There's nothing better than a fresh, warm baguette.
I didn't do so well last week. I am not making friends with my roommates as well as my roommates and making friends with each other so I started getting blacklisted a little until I finally stopped hanging out with my friends to hang out with them. Whose fault is it that my friends make better food for dinner? Lindsey and Jon made us homemade pizza and crepes Sunday night, it was amazing. Saturday night they made homemade chicken curry and vegetables. Friday night was Fiesta Fiesta at my apartment so we ate tacos and guacamole and homemade mango salsa. When I'm not inviting people over and cooking, all we eat is pasta. I'm sick of pasta.
It finally dawned on me Saturday that I live in France. I was walking to Lindsey's for dinner and basically had a panic attack. I wasn't even really homesick or sad, it was just finally realizing that I am not going home any time soon, that this isn't just a fun vacation like Savannah and I'll be back in my bed in a few weeks. I'm doing much better this week but no one (except other kids doing the exact same thing as me) understands how every day is a fight here just to keep your head above water. I am going to come back to the U.S. extremely humbled.
Another issue is me actually learning French. My French roommate has decided that she should probably take this chance to learn English so we talk English all the time at home now. All her friends speak English too so they all want to come over and practice their English with the Americans. Everywhere I go it's so obvious that I'm American that even when I try to speak French people respond back in English. I thought I'd never have a chance to speak English instead of never having a chance to speak French.
I start classes at the Université de Provence next Wednesday. I'm pretty scared about it, not the coursework but the chance of having to talk in class because, as mentioned in previous paragraph, I still can't form a sentence to save my life.
It finally dawned on me Saturday that I live in France. I was walking to Lindsey's for dinner and basically had a panic attack. I wasn't even really homesick or sad, it was just finally realizing that I am not going home any time soon, that this isn't just a fun vacation like Savannah and I'll be back in my bed in a few weeks. I'm doing much better this week but no one (except other kids doing the exact same thing as me) understands how every day is a fight here just to keep your head above water. I am going to come back to the U.S. extremely humbled.
Another issue is me actually learning French. My French roommate has decided that she should probably take this chance to learn English so we talk English all the time at home now. All her friends speak English too so they all want to come over and practice their English with the Americans. Everywhere I go it's so obvious that I'm American that even when I try to speak French people respond back in English. I thought I'd never have a chance to speak English instead of never having a chance to speak French.
I start classes at the Université de Provence next Wednesday. I'm pretty scared about it, not the coursework but the chance of having to talk in class because, as mentioned in previous paragraph, I still can't form a sentence to save my life.
posted by Adrienne Dye at 1:47 PM
1 Comments:
My mom seems to be in the same boat, she started grad school a few weeks ago for Spanish. And while i dont have the same bilingual aspirations as the two of you, I see parallels in the struggle. In my oh so vast experience, err, secondhand experience, it seems that if they speak nothing but english to you and you speak nothing but french to them you get the most benifit out of the conversation. just make sure theyre comfortable with correcting you ad nauseam and vice versa.
just my two cents, seems youre having an amazing time over there.
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