The naked trees lining the boulevard offered no protection, but I didn’t mind. While the Parisians scowled at the rain as though it was beating them down, for me it was a baptism, a new beginning.

A man opened the wide double doors from the inside then disappeared. A moment later, he squeezed out the narrow stone corridor in a Peugeot. I looked down the street and realized that all those double doors that I’d assumed led directly into the buildings were actually driveways that sloped down to the street. He drove away, leaving the doors propped open.

I grew groggy there on the bench, waiting for enough time to pass so that I could politely enter my new home. Activity began to pick up around me – shops were opening, more people were out on the streets. The drizzle stopped, but only for a moment, then it began again with a renewed vigor. I eyed the doors for a moment then made up my mind. I gathered my things and walked through them. Inside was a small courtyard where the clouded daylight shone in. One hundred and fifty years ago, when these buildings were constructed, this would have been where the carriages stood. Now it was filled with a half-dozen cars. I stood in the entrance, a modern glass door on either side of me. To my right the door seemed be to a small office. To my left, a wide curved staircase with maroon carpet hugged a small elevator. The old kind, open, constructed of metal bars. A panel near the door had names with buzzers. I found my family’s name, took a deep breath, checked my watch one last time, and pressed the bell.

Immediately I heard a buzz and opened the door. Above me on the landing – the first floor – a large double door opened, spilling out two young teenage boys and a woman in a bathrobe, her hair in mild disarray. The boys called something to me that I didn’t understand at all, but finally realized they were pointing at the elevator. Ascenseur. Feeling every bit the awkward American with a serious overpacking problem, I struggled to fit my two suitcases and myself into the elevator. One of the boys ran down the steps and helped me. I could feel my face turning red – I’m a redhead, so this happens with regularity – and a sheen of sweat dotted my forehead. I arrived on the first floor and the two boys each grabbed a suitcase for me, despite my protests. I was so embarrassed to have so much stuff with me, even though I was staying for months that crossed three seasons. I didn’t want anyone else to feel how heavy my bags were. The two of them – Thomas and Antoine* – crowded around me firing out questions, but when they realized I couldn’t understand them, they disappeared into the bowels of the house. I found out later that they went to school on Wednesdays, so they had their weekends free. My host mom, Juliette, greeted me with a small but kind smile and showed me to my room. I caught only a glimpse of the front rooms – a foyer the size of an oversized master bedroom back home, a dining room with a full formal table, and a living area the size of my apartment in San Diego, with couches and chairs all in Victorian style.

She led me down a long narrow hallway and into a small cozy room. It had a single bed on one side with two large cupboards overhead. I made a mental note to be careful to not whack my head on it, knowing full well that I was destined to whack my noggin with regularity. She pulled a desktop down from the wall, pointed out the wooden wardrobe, the TV on an arm high on the wall, and the phone, all the while talking in what might as well have been jibberish for all I was getting from it. She then led me further down the hall to point out the bathroom. Actually, the shower and sink room. The toilet (without a sink) was at the other end of the hall that was a good 100 feet in length. The kitchen opened just off the end of the hall, and she invited me to sit down and asked me if I’d like something to drink. That much, thankfully, I understood, and asked for some water. We talked for a bit, the easy stuff that I could easily answer: where are you from, how long have you been studying French, how long will you be staying. I could pick up words here and there, and an occasional phrase – enough to know when I was being asked a question, at least. She complimented my French, which made me feel at once proud and insecure. Proud that I’d impressed her, and insecure with the knowledge that soon the façade would crumble and she’d discover the truth: as I sat there nodding and smiling, I really didn’t understand much of anything. I gave her the gift I’d brought: A San Diego travel book, with ridiculously outdated photos: I hadn’t seen haircuts and swimsuits like those since the eighties. But it was one of the best I’d seen. She thanked me and later I found it in a stack in their living room along with similar books from all over the world. She introduced me to the student staying in one of the other bedrooms off the hall. Katyana, from what I could gather, came from Russia and was studying law at Sorbonne. She had a fresh, bright face and a tight smile, and spoke in rapid fire French to me. I faked it as best I could.

Charles, my host dad, arrived. He was large with a cherubic face and booming voice. He handed me the key – a heavy chunk of metal with real teeth – old school. He beckoned me to follow him to the front door, where he demonstrated how the key worked and spoke in the same rapid-fire French that Juliette had. I watched him and got from his demonstration (and certainly not from his words) that the door knob didn’t actually turn, and once the key rotated and clicked, the door was unlocked and I could just push it open. He handed me the key and looked at me expectantly, so I nodded and thanked him.

“Non,” and he said something else while gesturing to the door. I realized then that he wanted me to try it. It seemed overkill, but I humored him and was embarrassed to find that I couldn’t get the door open. I rotated the key first one direction and tried the door, but it didn’t budge, so I went counterclockwise and still nothing. Luckily, he laughed heartily and said some French gibberish, re-demonstrated, then had me take another turn. I got the door open that time – I hadn’t turned the key far enough before.

So, I was set. I had a key, I had a room, I had a home. I settled in – unpacked my bags and washed up. Then, armed with a city map and a drawn map from Stéphane, I found my way to the metro to go visit his parents. When I got there, his mother was intent on feeding me, then his mom and dad took me to find a cell phone. Stéphane’s mom cooked me a delicious dinner and then they drove me back to my host family’s place, assuring me that I could call them if I had any problems, and if I did have a problem it wouldn’t be a problem, because they would help me. I felt immediately at ease being so welcomed by both my host family and my boyfriend’s parents.

That evening, the sun finally peeked out of the Parisian cloud cover. The window in my room looked out over the enclosed cobblestone parking area, and just beyond the building my window faced, I could see the tips of the gothic spires from the nearby church.

The next day, I explored Paris, found my school, didn’t find the crêpe I so desperately craved – it was Sunday and not much was open. I explored the book stalls along the Seine and got caught in the rain. I realized I was talking to myself in simple French phrases all day, narrating my every move: Où est la rue ? Je traverse le pont. Je prends le métro. Je trouve l’école. I encountered a few French people: A flirtatious man who saw me studying my metro map and asked me first in French and, upon realizing I couldn’t understand, in thickly-accented English, “You are looking for me in the metro?” then pointing at my legs and telling me I’m very nice. One friendly girl in the metro saw me studying my map and stopped to show me how to get to where I wanted to go. I was consistently amazed at how well everyone spoke English. I kept trying to speak in French, but they all responded in English, even as I stubbornly continued in my broken French accented by hand gestures.

I decided, that Sunday, that each day I needed to try something new. Visit a site, wander down a street I didn’t know, eat something weird. Something, anything, as long as it was new.

I got back home early that evening, exhausted and wanting nothing more than to crash in my little bed and snuggle under the covers with a book. But when I arrived, the double wooden doors were closed and locked. Shit. Or merde. Whichever way I looked at it, it wasn’t good. A panel to the left of the door, inside the archway, was obviously for entering a code. A code I didn’t have. Added to the urgency was the fact that Paris is distinctly short on public bathrooms, and I didn’t know how much longer I’d be able to wait on the street. I looked up and down, but no one was anywhere in sight. I paced back and forth in front of the door and thought briefly about calling out to the windows above the door, which belonged to my host family. I settled for pacing in a spot where they’d see me if they happened to look out the window. Lucky for me, a kid on a skateboard skidded to a stop and punched in a code. In half French, half English, and a lot of hand gestures, I tried to ask him what the code was, and if I could follow him in. His expression didn’t adjust to acknowledge me in one way or another, but he did let me follow him through the doors. My host family was gone, but Katyana was in her room studying. I grabbed my French-English dictionary and went to her. I looked up a few words and then asked her for the code. After a few tries and a lot of hand gestures, I finally asked her if she spoke English. She looked annoyed, but nodded.

“Charles didn’t give you the code?”

“No. I was locked out for a while just now.”

She raised her eyebrows, then wrote it down for me.

“Merci beaucoup,” I said. I went to my room and crashed.

*Names of most people in this story have been changed.

Getting There

Posted on May 9, 2019 by A French American Life

Along the Seine

I’m writing a series of posts on a trip I took to France 15 years ago. This is the first installment.

Soon after I graduated from my physical therapy program and moved to San Diego, I met a group of French exchange students. I began to study French from a CD (which does not get you far, I quickly discovered) and managed to squeeze in a ten-day trip to visit them in France. There were four of them, all male, one of whom I had a brief, whirlwind romance with. I joked that my visit was my own French ElimiDate (does anyone remember that show?). Having four great-looking French guys show me around France was, well, no complaints here. The romance was short-lived, but in the way that life works, it rekindled my passion for France and the French language.

I signed up to take French night classes before a long stay in Paris was on my radar. The classes met in a small language school perched atop a row of shops and constructed of wooden planks. Trees and potted plants crowded the wooden patio between the small classrooms, giving the sense of being in an enormous tree house. Postcards from France and posters of basic phrases and verbs plastered the walls of our classroom, hiding the peeling, yellowed wall paper. Lumpy chairs circled a glass coffee table, the wine-colored shag carpet was thick and clumpy. It looked, and smelled, like a grandmother’s musty living room. But it became my twice weekly escape to the exotic.

Madame Loiseau hailed from Bretagne, France, and she guided us patiently through each lesson, gently correcting our errors, never wincing or criticizing our eardrum-grating accents. We learned the basics of conversational French while reading a play created for our class about Angelique, an American girl traveling to France to write a book on Paris (to which the douanier says, “another book about Paris? There are already enough books about Paris!”). She encounters a suave Frenchman named Jean who sweeps her off her feet, saying things like “How lucky I am to have met such a charming young lady,” and “tomorrow we will celebrate the ‘tu’ (meaning the decision to drop the formal ‘vous’ in favor of the more familiar ‘tu’) with champagne and a kiss.” Ooh la la.

But my favorite Jean quote was: “In France, we always say, ‘I work in order to live, but I don’t live in order to work.’”

We toured Paris with Jean and Angelique and we always ended the class by singing a French song. My favorite was Joe Dassin’s Aux Champs Elysees. That spirited little tune, with its trumpeted “ba-da-da-da-da” evoked cobblestone streets and sidewalk cafes, wine and cheese, leisure and beauty. Cliché though that song might be, it still put a grin on my face every time I belted it out with my class.

My initial plan involved about 3 months in a French Language Immersion Program followed by traveling around Europe for another 2-3 months. Springtime in Paris: it had a nice ring to it. Songs and movies have been made for this simple yet lovely phrase. I would head over the Atlantic two weeks before I turned thirty. Thirty. Wow. I don’t know what I thought I’d be doing when I turned thirty. I’d always assumed I’d be “on track” with life, have a career I cared about, perhaps own a home, perhaps be married, perhaps have children. I certainly didn’t think I’d still be searching for myself, still trying to figure things out. Thirty sounded too old to be doing that.

In retrospect, perhaps I’d already “found” myself. After all, I knew without a doubt that I would not be doing something ordinary for my thirtieth birthday. No coworkers singing happy birthday over a Von’s grocery store cake during lunch break. No party where I drunkenly stumbled into the start of my fourth decade. I wanted the Tour Eiffel framed by green blooming trees and blue skies. Cobblestone streets, creperies tucked beneath tall stone buildings, windows with overflowing flowerboxes. Planning the trip took some of the dread out of the big three-oh looming before me. Now, I actually looked forward to it. Paris. That’s where I would turn thirty. Rejecting the notion that it was time to settle down, be responsible, start adulting. No, thirty would be a reawakening for me. In the city I loved.

After researching I chose a program: Eurocentres, located in the heart of Paris: The Quartier Latin. I opted to live with a host family; mostly because it was the cheapest option. Plus, part of me was nervous about traveling alone. I’d done solo traveling and it had led to some of the most empowering and beautiful moments of my life, as well as some of the most frightening and disempowering. The idea of a home base where people would notice if I didn’t show up seemed… smart.

Because life likes to throw curve balls, while I was working 50-60 hour weeks, saving every bit I could, and fully committed to my plan, I met a guy. A French guy. And I fell madly in love. I knew it would be awful to leave him to take this trip I’d been planning. I also knew that I had to.

A few weeks before I left, I got my confirmation letter from the program. I studied it and then showed it to my boyfriend, Stéphane, wanting his confirmation that I’d understood the French correctly.

“I think they have a four-year-old,” I said. I’ve always loved kids, but I was in a stage of life where little kids were a whole lot less interesting than a club pumping out the best hip hop or a quiet Saturday morning in bed with a good book. I was trying hard to not be disappointed that I would be living with a four-year-old.

“Um, no.” Stéphane was looking over the letter.

“No kids?” I said.

“No, they have four kids.”

“Four kids? What? Are you serious?”

I immediately envisioned getting roped into being an au pair, unpaid. Shit.

The rest of the news was good: I would be in an apartment along Boulevard Malesherbes, in the 8^th arrondissement, which meant nothing to me at the time but turned out to be a rather swanky quarter very centrally located, close to metro stops, Gare St. Lazare, and a gorgeous park (Parc Monceau).

Saying goodbye to Stéphane was excruciating. I hadn’t had many moments of second guessing the decision to take this trip, but second guesses bombarded me as he drove me to the airport. Why would I leave San Diego, and this amazing man who I was completely in love with? What kind of nut job would risk a relationship with the person she wanted to marry? We’d tiptoed around the subject once or twice, but in my mind, I knew. I had no doubt in my mind that I wanted to spend my life with him. So of course, by the time we got to the airport, I was sobbing. It’s testimony to the strength of our relationship and his love and understanding of me that he gently told me, “Of course you should go. You’re going to have a great time. We’re going to be okay.”

I remember looking back at him as I walked through security and hating that I was leaving him, considering running back, knowing I was open to the changes that would happen in my life over the next months and what that might mean for us while desperately hoping we would survive the separation. (Happy spoiler – we did).

Irresponsible had never been a word I’d used to describe myself. Well-organized, yes. A planner. Solid and reliable. I’d done my due diligence on this trip in terms of planning, saving, and preparing for it.

Then, I quit my job and left my home to embark on adventure with no plan for what would happen after. Only the awareness that I would, in all likelihood, be blowing through the entirety of my savings account. I felt a giddy pride in letting the spirit of adventure take over, in defining what my life would be outside of the conventions and expectations I had previously roped myself down with. In approaching my life with a “who knows what will happen next.”

It felt reckless and I loved that I was doing it.

Springtime in Paris

Posted on March 18, 2019 by A French American Life

Fifteen years ago, this month, I quit my job and set off for Paris. On March 19, in fact.

It was everything I dreamed it would be. And more.

A lot led up to that trip. Like many who work in the health care field, I was Burnt. Out. I was angsting my way through a quarter(ish)-life crisis. I hated the idea of turning thirty and being in a situation that felt closer to hamster-on-a-wheel than to the bright future of a rewarding career and the balanced life that I’d envisioned in grad school.

In high school, I signed up for French as my second language but my mom refused to sign my electives form until I changed it. “You live in southern Arizona. You’ll never have any occasion in your life to use French. You need to learn Spanish.” So I did. And then I married a Frenchman. I like to remind her of this.

I’d long been fascinated with the French language and with France. Before I went to graduate school, I’d taken a month to backpack through Europe. France had been one of the best parts of my trip. Later, while living in San Diego, I met a bunch of French exchange students who I bonded with, and so I picked up a language CD and started trying to impress them. My French, then, was decidedly not impressive.

Mostly, I ached for adventure. Other than my month in Europe, I’d been living a nose-to-the-grindstone sort of life. My employer at the time considered a three-day weekend (where I clumped my work into four 10-hour days to get Friday off) a vacation that he had benevolently granted me, despite the hardship it entailed on his business. This was better than my first job where I was told a few weeks in that while they couldn’t authorize any vacation time as they were much too busy of a clinic, they would gladly consider allowing me to take an hour or two of my vacation time, as I earned it, if I needed to see a doctor or dentist.

It didn’t take long for me to realize something needed to change. I’d worked since my senior year of high school – all my summers and spring breaks were filled with jobs, and by the time I was a junior in college, I was working 20, sometimes as many as 30 hours a week while taking a full load of classes. Spring Break partying on the beach had never been on my calendar.

The French exchange students I met were having the time of their lives – traveling, learning a new language, experiencing a new culture, meeting friends from all over the world. Some were in college, some were older and learning English to help with their careers. I did some research and saw that I, too, could do something similar, in France. In Paris.

To get there, I threw myself into work: I spent more than a year working two jobs (plunging myself into even higher levels of burn out, exacerbating the very problem I was trying to escape), diligently saving, eating cheap, wearing worn-out clothes, and doing whatever I could to maximize my savings. I was determined to be doing something amazing for my upcoming thirtieth birthday.

The whole idea defied the puritan nature I’d been raised to have: work hard, and play, maybe, if you have time. When I told my parents my plan, they were… unimpressed. My Dad’s first comment: “I don’t understand why you’re doing this. How is this going to help your career?” I answered, “It won’t. That’s not what this is about.” They were concerned, I get that. After all, I’d gone to grad school and had a good job that payed well and offered a promising career. I’d arrived. Right? My parents worried I was throwing that all away. As a physical therapist, I knew I wouldn’t struggle to find a job when I returned (I didn’t). I knew I’d be okay. I also knew that I wouldn’t be okay if I continued on as I was. I was exhausted. I needed more than the day to day grind. I needed an adventure. I needed to find some joie de vivre.

To complicate things, the dollar sank rapidly in value against the Euro during the first year after France adopted it, so my plan for a six month trip had to be pared down. I also had a new boyfriend – a French guy who by our third date I was pretty sure I was going to marry (he’s now my husband). Still, giving up this chance of a lifetime, this dream, wasn’t a consideration for me.

I quit my job. I sold most of my furniture and moved the rest of my stuff into storage (i.e. my sweet new boyfriend’s apartment). I left my car in the care of my parents. I consolidated my student loan bills and left a series of checks and payment stubs with my boyfriend who had kindly agreed to mail the checks I’d pre-written to pay all my bills while I was away. This was before online payments, Facebook, smartphones, and all sorts of other technology that makes this sort of stuff a breeze now. I didn’t even have a digital camera – I was still using film. And a dial-up modem. And a flip phone that had no chance of working in Europe.

Then; I did it. I went to Paris. I studied French. I traveled. And I had the time of my life.

I also kept a journal and wrote long emails home.

So, in honor of this 15^th anniversary of that amazing time in Paris and beyond, I am doing a series on my trip, using excerpts from my journals and emails, as well as some photos – presuming the scans come out.

I’m looking forward to reliving this trip, and to sharing it with you!

Et alors… quoi de neuf?

Posted on July 23, 2018 by A French American Life

My long hiatus has been unintentional.

Sort of.

Truth: What is going on in the U.S. has thrown me for a serious loop. When I began my blog years ago, I wanted to write about the often funny, always interesting, and sometimes exasperating differences between French and American culture, and to share anecdotes from my own life on what it’s like to be in a bicultural, bilingual marriage with kids. I enjoyed comparing our two cultures and poking fun at each of them.

November 2016: suddenly, those differences don’t seem so funny or cute anymore. Many of them seem pathetic and even dangerous. Even the smallest topics I consider writing about feel hypercharged. I, like so many others, feel like a stranger in a strange land in my own country. I often find myself defending the US to my foreign friends, and I’m weary of trying to defend what I don’t identify with nor agree with.

I always intended this to be a personal blog where I shared my story, my family, my experiences. While I’ve touched on politics, it was never intended to be a political blog. But isn’t the personal also political? Can any of us afford to ignore the political these days? To pretend it isn’t a part of us, a part of our culture? And of course, deeply important to the course our country and the world takes? Wouldn’t it be irresponsible to pretend otherwise?

I struggle, too, to find balance between actively doing my part to make the world a better place and still finding time to enjoy life – those little moments with my kids, the joy I find in traveling, the laughs I share with friends. I consider posting a few photos from a recent trip and I pause, feeling guilty that here I am, lucky enough to travel around the world with my kids, while others in my home country are suffering unimaginably.

So, I’ve spent much time wondering over this last year and a half how to continue this blog.

But I’ve decided to try. Rick Steves writes about Travel as a Political Act. My experiences traveling, meeting and talking with people, even the times I’ve been confronted with angry, vocal locals once they find out where I’m from, have made me a better person, of that I have no doubt. My mind has opened, my world view expanded. My ability to empathize and to see a perspective other than my own improves each time.

So, I will continue on. Some posts may be fluffy travel posts full of pictures of gorgeous locales. There will still be funny anecdotes about the culture clashes of being in a French-American family. Some posts may be political. I may lose followers. And that’s okay. C’est la vie. C’est comme ça.

Je Vais Mal

Posted on March 21, 2017 by A French American Life

Don’t worry, this isn’t another political-ish post. Not today.

I feel like I’ve hit my stride with teaching French to preschoolers. When my announcements on the playground of, “Hey friends, I’ll be teaching French in the Discovery Room for whoever wants to join me!” are met with 4-year-old boys exclaiming to each other, “FRENCH! Let’s go!”, abandoning the (awesome) pirate ship they were playing on and racing to the classroom, I’m going to call that success.

My adventures in teaching French began with a fear that when we moved to Colorado my children, no longer attending French immersion preschool, wouldn’t get enough French. So I offered to teach a lesson a week at their school in Colorado. Now, four years later, I’ve figured out what does and doesn’t work for the 2-5 year old set, how to expose them to just enough of a new language and culture so that they learn an appreciation, pick up some words and phrases, and stay engaged.

My initial attempts at total immersion, while well intended, just didn’t work. At 30 minutes a week with a population that has the attention span of, well, a 3-year-old, once they realized they couldn’t understand me, they lost interest. I’ve found that lots of repetition, a variety of visual aids and expressive use of the language, along with a smattering of English explanations, keep these kiddos interested. It’s working; 10 to 15 kids join me each week and most of them stay for the entire class. This is a preschool where kids can choose where they want to be during the day; the fact that they choose my class over playing with toys is a good sign that they are into it. Sometimes, they bail. Then I know that either the call of the swings is too strong to overcome, or my lesson needs some tweaking.

I begin each class going around the room, greeting each of the kids with a cheery, “Bonjour!” and asking the other kids to greet each classmate as well. Then we ask, “Comment ça va? Ca va bien (thumbs up), comme si comme ça (hand waggle), ou ça va mal (big pout, thumb down)?”

For some reason, the kids have decided it is hilarious to tell me, “Je vais mal,” and give me a big thumbs down while bursting into giggles.

So we go with it. I throw out my arms and wail, “Mais, pourquoi !?” Half the time, they burst into fits of laughter, and now the kids know the word, “betise,” as in – he or she is being silly. Sometimes, they tell me they miss their mom. Several of them now know how to say that in French: “Maman me manque.”

These mostly 4 and 5-year-olds, with 30 minutes a week, know basic greetings, please, thank you, how to count to 10, a few phrases, and a few songs. The other day, one of them made a butterfly with his hands and said, proudly, “papillion!”

All of this makes me glow with joy, but honestly, the best thing is how excited they are to learn French. When I walk into the classroom to pick up my son on non-French days, a few of them approach me and ask if it’s a French day. They pull me over to their parents and ask me for help remembering a word or two so they can show off their new skills. I hear from parents and teachers that the kids throw French words into conversations and talk about French classes. Today, one of my most dedicated and enthusiastic students brought a book in French she was given as a gift – Boucles d’or et le 3 ours – to proudly show it to me.

I’ve grown to love my time with these kids. It isn’t always easy to figure out ways to engage them, but their enthusiasm, those bright eyes soaking it all in, and their adorable enunciations make it worth the effort. I hope that at the very least, they will stay interested in languages and cultures.

Are you still teaching your kids French?

Posted on November 17, 2016 by A French American Life

I suppose the fact that I get asked this question is telling. The short answer is yes, we are. The longer answer is that, well, we’re trying, it’s a lot harder than we thought, but here’s an update:

A lot of the teaching falls on my husband, which is a heavy load to carry. He’s the fluent, native speaker of the house. He continues to speak to them mostly in French. But sometimes he slips. It’s hard for him, and as much as I jump on him when he resorts to English, I get it. He speaks English all day, he lives in English, so making the transition to French with them isn’t easy. The kids tend to answer him in English, and he’s not consistent about rephrasing what they’ve said in French for them to practice, which is a strategy we’ve found to be pretty effective. I get it – it stops the flow of the conversation, it feels like a battle. I’m on the sidelines either jumping in and doing the rephrasing for him which feels helicopter-y, or just letting the kids avoid French, which doesn’t feel good either.

When the kids were home with me more, I tended to do certain things in French: grocery shopping was a French activity. We tried to do some meals in French. I would often read French books or play games with them in French. But it’s gotten more complicated now that our daughter is in first grade – she’s gone 7 and 1/2 hours a day. That’s a long day for a 6-year-old. So when she comes home, she’s not exactly enthused by my, “Let’s play a game in French!” suggestions. Or, if I simply speak to her in French, she gives me a look that I know well – it’s my very own “are you kidding me right now?” look.

My son, the four-year-old, is even more resistant. My attempts with him are met with a wailing: “Awww, not in French!”

In homes where the stay-at-home parent, or the parent who spends more time with the children, speaks the minority language (the language not spoken in the community) the kids make better progress. I know this. But it’s a leap I haven’t made, and don’t necessarily want to. I’ve written before about how I feel like I am a different person in French, not 100% me, and with my kids being authentically and comfortably me is more important than perfection in French. Being a parent presents enough challenges without saddling myself with more. That said, I do still incorporate French when I can, and I still think it’s an important part of what I want to give to our kids.

What we are seeing is passive French speakers; they understand most everything, but their spoken French lags far behind.

However, all is not lost. When we traveled this summer to France, our kids had to speak in French. If they wanted to communicate with their cousins, aunt, uncle, and grandparents, they had to do it. And they did. Especially my 6-year-old, who had a year at a French preschool to help her knowledge and confidence. They came away having improved their French, and since then they’ve resisted less. They seem to be approaching an age where they get it – they see that French has a purpose rather than being one more thing Mommy and Papa make them do.

We were also able to enroll our daughter in a one week French summer camp here in Boulder, and it was fabulous. She LOVED her teacher and came home every day excited about speaking French, about what she had learned and even wanting to teach her brother:

I still teach French at my son’s preschool, and he’s finally getting into it. Up until this year, he chose to play outside rather than come to one of Mom’s French classes. But now he, along with a dozen or so regulars, come faithfully each week. These kids love it – it is so fun to see their enthusiasm! Every day when I pick up my son, a few little faces turn up to me, small hands grab my own, and they eagerly ask, “Are you doing French today?” Most of them can now say a few words in French, and some of them can sing entire songs.

While in France this last summer, my daughter found some of her cousin’s old comic books and fell in love. Her favorite: Picsou (Scrooge McDuck). While she can’t yet read them herself, we kept catching her “reading” to her little brother. So we brought one home, and her Mimi and Papy bought her a subscription for her birthday. She has gone from never wanting to read in French to wanting to read Picsou with Papa most nights.

picsou

My son is enjoying teaching his classmates how to count and say “Bonjour” with the right accent. And just this weekend, we were with a group of kids that were asked if they spoke any languages other than English. My kids proudly shot up their hands and said they spoke French.

So while our progress isn’t perfect, and it doesn’t resemble my imagined utopian bilingual home where fluency is achieved in all areas of both languages and our kids are happy and compliant with it all (how delusional was I pre-kiddos!), we are still making progress. Objectives have changed. I now want them to enjoy French, to have enough of a base that they can continue to pursue it with a leg up from where they would have been if we were a monolingual household, and I want them to learn about and embrace their bicultural heritage. I’m going to call us successful thus far, and still working at it.

Photo Day: Antibes (Part 1)

Posted on May 9, 2014 by A French American Life

Here’s the conversation I had with the guy at the bike shop yesterday:

Him: “Are you ready for the snow on Sunday?”

Me: Jaw hits the floor. “Wh- the- snow? Are you kidding me?”

Him: Big shrug and amused smile. “It’s only May. Welcome to Colorado!”

I don’t want snow. I want flip flops. Sunburns. I want the Riviera. I’ll have to live vicariously through my own pictures and memories. Maybe I’ll crank up the heater, don a tank top, close my eyes, and drink a glass of rosé.

Here’s Antibes:

A few years ago, we spent part of our summer in Antibes, France. For me, I got to attend a French immersion program and explore the south of France with the friends I met there. Fabulous. For my hubby, he was working. Hard. Sophia Antipolis, located in the south not far from Antibes, is a mini-Silicon Valley, home to a growing number of software companies. Stef’s job had a site there, so we thought: great! Summer in the south of France! It’ll be like an extended vacation! For him, not so much. Poor guy put in some serious hours and left our “vacation” exhausted. I made sure to take one for the team and did extra exploring and extra rosé drinking. I’m a good wife like that. Here are some photos from that adventure:

Looking over Antibes from the cape

Centre International d’Antibes – my school (and inspiration for a YA novel I’m working on!)

Healthy petunias partout

Cap d’Antibes – the oldest part of the village

Swedish students celebrating the summer solstice

Funny story, this photo (above). Apparently, a group of Swedes comes to Antibes each year to welcome the summer solstice. We were eating at a pizzeria across the street and the owner was watching them, arms crossed over his chest, shaking his head. Inevitably, a couple of girls needed to use the facilities and made for his restaurant. Their blond locks decorated with leaves and flowers and their innocent young faces alight with mother earth goddess energy, they asked him if they could use the toilet. Reality crashed upon them. He chased them off with harsh, “Non!”s and “Only for customers! Buy my pizza if you want to use my toilet!” Crushed and desperate, they begged, but elicited no sympathy. They finally gave up and left, and he turned to us and complained about the crazy Swedes who do this dance every year and line up for his toilet. I was almost scared to ask where it was, because I actually needed to use it too, but he told me, “You, I don’t mind. You ate my pizza.”

Street in old Antibes

Plage du ponteil in Antibes

Spices in the Marche Provencal

This is what happens to cars parked on the narrow streets of France

Yummy pizza abounds in the South of France

An American Teaching French – One Child at a Time

Posted on October 24, 2013 by A French American Life

This post is written for this month’s Multilingual Blogging Carnival, hosted by Discovering the World Through My Son’s Eyes. Check out the link for more great posts!

I got lazy last year. Having our daughter in a French immersion preschool made it so easy. French surrounded her. Everything she learned was in French. French was cool, because everyone else was doing it.

Now, I have to step up my game. I’m trying to find ways to keep French active in our lives. But my fears are coming to fruition: my daughter is starting to resist French.

No one around us speaks it, here in Colorado. Her schoolmates all speak English, and now that’s all she wants to speak. We haven’t connected with the French community here, though we remain hopeful about finding it.

Bringing Up Baby Bilingual has been my reference bible for French activities in this area. I know there are a surprising number of opportunities here, we just have to look a little harder than we did in San Diego. Here’s what we’re doing so far:

We have attended story times. I feel like a desperate twenty-something dude in a club on a Saturday night, frequenting these story times, eavesdropping on conversations, trying to find another mom, hopefully speaking French to her kids, who might be willing to fork over her digits and set up a play date.

Meanwhile, since we don’t have any French-speaking friends here yet, and since my husband is putting in a lot of hours at work, it’s on me to make sure French is a part of our kids’ daily lives. Here’s the real kicker: I’m resisting it. I hate to admit it, but it’s true. Because I’m not truly me in French (see this post). My affection for my kids comes in the form of “honey” and “sweetheart”, not “mon petit chou” (my little cabbage. Ewww.). A French teacher once pointed out to me that “honey” is gross to her, because it’s sticky and messy. I suppose I can see her point. I do find myself, for whatever reason, resorting to French when I need to be stern with my kids. “Assieds-toi !” When my son stands in the bathtub and starts jumping around. “On y va ! Vite !” When we’re late. French sounds scarier to me, and they jump to attention when I speak in French where they ignore me in English. I can already see their conversations as adults: “And when Mom started in on us in French, that’s when we knew we were in trouble!” Come to think of it, perhaps this is not the association I want to build….

Our bilingual bookshelf

We have plenty of French books, and I struggle here too because I focus too much on making sure I’m pronouncing everything correctly rather than immersing us in the story with an animated reading, the way I do so easily in English. Still, I’m trying. The more familiar each text becomes, the more fun I am when I read it, and the more attention my kids give me when I pull one of these books out.

Music. We listen to French music all the time. My daughter asks me to play, “Dansons la Capucine” every time we get into the car. French music is her music, anything in English is “Mommy music.” Sometimes she’ll tolerate a Mumford and Sons song or two before saying, “Mommy, I want French music! Dansons la Capucine!”

I’ve ambitiously (Naively? Stupidly?) offered to do French activities and story times at my daughter’s preschool for any kids who are interested. I’m scaring myself with this one. The mere thought of trying to put together a French lesson for a bunch of 3 and 4 year olds is giving me performance anxiety. If you know me, you know I don’t do anything half-way. I’m all in. Type A perfectionism overachiever at its most intense. I don’t cut myself any slack. I’ll nitpick at myself for mispronouncing one of those ridiculous vowel sounds until I’ve convinced myself that I’m unworthy of even attempting French. Stuart Smalley, care for a session in front of the mirror with me?

I know they say a language can’t be taught through TV, however, my daughter adores La Maison de Mickey and asks to watch it daily. So, a few times a week, I turn on an episode (Thank you, Roku). She does, in fact, pick up a few new words each time. We talk about the show in French, then we all do the Mickey dance together.

The other day, she pulled out a stack of French flashcards and handed them to me. “Mommy, can you do these with me so I can learn French so I can talk to my cousins?” Again, flashcards get a bad rap, but I wasn’t about to deny her a learning opportunity. I was pleased to see that she remembered a ton of vocabulary words in French. I often ask her to tell me what different things are in French. My husband and I try to both speak French when we are all together, and when the kids say something in English, we translate it into French, then ask them to repeat it. Incidentally, my son’s first French word is, “Coucou !” Translation – a form of “hello” mainly used with families and children.

As for my own learning, I’m planning to crash a French class or two at the University of Colorado in Boulder next semester. When I’m excited about the language, I can pass that on to my kids. Taking classes always makes me happy – if someone would pay me to be a student for the rest of my life, I’d take that job in a heartbeat. I remain determined that my kids learn French, and that it is not a secret language they share with their Papa only.

I believe that plugging into the French-speaking community here is our best hope for ensuring that our daughter and son, and me too, speak French fluently. Like many things, this will take time. And I still dream of a summer in France, maybe in a few years, when the kids are older, where the kids and I all take French lessons. Actually, I’d be fine with a yearly French immersion. Complete with lots of bike rides, croissants, and crepes. That would work for me.

Trader Joe’s croissants for now… whenever TJ’s opens in Colorado!

As always, we remain determined, if a bit daunted, to raise our children bilingually and biculturally.

The French Version of Me

Posted on October 10, 2013 by A French American Life

Something strange happens whenever I go to France. I morph into a slightly different person.

I’m not pretending to be someone I’m not. I’m not even on my best behavior. No, it’s about the language. I can’t quite be myself in French.

In part, my French is not fluent, so I always feel I’m in a bit of a fog, not completely able to hear, understand, or express myself. But there’s more. My sarcasm and dry humor don’t often translate. I’ve tried, and more often than not I end up getting confused looks or worse, offending people. In French, I tend to be quiet and withdrawn, while in English I am extroverted, confident, sometimes even gregarious. I tend to be much more serious in French; again – my humor doesn’t translate. In English, I tease and joke with everyone and I constantly poke fun at myself. I’m not there yet with my French. Instead, I resort to a goofy, unsophisticated sense of humor that relies heavily on facial expressions and body language, whereas in English I’m known for being so deadpan people can’t always tell if I’m joking.

I phrase things differently. In English, I can be precise with my word choice, allowing myself to be diplomatic or irritated, straightforward or sarcastic, serious or funny. In French, I must rely on my limited vocabulary, gestures, and an exaggerated tone of voice, making me wonder if I come across as dense. It’s so easy to misinterpret what I hear or to say something I didn’t intend to say. Like my wedding vows or the time I announced “Je suis femme !” (“I am woman”) when what I intended to say was: “J’ai faim !” (“I’m hungry.”)

There’s also the inherent cultural aspects of a language. French speakers tend to be more animated, their voices sometimes almost sing-songy. I find myself adopting this mannerism as I speak French. I start doing the French Blow. French speakers tend to repeat short phrases. I say this is because they are always talking over one another, so they have to repeat the same things over and over in the hopes that someone will hear them eventually. In English, I would find this repetition annoying but it seems to be simply part of the language in French. I tend to adopt this mannerism as well.

Yet it cuts deeper than the way I express myself, it affects the way I think. Of course, there’s no direct, word for word translation from any one language to another. Getting to the level in a language where you actually think in that language is an exciting milestone to reach. Then, it has become a part of you. Language shapes our minds. So much of a culture is wrapped into its language, and vice versa. When living in a foreign language, our very core changes, sometimes subtley, sometimes more.