But each of these trying mistakes is matched by a triumph just as rewarding. I now take the bus to wherever I want to go, whether that be my school or the market or the shopping plaza. On my 2nd day of school, my host mother suggested I try and activate my phone myself as an exercise of my fluency. It seemed as if the woman working the counter was competing against herself to fit as many sentences as possible in 30 seconds. I found myself unable to understand almost any of what she said. A more capable classmate had to take over the operation on my behalf. Saturday, I returned to the store to fix an issue with my phone’s connecting to the internet, and I could handle. I casually spoke to the woman working with me, explaining that I was a student seeking to improve my French. I have survived sessions of double language and double history and double politics and double literature taught entirely in French and walked away both having acquired new knowledge and knowing the homework assignment. After going to school on a Wednesday, I realized I have no classes scheduled that day. It was on that Wednesday, however, that I joined the politics club. We plan to attend conferences in Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and here in Rennes. I volunteered for the one in Germany.
I continuously must remind myself that “yes, I am here in France.” I continuously must address again that “yes, I now have a sister and am an aunt to three nephews.” I must clap myself on the back and acknowledge that “Yeah, almost no one has spoken English to me today.” It seems surreal that living in another country came with just completing an application. I now am part of a culture that both so closely parallels and is so distinctive from my own. Bizzarely, there are a great number of people here in France who speak English proficiently. The French education system mandates its students take at least two different languages in high school. The food presented to me at cafeterias here are much healthier than anything I have yet to find in any school cafeteria during all my years of experience. Even now I find myself surprised everytime someone brushes their lips across my cheek to give me “un basier”. As a result, I have to merge understanding of myself with my understanding of what it means to be a French citizen. And I find myself trying to refute through my actions that Americans surely must be…loud, ignorant of the world beyond their continent, wanting everyone to speak English- though honestly it sometimes is against my instinct or beyond my capacity. Yes, it has been 11 days since arrival, but the changes I expect I will undergo will last a lifetime.