Roma Recap

I feel like I've gone through culture shock ten times over within the last five days...in the best way possible, though.

First things first, Italy is AMAZING and Rome is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. And the food was delicious, but you were expecting that. I'll go into more detail about what I didn't post during my actual trip!

Overall, this is how I felt the entire time:

Seeing Hope and spending so much time with her was the best feeling in the world. Last semester we were constantly talk about studying abroad and visiting one another and it finally came true. This photo wasn't even taken when we first met up, I just wanted to hug her all the time!

That also meant that saying goodbye last night was devastatingly hard :( I almost cried...

Our last dinner together :(

But it was delicious homemade gnocchi...my mouth is watering just thinking about it mmmmmm!!

I thought that when I got back to Rennes I would feel homesick because Hope and I talked a lot about Pittsburgh and our friends/families but actually I was thrilled to be back here. Even though the weather wasn't sunny and in the 50s like it was in Rome I admitted to myself that it wouldn't have been a proper "welcome back to Rennes" if it hadn't been gloomy and chilly!

 I'm glad to be back and even more motivated to speak French than I was before. Seeing Hope speak Italian with her family even made me realize that it's silly for me to be afraid of making mistakes. Hope's a great inspiration for doing things; she never lets her fear hold her back and look where she is now! In fact, she's come up with this new saying (full credit being given to you here, Hope!) "no reservations" which she says to herself whenever she makes herself do something she wouldn't ordinarily do. I think it's a great phrase. #nores

Hope and her aunt while we were walking to dinner for her birthday. Adorbs. (yes, I just wrote that)

Somehow I've had a lot of time to think over the last few days and mostly I've thought about my future. Every other month I have a crisis where I freak out about what I'm going to do with my life...what majors should I decide? what career will I have? where will I go to grad school? should I teach English abroad or do the peace corps? Can't someone just tell me what I'm supposed to do and I can just do it?!? That's how I feel most of the time...but that's what experiences like this semester are for, to figure out who you really are and who you want to become. Or at least to figure it out a little bit...I surely am though. But that'll have to be a different post, this one is already too text-heavy!

Ya know how it seems like they all ride vespas? WELL IT'S TRUE.

I decided that during the five days between when my program here in Rennes ends (at the end of May) and when I need to meet my grandpa in Venice for vacation, I'm going to go on a trip by myself to Florence. I was soooo tempted to buy a leather purse in Rome (they're so beautiful and so cheap there) but I told myself I would wait until I'm actually in Florence, where it's all made.

This is me touching ANCIENT ROMAN RUINS! They're just right on the side of the road on the walk to Hope's apartment...I just still can't believe that.

That independent trip will be safe (no need to worry family, I'm smart about what I do with my life!) and I figure I can call it a culmination of all of the self-improvements that I've been trying to make while I'm here, mainly with independence. I'll go there all by myself, stay in a hostel all by myself, spend five days in a town where I don't already know people. Believe me, it sounds scary to me too...but I think it's something that I have to do. Besides, I've got a few months to prepare!

Oh and I forgot to mention that when I was walking to meet my other friend from Hope's house two French people asked me how to get to the colosseum and I told them the general direction ALL IN FRENCH! WOOHOO!

And also I've talked to my host family/siblings more today and I also took out the trash so I'm feelin' preeettttyyyy good. And Sunday if it's nice out I'm going to go to the coast with my family! That'll by my first little trip with them. YEAH!

Last day in Rome :(

My life revolves around food...and picking flowers.

Mmmm cappuccino...Italian espresso is much stronger than French so I chose a cappuccino instead :) It was soooo goooooood.

So there are men sitting at little stoves throughout Rome roasting chestnuts. I had to do it! Especially because it reminded me of Christmas when my pap roasts chestnuts too. (He's Italian so it's all coming together! At least I think that's the reason? He might tell me otherwise!)

I think they're beauuuutiful flowers...but my friends called them weeds. Some friends, huh!

Hope bought me/us an espresso maker for our apartment next year! Don't mind the awkward serious faces, we meant to do that!

How ROMantic!

Oh, the origins of words...

That little light in the background is the moon! I only point it out because it was very pretty that night.

I. Love. Gelato.

Roma

Guess what...I'M IN ROME!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HOPE!!!!!!!!!!!

Reunited and it feels so good!

Pancakes

Amanda's host brother and sister wanted pancakes...so we made them! Sooo sooo happy to be back in a kitchen doing my own thing (things I'll never be able to live without: my own kitchen).

I lit this stovetop old-fashioned style! I thought I didn't even burn my hand off.

We thought they weren't going to turn out right because French flour is different from American and we couldn't find baking powder at the grocery store....

But it turns out Amanda's mom had some! It's called "levure 'alsacienne'" for some reason...Oh, wikipedia says that's a brand. Anyway, our pancakes were perfect :)

Amanda was obviously happy to have her pancakes.

I made two in Mickey Mouse shapes! And ate them both myself. Oh but I loooove nutella. People said I'd be eating a ton of it here, but actually this is only the second time I've had it.

Eventually Kelsey showed up but everything was already made by them. She's always late :p

That's supposed to be Mickey, even if he does look like a deranged koala bear...

Vacation

You know how people say the only thing French people do is vacation? Well it's kind of true...

Something just clicked

I was laying bed perusing Facebook and other social media sites after a night out and it suddenly hit me that my French home, which has until this very moment felt temporary and make-believe, is actually starting to feel like home.

What really triggered it was that I heard the jazz music playing downstairs (a sign that Monique is gone, she plays it for Pépère the cat) and it didn't even feel weird in the slightest.

And this note was on the table for me!

It says, "Hello/Good morning. You are certainly going to be the last to leave the house. Please (abbreviated SVP) lock the hallway door as usual. Thanks, have a good day! Monique" at least that's how I interpreted it, other French speakers might say otherwise :p I know that's what she wanted me to do, regardless.

Sometimes weird/creepy songs like "love makes the world go round, somebody soon will love you of nobody loves you now" come on though...

Bonjour Pépère!

And the weird song that I almost couldn't listen to this morning...

Life's Seasons

Today I was in a crappy mood when I woke up, but that's because I went to sleep worrying myself into a tizzy about language. Luckily I have a lot of experienced people in my life who gave me some good advice (don't worry so much, immerse yourself, and let it happen naturally) and today I feel much better about things. I was just in a funk, ya know? It happens in France too; you can't run away from your emotions.

Anyhow, what really turned my day around (since I woke up late, had to walk to the metro station in flats and got blisters, and was 6 minutes late for class) was observing the class I'm going to be teaching.

The professor who is my boss (well, I'm her assistant so I don't know what exactly she is) is very nice and very, very thorough. When she speaks English it is ADORABLE because she sounds slightly British. Also she says funny things like, "I'm sick of this," "I'm fed up with you," and "What's your problem?" on a regular basis...I don't think she realizes how harsh it sounds though.

After the observation she helped me (aka basically did the whole thing for me) fill out a packet that I have to do for my pedagogy class.

It's funny, though, because I understand everything she says but I have more trouble speaking so I don't think she realizes that I have a pretty good level of written French (when I'm not in a hurry, that is).

I'm going to be doing more than expected for this, though, because Madame Ollivier wants me to meet with her every Monday for an hour or so to prepare for the class that I'll teach the Thursday of that same week. I'm fine with that though; she doesn't act like a boss to me, she acts like an actual teacher so I'm very grateful for that :)

One thing I've noticed about myself that I'd like to improve: social interactions are...not quite my thing. I'm sure this comes as no surprise to you. However, one I get back from Rome there is a lot I'm going to start working on.

Professionally speaking: I need to learn how to introduce myself properly, say a formal goodbye, express gratitude/politesse, and keep a good conversation going without constantly pausing to properly formulate my thoughts.

Nobody has ever told me these are things I need to work on, they're just my weak points.

Personally speaking: I'm going to REALLY start listening to French songs/watching French TV/listening to French radio far more often. And speaking French, of course.

But you may be wondering what made me think of all of this, so:

I was riding the bus home from my observation, all happy and on cloud-nine because I love being in school environments, and I was thinking about how this is my first internship, my first real venture into the professional world.

Then I realized it's the first of many...since I'll be in this world for the rest of my life (let's face it, I'll never have enough money to retire!). I'm happy, though, because this marks the end of one phase of my life and the beginning of another. Gone are the days of focusing on...nothing really, and in come the days on developing into a real-life ADULT.

And I'm actually starting to do things, at the age of 20 (earlier than most of my friends here since they're all juniors) to pursue my future in education! So hopefully that's what I actually will end up doing. I feel like it is, but I guess we'll see at the end of May. I can already see how strenuous the job is; I could tell that my teacher had to make an effort to reign in the 9th graders since it was their last course of the day, but she seems to really be passionate about her work, especially since she's taking the extra time to teach me. She's basically taking on another job, but she must know it's worth it for both her class and for me.

I feel bad/weird because she can't really get to know me well very quickly because it's impossible to express myself in French, but the next time I teach I'm going to be answering students questions with a powerpoint that I make so hopefully she and the students will get to know me better that way. (Warning: YOU may be featured in it. I have a feeling they'll be asking about my friends/family...so I hope that's okay :p)

Overall I'm very excited to introduce the kids to a real live American who does real American things like prom and yearbooks and silly things like that. The first thing I'm going to teach them about is stereotypes, I feel like that's a good leeway into the whole differences in culture thing.

Oh and also something to laugh at myself about: today I went into the teacher's lounge before class, where I meet my prof, and I was early. (By the way how COOL is it that I get to use the teacher's lounge?! Because it isn't the teacher's lounge, it's MY LOUNGE! CAUSE I'M A TEACHER! Sort of. But it is AWESOME!!!) And anyway, eventually the prof got there and I was sitting on a couch with other teacher's reviewing my notes/writing stuff down while they talked (I was nervous too, as I'm sure they could tell) and once I finished that I caught the prof peek back into the room and smile at me because I guess she knew I was nervous. When she sat back down she said "Sorry to leave you all alone," and I was all, "Oh no, it's fine!" because really it was, I'm just awkward. But then they were talking about how some students make fun of this one professor and she started to explain their conversation to me but then she realized I understood it all so she stopped. Oh and also before she got there I lent my pen to a teacher. So my pen has now been touched and used by a Frenchman. That's cool, people, I swear.

Anyway, I'm gonna go start packing for ROME now!

Language Learning

Today has been an especially bad day with learning French, not that I have that many particularly wonderful ones. I gave a post-it to my host mom telling her the times when I'll be leaving/coming back from my trip and I made a conjugation error... I wrote serai instead of sera because I was thinking in 1st person terms but writing in 3rd person. She read it out loud and I just nodded my head in verification but as I reached the top of the stairs going back to my bedroom I realized I made the stupid mistake, and I also realized that she probably read it aloud to give me the chance to correct myself. I was too lazy to go down and correct it so I've been sitting in my room for the last 2 hours feeling dumb instead :p Most of me wishes she would have just corrected my stupid error...

Anyway, right now I'm reading a guide that I got in my pedagogy (aka teaching methods) course and in a section about language acquisition is written: "The learner's emotional state can act as a filter that impedes or blocks input necessary to acquisition (The affective filter hypothesis.)" This really sparked my interest, since it struck a chord with me, so I looked more into it:

From wikipedia: "According to the affective filter hypothesis, certain emotions, such as anxiety, self-doubt, and mere boredom interfere with the process of acquiring a second language. They function as a filter between the speaker and the listener that reduces the amount of language input the listener is able to understand. These negative emotions prevent efficient processing of the language input.^[3] The hypothesis further states that the blockage can be reduced by sparking interest, providing low anxiety environments and bolstering the learner's self-esteem."

In all honesty, I'm having an immense amount of difficultly learning this language. Speaking is incredibly hard for me, I make tons of mistakes in my written French (that I hardly even care to correct, I just want to get it over with), and sometimes I can't even understand what people in stores tell me. STILL.

In other news, this is from Valentine's day. Kelsey is holding her card from Tanya and I'm holding my card from Amanda.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I just feel like my brain is literally blocking the language. This theory explains perfectly my sentiment and just validates for me that there's a reason why I'm having so much difficulty. I knew my level of anxiety was why, I just couldn't put it into words or validate it until now.

The only class I'm truly enjoying and am eager to learn in is phonetics. It's incredibly interesting, the teacher is really nice, and it's something I've never seen before. I feel like the fact that it's brand new is what really sets it apart; I've been studying this language for six years...honestly, it's starting to become slightly monotonous.

I'm not trying to say that I'm learning absolutely nothing; I'm learning a lot and I can speak when I'm not feeling anxious. I also understand most of what people tell me when they're talking to me (if they're nice enough to not speak to me at the same speed/with the same blending-of-words like they would speak to a friend). 

It does stress me out though, which isn't good because I have the initial stress of being here, plus the stress/frustration with myself. The last few nights I've had dreams in which I'm speaking French with my friends and I literally wake up with what I'm going to call a language-headache. It's when your brain starts to hurt because it's working so hard.

And Amanda with her stuff from Kelsey next to Tanya with her stuff from me. She loves bueno bars. (Sorry these are not very new subject matter, nothing very exciting has happened. But Saturday we leave for Rome so I'll make up for it next week!

I guess what I really need is a change of mentality...but how can I change something that I don't feel I have much control over? That is the question. I might talk to the program directors about it tomorrow, if I can manage to blab all of this out in French, and see if they have any suggestions. 

I have a feeling I'm just being too hard on myself, but that's nothing new.

Collège Jean-Moulin

It's already Monday again, somehow...time passes more quickly here than ever in my life before! It's a good thing that I'm enjoying myself so much, since time seems to drag when I'm not content with my life, but it's sad that before I know it I'll be back in America.

Today was the third sunny day in a row. Look at that sky, it's pure blue! Not one single cloud! It's incredible. The air was sweet today, I could taste the growing grass in the most wonderful way possible.

But it was a big day for me regardless of the weather, which just made it even more wonderful. At 1:30 I finally got to meet the teacher with whom I'll be doing in internship! The school is the brown building in the picture below. 

We spoke almost exclusively in French, which was wonderful, and she (her name is Madame Ollivier, if you were curious) said that I don't have a strong American accent which was great to hear. I was nervous to go meet her, especially since the school isn't even in Rennes (it's in a suburb called Saint Jaques) so it was a far commute. Luckily I got there right on time, as planned, and everything went perfectly.

I'm excited to teach, but as we talked I quickly realized how little I know about the technical and organized side of actually teaching a course. Madame Ollivier (who is no older than 30, I must add, because calling someone Madame makes them sound older) was very nice and seemed invested in really teaching me how to properly run a course. 

Funny moment, though: when Madame Ollivier was giving me a tour one of the students, who was about 12, said "Ah, c'est la nouvelle!" (in English "Oh, it's the new girl!). I was already happy to be back in a school environment so I was smiling and when he said that I couldn't help but laugh a little. 

But alas, the night is awaiting me! It's English night at O'Connel's pub and I need to make sure I get to talk to the friend I made last week.

This is the stop I wait at to get back into Rennes from the school!

On the bus! The weirdest thing I noticed about these buses is that some of the seats are placed facing each other...that's just awkward, if you ask me, to sit and stare at a stranger? No thank you, I say to that, so I usually stand.

This is the contraption you use to open the doors when you want to get off. Sometimes, for some reason, the button doesn't work and you have to yell up to the driver, "La porte, s'il vous plaît!"

A bit more elaboration...

I realized that in my last post, I gave mostly the bad and the ugly on living with a host family...now it's time for some of the good:

1) My host mom does my laundry

2) My host mom sets the table and gets everything out for breakfast in the morning

3) My host mom buys cereal with REAL CHUNKS OF CHOCOLATE in it!

4) I'm actually learning what it means to be living in a traditional French household
         a) we wear house shoes (aka slippers) all the time
         b) things are more straight-forward, less sugar coated
         c) politics on tv all the time
         d) shutting off the water while you shower unless you're actually using it
         e) shutting off all lights unless you're using it
         f) Sunday lunches
         g) sometimes wine with lunch and dinner (I looked at my cheeks and wondered why they were flushed before I got in the shower....then I remembered the wine)
         h) galette des roi!

5) I have people in the house all the time...could be a good thing or a bad one, considering your outlook

6) Sometimes the dinners my mom makes are fun, like egg rolls and lychee! most of the time not though :p

7) Cheese.....all the time.....yum

Also, I'm just going to throw something out there....

.....


...........


the food here, in this country in general...


is not that good.

But there is a TON of cheap bread and cheese and wine, so that makes a difference.


Alright, I said it. I'm not 100% sure if this will be true or not, but I'm predicting I'll come back from Rome and say that the food there was better. Or maybe I'm just giving-in to stereotypes.

Let's be real: a rant

Before reading: I realize that this entry is has a negative attitude, just what I've been trying to avoid, but I was having a bad day when I wrote it so, as you should with everything I write, take this with a grain of salt. Also know that I am posting it with good intent: to be honest with myself and others about the fluctuations of emotion in the study abroad experience. Our program coordinators call it culture shock. Also, I know I make it sound like my life at home is less than optimal which is untrue. However, I felt like I was lyon to everyone when I wasn't including the bad days as well as the good.


There are 117 days left until I leave France. Of those days, 41 are vacation (aka I won't be in Rennes, not even counting a few 3-day weekends).

That's not the point of this entry. Today I'm having one of my homesick days and I want to make sure whoever reads this has an accurate depiction of the study abroad (and host family) experience, at least for me.

I just wanted to say that it's not all fun and games. Sometimes it can be very frustrating, confusing and, in a word, heavy.

Usually when things are frustrating, they're little things that could easily be handled on a normal day but if I'm tired or hungry, forget about it. Examples: the overly crowded university restaurant, people literally pushing me out of the way in stores, silly French ways of doing things that are different from American, and using a fork and knife properly.

Things that are confusing usually stem from cultural misunderstandings. For me, that happens a lot in my home. I like my host family and I enjoy the time I spend with them, but according to my friends some of the rules I have to follow are weird and not typical.

Examples: 

Only showering between 5:30pm and 9pm (honestly I hate that rule and I won't ever understand it)

Not being allowed to close the bathroom door in the morning when I brush my teeth

Not being allowed to eat breakfast after 10am because that's when food for lunch is prepared (even though I've never seen that happening...)

The regimented-ness of the chore lists

Doing certain things on certain days (like every Thursday trash from the bedrooms is taken out. once I told my older host sister that I didn't have much in it so it was fine. I heard her talking to my younger sister about it and she was very unusually bent out of shape about it. It was bizarre, but I feel like maybe I'm missing something...?)

The style of "talking" that my host mom and sister sometimes have: they yell at each other, like at the dinner table...and then a millisecond everything is fine. I know that isn't that weird, but I just don't like yelling I guess. 

My host parents are anti-gay marriage. They said that they don't want gay people to be able to marry because then they could adopt a baby, and babies raised by gay parents will be "psychologically traumatized."

Every Sunday my host dad jokes about how I'm not wearing a dress and that's what girls are supposed to wear on Sundays...and my host sisters and host mom actually do it. He's joking, I know, but there is a small element of seriousness to it. He's kind of not joking...but I'm not going to follow a rule like that, it's sexist. It's not a matter of dressing up, it's a matter of wearing a dress.

My host mom says my youngest host-sister, who turns 13 tomorrow, is too young to do the dishes. At 13, I think I was helping with just about every chore in the house. 

When I talk to my friends about these things they all agree that it's just a very traditional French family, despite the nontraditional family structure.

Since I'm making a point of being honest, I'll throw it out there and say that sometimes I just don't want to be here. The rules, the schedules, the routines, they make me feel so stressed and uncomfortable. Don't get me wrong: I have no problems with doing chores, following loose schedules, and following rules.

And I'll be honest, again: I don't spend as much time as I'd like to with my host mom in the evenings. I just don't know what to talk to her about; I don't like what she watches on TV, I don't like being preached to about what's right and wrong in this world. I enjoy dinner time because I can just sit and listen to conversations and pipe in sometimes if I need to, but a good 25% of the time I am zoned out, in my own head thinking in English. If I lived in a dorm, I might actually have something to talk to the other residents about.

I'm slowly making French friends though, it's just taking some time.

Sometimes I think I've gotten over the culture shock, then I have a day like today where it all bubbles up and I think "what I wouldn't give to be at home on the couch watching tv with my family right now." It's funny though, because literally just this morning I was walking around thinking, "wow, I'm in France. This is so awesome, I can't believe it."

But again, in all honesty, I'm not immersing myself in the language as much as I should be. However, I'm not sure if my brain could handle all of this emotion without being able to process it and de-stress in English. Speaking is a difficulty for me in English, so when I try to do it in French sometimes it's just a train wreck. If I'm with people who I know aren't going to judge me, I'm fine. If I'm with professors or my host parents, not so much. Sometimes it's also hard for me to understand people, like store workers or whatever, when they're talking to me. A way to help that would be to watch French movies at night but my brain just can't handle it. I know my limits and what I'm capable of, I just need to take this at my own pace. Another part of it is that when I don't have something to say, I just don't say anything (in English or in French).

And that contradiction right there, that's what's so confusing and heavy. Luckily I don't feel this way that often though.

Living in a host family is hard, and to anyone considering doing it I would greatly advise you to think long and hard about who you are as a person and if you could actually handle living in a new house with new rules and new people.

Living here really is helping me get to know myself as a person though, so I'm glad I did it and I'm trying not to let the little things bug me too much. It's not worth it anyway, cause I'M IN FRANCE!

I'm not trying to give the impression that my host family isn't nice, they're all very nice agreeable people. Monique has done and continues to do great things for other people, including me by allowing me to stay in her home and learn from her family, but she's just not the type of person with whom I get along on a deep level. I'm sure some of it is cultural, some of it is generational, and some of it is just human nature.

What's important is that I'm learning what I like and don't like in other people and their lifestyles, which will (and is) helping me figure out and define who I am based on what I'm not.

I just wanted to put it out there, that I'm not trying to give anyone the illusion that my life here is all sugar-coated chocolate-filled French pastry, sometimes it's the crappy kind that you get out of a vending machine.

Valentine's Day!

So as I'm sure you know, today is Valentine's Day.

My friends and I decided to do a sort of "secret Santa" except for choosing our Valentines! I really love coming up with gifts for people so I was pretty happy :) And for some reason, I decided to take a picture of my breakfast.

As usual, I had cereal. Here you can see our cloth napkins and the different containers that milk and orange juice come in! And also the REAL CHUNKS OF CHOCOLATE in my cereal. So good.

I had Tanya for my Valentine, but I forgot to take pictures of what I got and made for her. I'm sure she'll post them soon enough so I'll update soon. However I'll just tell you now: I got her an 8-pack of Bueno bars, a candy bar she really loves, a Brittany shot glass (don't worry people, she's 21 :p) and I made her a coloring book :)

Amanda had me though, and this is what she got:

On the left is a card all in French. Then there's chocolate (soo goooood), dried fruit (because she and I have bonded over our love of pruneaux!) and almond paste..aka marzipan. She got that because one day we were walking around the store and I told her how much I love to eat it. So she got it! I wasn't expecting the gift to be so thoughtful so I'm very very thankful to have such a great friend :)

This is the other side of the card that she made me.

And this evening, we went to go see Cyrano de Bergerac at the Theatre National de Bretagne (missing some accents, I know). I'm not in that picture, by the way.

The play was...different. It was a modern version, so all of the action took place in one big room...the setting was a mental hospital, and the inpatients put on the play. It was weird, but interesting. I would have liked to have seen the original version, because it's more romantic and it is, after all, Cyrano de Bergerac, but this was free so I'm happy with what I saw!

l'université Rennes 2

At the metro station called Villejean (the name of our campus)

These pictures are in no particular order because that is just how it works when I post from my phone and I do not feel like editing. Also, there will be a lack of contractions since I cannot seem to find the apostrophe on this French keyboard (posting from the library).

That's the library...also found the apostrophe!

School lunch: jambalaya: That shrimp was fresh, the benefits of living in Brittany! and alcohol soaked dessert again...

Building E, where I have most of my classes. Pretty, right?.........

Spiral staircases everywhere here...like the miscellaneous matter growing there (and on vitually everthing)? rainy climate...

Trash covered stairs that I take every day. But look how green the grass is! benefits of the rain

Bathroom stall art!

I will post pics of the craz and terribly laid out cafeteria soon.

In other news: the other night I made a French friend at English night at a bar called O'Connels and we talked about French milk. I was super happy because you don't often find people who are willing to talk to you about weird things like milk so you have to hold on tight when you do!

Also tonight we are going to see Cyrano de Bergerac which I am suuuuper excited to see. I'm done writing for now though, this keyboard is giving me a headache.