Submitted by Kayla Dickens on the 2014 fall semester study abroad program in Paris, France…
This past week has definitely been one of the best weeks yet (and I do hope that the weeks continue to get better as the time goes by like they have been). We visited Belgium with Club des Jeunes, and it was by far my favorite place in Europe so far (although to be fair I’ve only seen four other cities). I think the biggest attraction was the food. It is a lot more like American food there, for instance I had fries and a veggie burger for lunch in Bruges (and veggie burgers are practically non-existent in Paris). But of course the chocolate and the waffles were delicious too, lots of junk food, and I tried Greek food for the first time while I was there which was delicious, so maybe the food is making me slightly biased. We also visited the European Union Parlamentarium, which was definitely the coolest interactive exhibit I have ever seen—I believe I could have spent the whole day in there from open to close actually reading everything and soaking it all in, but we only had two and a half hours before we had to go back and catch the bus to come back to France. It was overall a beautiful place (as far as the outside architecture is concerned I’m convinced their main cathedral in Brussels is even more elaborate than Notre Dame, but just a personal opinion) and the people there were generally very friendly (much unlike Paris, people do not look at you like you have three heads if you smile at them on the street, they just smile back!). And that is all aside from the linguistic diversity there which was very interesting, and worked to our benefit—if we were struggling with French (or perhaps not struggling, but just didn’t sound native) the people were not automatically inclined to switch to English because we could have been native Dutch speakers, so we were able to carry on conversations in French without having to beg people not to speak English with us. I believe if I were choosing a place to live in Europe so far Belguium would be my choice.
As far as school is concerned, the most important part of academics in the last week was actually before the Belgium trip, last Thursday. I completed my first major assignment in any of my classes, a presentation that was worth a third of my final grade. I definitely put a lot of time into preparing for it and felt as though I deserved a good grade, but I got an even better grade than I expected which was definitely a highlight of my week. And, most importantly, that was in my literature course which is one that I expected to be the most difficult for me, but it is proving to be one of the easiest (which could be due to the fact that it is spread across three levels of French speakers and I am in the highest, or it could be thanks to my good preparation in Introduction to French Prose last semester, probably a mix of both to be honest). Otherwise, classes are still going relatively well. My cinema class is proving to be harder than it seemed like it would be based on the first two weeks, and I’m hoping it doesn’t get too difficult, but that is to be expected since it is my highest level course based on the University of Delaware equivalencies. The televised journalism class is extremely practical and thus far not too difficult, but we do have our first exam next week so I suppose that will be a better judge of how difficult the class is all around. And I’m still not sure yet how I feel about my French Language class all around, it tends to go back and forth between classes that are too easy and just right, but most classes are just too easy. We definitely do lots of oral production and comprehension practice which is good, but as far as our writing is concerned it is far too easy for me, but maybe it will pick up as the semester goes on.
Regardless of how challenged, I do or don’t feel in the French Language class, I can nevertheless tell that my French skills, at least my listening comprehension and speaking proficiency, have increased immensely. I can now typically understand when people come up to me on the street and have something to say, and I’m getting much better at understanding the announcements in the metro (which there are a ton of). I think my goal for the end of the semester is to be able to pick up one of the free papers in the metro each morning and be able to get through the whole thing without needing a dictionary or to stop and think every few sentences. And given the fact that is one of the objectives of my French Language class, not to mention that we do just that every day with televised journalism each week in one of my civilization courses, hopefully I will make it to that point. Unfortunately, my language partner’s availability is a little less than ideal (I’m not so sure how much that was considered when we were paired even though we were asked to provide availability), so I haven’t had the opportunity to meet with him to see how my French is improving outside the classroom and formal interaction contexts , but we are hoping to meet several times this upcoming week before the fall break begins since I will then be gone for eight days. One thing I have definitely noticed in my French is the amount of “Franglish” I’ve been speaking lately, which is a good sign that the French language is really starting to permeate a little deeper into my brain. For instance, just yesterday in class I caught myself in the middle of saying “I really want to take a nap after classes, but I have so many choses to do today” (and “choses,” pronounced “shoze,” is how you say “things” in French). And that is one example among many, honestly at first I was trying to fend it off, because it sounded silly, but now I’m just letting it come out that way, I figure the more I let French get into my head the better (that’s the whole reason why I came here, right?).
Still, I am not feeling too culture shocked. Although, I do miss the States very much now it is mostly homesickness because I miss my family, I miss my Brothers in Phi Sigma Pi, I miss all of my other friends, and of course I miss the food (I can’t wait for some good old American cheese). Otherwise, I am one hundred percent content here. I love having the opportunity to speak French every day, and I actually like the way that their culture works here. The French people’s expectations of their government are very different than what we expect, and their logic is very reasonable. For instance, my host Mom was explaining to me at dinner the other night that any health care institution can’t refuse treatment to anyone regardless of their ability to pay, even undocumented immigrants, because the logic is that if anyone has something, regardless of their legal status, it could be passed to anyone else including French residents. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I don’t think the health care system is quite as giving in the United States (although I am far from an expert, so as I said perhaps I am mistaken). I found that very interesting. Something else I learned that was particularly interesting about their culture was yesterday during a discussion in our televised journalism in France class. The theme for the day was professions and the professor wanted us to guess the most popular profession among the French, and when someone suggested that it might be professor, he explained that the field was actually seen with very little prestige here and that one wasn’t paid much as a professor. While being a professor might not be the most prestigious job in the U.S. (I would say doctor and lawyer beat it by far) it is still a relatively competitive and prestigious field considering one generally has to have a PhD which can be difficult to obtain, and it pays moderately well depending how far along one is in their career. So I found that to be a very interesting difference. But overall, there still is not a lot of culture shock that affects my daily lifestyle, even living with a host family the only thing that is really different is that we eat dinner around 8 o’clock rather than 5 or 6, but I still live with my family since I’m a commuter student at UD and goodness knows we sometimes eat dinner at 3 in the afternoon and sometimes at 9 at night so the different time doesn’t really bother me.
As always, I still have a lot to look forward to: I leave tomorrow for Barcelona, next weekend we have the Versailles excursion as a group, then I am off to Marseille, London, and Geneva for fall break (I really love how inexpensive it is to travel in Europe, I would never be able to afford to travel that much in one week in the U.S.), and the weekend after that we all go to the Loire Valley as a group, then my birthday will be around the corner and I got tickets to see one of my favorite artists who is playing right across the river from my apartment (I can see the Omnisports complex from my balcony) on my birthday. And then before I know it, I will be coming back to the USA which although I love it here, I am still excited for. I know I am so lucky to be here and I always knew that, but honestly it was on the bus ride back from Belgium when I woke up to the view of the rolling countryside just in time to watch us drive across the border between Belgium and France (can you believe you can just drive across international borders no questions asked here?) that I realized exactly how lucky I am, and I consciously promised myself to take advantage of every moment and appreciate it to the fullest extent.
