Cultural Saturation as Converse to Cultural Fatigue

There is always an upside to things that go poorly, or almost always, just as there is an inevitable drop from any summit that we reach. The polarity of our emotions and the things that happen for us is actually somewhat predictable to the extent that it seems random, that is to say that our swings in mood and fortune are entirely normal and we can expect them like we can expect the weather to change at a moment's notice, without given reason or explanation.

So it goes that what happened after reaching an apparent rock bottom, being unable to speak to anyone in French except with rudimentary words and grammatical structure, lots of gesticulation, and more than a little bit of stress. Lots of drinking involved, lots of seeking out English speakers, and then a sudden realization that I should probably not actually be doing either of those things to the extent that it was happening, because studying abroad is not intended to be speaking drunken English abroad, like so many of the assholes from Tufts that study in the region are so eagerly willing to demonstrate. Our decisions to go to Geneva and Germany coincided with precisely all of those things and are not as accidental as they initially seem to be.

So we left both times, each time stepping into the car feeling like complete relief from the monotony and downturn of Annecy. What I was not expecting was that when we got back from Germany (another day, another post, blah blah blah), something happened to change everything, and suddenly I found myself conversing fluidly with momma having nothing but strong coffee in my system. No aperitif or anything. It was a first, and then it kept happening. A brief conversation without any major hitches, and then an order placed in French without the French person getting frustrated about foreign French. The cashier at Zara switching back into French after I found myself instinctually speaking relaxed French (and only French) with her in the middle of holding an English conversation. The people on the street never assuming that I didn't speak French when I encountered them by myself. So many little instances of being integrated just a little bit more into the language, sinking a little further into the culture, as though the words were all in there before but just needed something there to arrange themselves properly.

And that's the thing. I have no idea what that something is or was, but something happened after we spent roughly a day in an area where I know absolutely none of the language surrounding me. Perhaps the synapses in my brain needed down time to allow themselves to rearrange to fire more efficiently. Perhaps my chakras lined up correctly ("lawl"). I don't know. What I do know is that I came back and suddenly everything was not so bad anymore. I didn't need to be sick of France anymore, because finally I could connect in it again. I call it "cultural saturation", because that's what it feels like. There's no sharpness to the transition, I just sort of woke up one morning and there I found myself. All of the stress of the previous week or two was not necessarily lifted, but the little things were certainly for their part not nearly so irritating. Once again I could be elated in the rare moments I had to myself and feel as though I was, in fact, in elysium, and that this could not possibly be real. Reality has come back a little more in the period afterward, but it was a breakthrough that there's no coming back from.

A pinch later, and this is real.

The Day the Food Died and Other Reflections

Sometimes, things work out brilliantly well in life, you feel like you're on top of the world, nothing can go wrong, you have the best contacts and plans for life, you're going places, everything is amazing. Sometimes it all comes crashing down and you feel like you're actually a living dead person, in other words, a zombie. We go through these ups and downs fairly routinely in life, but when you spend time getting habituated in a foreign country, these ups and downs are significantly more acute and bipolar, happening with such frequency that you end up incredibly stressed out and you have no idea what you want or what to do.

I was having a bit of a down week with my cultural fatigue and N was starting to get a little burned out as well. We went to a cheese factory in the morning with our host director Babette (do you love her name already? because I do.), which is awesome for all of the lactose intolerant people in our group. I swear, there's something about CU students and studying abroad in France that just synergizes with being totally incapable of digesting lactose. Useful! So N tried the cheeses that he could and I tried a little bit of everything, it smelled abhorrently foul, we got some free souvenirs and take-home cheese, and then we left to get lunch and hang out for a bit. It's not that the cheese factory wasn't really cool, but it was a little underwhelming, and thus not the point of this post.

So that's when our day soured as we settled into a flamboyant café for, well, a café. We got two absurdly bad coffees so typical of France in general, but particularly Annecy, and sat in the sun, so it was a little less than ideal. The quality of the coffee was perhaps the worst in the whole city, but you know, sometimes you can't let the little details get you down. So after a couple of minutes of coffee, N finishing his, me choking mine down in desperate need of caffeine, he threw his newspaper at me, saying "I think there's a tennis article, why don't you read it?" and proceeded to run to allow his lactose intolerance to take its inevitable course. Brilliant. Twenty minutes of almost blinding myself trying to read an article in the sun without sunglasses on (quel jour to wear regular glasses) later and N sits back down, and we proceed to wait approximately forever to pay. The café manager/owner didn't come back out again, so I ended up going inside to pay, wherein I discovered that to compensate for the awful coffee, they only charge people half-price for it. That works, sort of. Not that I would go back.

So then we started to wander around Annecy looking for something to eat, none of the sandwiches we passed looking particularly appealing, with both of us hungry and a little hypoglycemic. N was getting particularly sick of being a ringleader, that is to say making decisions, and so we ended up sitting at a crêperie that had a decent-looking menu but was unfortunately situated on the most touristic side of the river. Oh well, lunch was to be had. So we took our sweet, sweet time trying to find something palatable on the menu to eat and finally ordered. Without really paying too much attention, as happens when I get too hungry, I ordered a Danish crepe, and N ordered a Niçoise salad. Now, here's the deal, in France, normally a Danish crepe means that you have salmon, a light, tasteless cream sauce, and citrus in your crepe. We got our food to discover, lo and behold, that N's Niçoise salad was actually a cream dressing-covered monstrosity and that my crepe was perhaps the worst piece of food ever. It was death on a plate.

Let me describe this for you. Imagine you are eating a crepe. Now imagine that crepe to be just a little bit too thick, a little bit rubbery, and a little bit spongy all at the same time. It's probably not extremely fresh, or was simply not well looked after while cooking. It's a little too brown. You've squeezed a healthy amount of citrus on it, expecting it to add the perfect, fresh zest to your bite. You bite into the crepe, only to discover that it is the textural equivalent of the combination of insulation packing foam and flan, has a mild hint of lemon mixed into an almost untraceable cream sauce...followed by the saltiest black caviar ever known to man. We're talking more salt than the Dead Sea here. One bite and you might go into cardiac arrest because of your blood pressure.

It was bad. So bad, in fact, that I managed to con N into taking a bite, which he physically gagged on. We had a moment of understanding without looking at each other and knew that we could not possibly eat that food. There was no way. The problem with this is that sending the food back was also not an option, we were going to have to pay for it and leave, because there was no turning around. This is extremely rude even in America, the land of the nagging asshole customer, but an almost ideological affront to French culture. You're offending everyone and everything by doing so. After what seemed like an eternity of waiting in almost maniacal laughter, we finally got the waitress, who was every bit as displeased as we had anticipated she would be. We weren't necessarily anticipating our bill to be thrown at us, but we could accept it. We paid, N left a 7€ tip, something unheard of in France, and then we ended up getting a sandwich anyway.

Lesson learned.

Lyon, or Why Must I Hike Unexpectedly?

There was another IFALPES-led excursion to a major city that I have yet to visit in my limited experience out in the world, so naturally for the cost of 36€, there was no way I could turn up the opportunity to go to Lyon and a medieval village for the day. There was going to be a big group of 25+ people going, but ultimately IFALPES didn't get enough people to sign up in order to rent the larger bus for the day, leaving the group at a humble 8. Our first stop was in a charming, but cold, medieval city called Pérouges, so named for the Italians from Perugia who settled there for quality of life reasons several centuries ago but who also wanted to retain their identity of place. It was interesting, it was small, I tried a flat cake (gallette) from the town, and it was a little boring. It's nice to see, but the differences between that medieval village and, say, Yvoire are superficial at best. Perhaps we could say that about cities in general, given the sense that occurs to people who spend their lives traveling around that everywhere is roughly similar and people want and do the same things.

Things changed, however, upon our arrival in Lyon. Or at least, upon waking up and seeing that we were actually in a large city. For real. Civilization! We arrived not far from the river in a square that is apparently rather large and historic, but the details of which I don't really remember. Oops. So we arrived and were promptly advised to go eat lunch and discover the city, which is when the world's longest lunch happened. First it took a while to find a place that would work for 6 people, and then we spent two hours sitting there and eating. Two. Hours. What the fuck? So it wasn't ideal, and left us with just enough time to rush through discovering the city ourselves. I was a little bit disappointed, but not overly so, because the vibe I get from Lyon is one that I don't completely click with. The city is rather nice, and perhaps it was the group dynamic, but there was something about it that didn't feel quite like it suited me.

Don't let the bitching fool you, I had fun.

What we did see of the city I enjoyed, however, and we took a tour through a pedestrian zone so familiar to so many: the pedestrian street mall. We have plenty of examples in the Denver agglomeration, notably 16th St. downtown and Pearl St. in Boulder, but they exist pretty much everywhere and are not special unless there is good shopping or dining to accompany them. The shopping on offer in Lyon, however, is incredible, and definitely something worth seeing (and doing) if you have the resources for it. We went through the streets of the city quickly, but what we did see was nice.

One thing to note: Lyon appears to be a less-heavily touristed city than others that I have seen on this séjour, all of the tourists appeared to be either of French or random Asian origin, neither of which being a good indicator of the popularity of the city with tourists. I'm sure they exist, but they certainly don't make themselves visible, and that's perhaps a good thing. The city is beautiful, historic, and ...a place that the locals "profitent" of for themselves. Bien.

So we rushed back to the square where we had arrived so that we could take the promised walking tour à la Genève and ended up being approximately 11 minutes late. This I blame on the member of the group who was late arriving, prolonged the restaurant selection process, and ended up with disgusting food and thus prolonged our lunch. Not that I'm saying he's existentially late, but I'm saying he's existentially late. The walking tour was great, consisting of visits on the other side of the other river in town, thus through the center of town (dating to circa 19th century) and into the old town (dating older), including the traboules, or secret passages, a quick peek in a museum of miniature things, and so on. What followed was a surprise hike, announced by our guide who so helpfully put it "Now I hope you're in good shape, because we're going to walk up 500 stairs!" In the fresh heat of the afternoon.

Great.

We complained to each other until we looked behind us and realized what a magnificent view we could enjoy on the stairs of death of hazard.

No shit, seriously. It makes the thigh burn hurt so good.

So we somehow made it to the summit and were rewarded by the basilica of the city and the most magnificent vista in all of France. The view would only be better if there were the Alps in the background for it.

Voilà.

There wasn't a lot more substance to the rest of the trip, other than retrieving a bottle of water for 2€, feeling somewhat comical taking pictures inside of a church, and then getting back into the oven minibus to go back to Annecy. Another day, another city. After a nice nap, we arrived back into town, thanked Philippe for guiding us, and got ready to go out later that night.

The Normalization of the Domicile

Relations in the household are normalized here after the cousins from Luxembourg left and a more regular routine resumed. We've had plenty of time to get used to each other and have settled into a routine that allows me to be my young adult self without disturbing the suburban family unit too much and that allows them to distance themselves a little bit more without actually disengaging from showing the American student their world. Part of the way I can tell that this is the case is that the parents are speaking a little faster among each other and the kids have reached an even greater equilibrium in their interactions and dealings with me. Jules is a little bit more social and Clément is a little bit less social. I can deal with that.

This comfort was probably best manifest one day when I had gotten home from class like normal and Laurence was home as well from grocery shopping. She asked me to assist her with getting stuff inside the house and was courteous in talking to me, but it was pretty obvious she was distracted by anything and everything else going on in her world. I went upstairs to my room like normal, organized my things a little bit, the kids and Christian came home, and then...

Momma on the warpath.

She would not let up on any of them. It was as though the entire world was falling apart and it was everyone else's fault, because why can't you tidy your room or do your homework or get the things done around the house like I asked you? Her voice got not-French loud and Christian had to ask her to tone it down a little more than once, and her favorite target seemed to be Jules, who bore her wrath for not cleaning his room, not doing his homework, and not getting as good of grades as he should. I have never heard such "real", fast, and angry French as I did then. Happily, I was spared any of it, and in fact she was perfectly nice to me the whole time when I bothered to venture downstairs.

Momma (as I've been referring to her ever since, given italicized text above) got her drink on drank plenty of wine at dinner and restored her more amicable spirits, but I couldn't help but feel like this, indeed, is a snapshot of how regular life functions in this household. All of the newness of the student coming to stay with them for a month wore off, and so the increased politesse dulled somewhat too. I'm mostly happy for that, because it's better for my French, and it means that I'm doing something right, because I didn't have any complaints or qualms thrust at me. This is great, but I should probably keep working on improving my French speaking abilities.

In a humorous twist of fate, my best French conversing has been with Momma. Cause and effect, or correlation? You decide.

Lessons in French Adventure, or a Crash Course in Speaking Awkwardly

There are moments where I discover exactly how much French I know, where I feel on top of the world and I am understanding everything, and can sort of converse in the language. There are other moments where I discover exactly how much French I do not know, I do not understand anything, and my conversation is reduced to gesticulation and rudimentary usage of the same words over and over in no particular grammatical pattern. In the case of meeting local French men, the latter is what happens when I am not en écrivant on my iPod or Facebook or some other means of chatting and am actually faced with the situation of dining and associating with someone who speaks, at best, broken English.

How terrifying.

So I decided that life was too short to reduce all of my going out and interacting with people to Americans and other people who speak English and broken French the way that I do, because I remembered how I don't actually like being insular when I'm abroad. Life is too short not to be awkward, and so it was that I decided to grab some food and hang out with a French guy who lives not too far from Geneva. Everyone here seems to drive, and it is definitely more of a necessity than in bigger cities, but that's not really a problem. The idea was to get some food and figure out what else to do afterward, probably hanging out at the lake or something if the weather was nice. It wasn't, so it ended up being in the air.

This is the point that I discovered that I am absolutely terrified of talking on the telephone in French. In Russian I can sort of get by and I have done such things as ordering taxis with no particular difficulty. The way that the French murmur and slur their language, as though the whole country is drunk absolutely constantly, I can not bear to attempt to talk on the phone in it. Not going to happen. So we exchanged confusing text messages and finally figured out where we were and ended up eating in an "Italian" chain that is remarkably similar to any that you could think of and name in the United States. It seems that pizza and pasta are done pretty much exactly the same way the world over. I bet you could probably find such chains even in Italy, except that they would probably call it "American". They would have good reason for that.

The combination of the extremely loud restaurant, mumbling flamboyant Frenchman, and natural shyness upon first meeting anyone created the perfect storm for my French to absolutely shit itself fall apart, and I was rendered pretty much unable to say anything confidently or particularly coherently. All of my written fluency flew right out the window, and there I found myself, eating my not particularly kosher pizza, wondering exactly how long this meal was going to last. Given the nature of any and all service sectors in France not caring particularly much to work together, that turned into an hour or so longer than it needed to, with the kitchen staff forgetting our dessert order, his dessert arriving cold, and then the bill taking longer than necessary to get paid. It was painful.

Yet, reflecting on it afterward, I feel like this is how people really do end up learning how to communicate properly in a language. If you want to speak fluidly (if not fluently), you kind of just have to do it. Eventually the words will come, and you'll be able to remember the right things to express the more nuanced subjects that you think of in your native language. Or I have it all wrong, and there's a LOLcats for that. I just have to actually do that more. If I were staying in France for longer than six weeks I would push myself a little bit harder, especially given the element of needing to make more lasting social contacts, but I am still thrust into situations like this, and I think it's good.

The evening ended up going better, and we walked around the old town and pedestrian zones for quite a while, seeing some things I hadn't before and in general scaling the entire city. It was good, and I got more comfortable, but I don't mark it as so much of a linguistic success at it could have been. Perhaps next time.

The iPhone got flash, horrible photo quality commenced the world over.

Everything is Different and Nothing Has Changed, a Chronicle in Two Parts: "1er"

Having arrived, everything is, as was previously noted, extremely nice. The family has treated me to a very warm welcome and I have come to discover that their house is, in fact, nicer than my own at home. But it's also a cookie-cutter and one half of a (very) large duplex in the middle of a French gated community, a "queer" hybrid of cultures the least of which I would not have expected here. That isn't a complaint, however, and I'm relishing the experience.

Très moderne la cuisine, non?

They eat like extremely typical French people do, the children drinking their milk out of a bowl in the morning and dunking their sliced "American" bread avec Nutella in it, the adults consuming extra strong coffee while partaking in "real" bread with lots and lots of butter (Paula Deen would be proud) and "confiture" (preserves/jam) that they make themselves. In fact, they have a garden, so a lot of the things they eat they make or produce in some way or another themselves. It's pretty sweet. Everything from the potatoes to the lettuce to the herbs is grown chez nous. We have aperitifs before dinner usually including some form of interesting Italian liqueur, white or rosé wine, dinner with red wine, salad after dinner, and assorted regional cheeses and cherries after dinner.

Do you have vertigo and envy yet? Voilà the garden.

I must also note that everything in this country tastes significantly better than its counterpart in both Russia and the US, for reasons entirely unknown to me, but totally unimportant regardless. I understand that this family is a little more wealthy than your average French person and that we (they) therefore eat a little better as well, but even still, I have found everything from the street sandwiches to the food in restaurants to be of a much better quality overall.

The family themselves are rather nice, a married couple the same age (almost exactly) as my own parents who do some sort of miscellaneous work in banks and commerce. Their kids are 11 and 14 and thus at that awkward tween/early teen age of being curious who the strange person come to visit them is but also not exactly sure what, if anything, to say. The younger one is much more antisocial, the older one much more talkative. They're both boys, and thus it is a very male household, very obsessed with rugby. They fucking love their rugby here. Two thirds of their conversations are about rugby. I know way more about rugby than I ever thought I would now. The mother, on the other hand, is a little quiet, rather inquisitive, and seems to be fond of good drink.

They drive Renaults, which in their neighborhood, the little cul-de-sac style street they live on and the surrounding vicinity, means that they're not quite in the upper strata of income. It is ridiculous seeing some of the vehicles around here, especially because in France, they are much more expensive. Audi, Mercedes, Porsche, you name it and it's here. The thing is, in this part of town, it's not really considered a flash of income to drive such cars, because everyone has brand new vehicles and they're all of a nice make, so it's just the normal thing to see.

They drive the kids to their private schools (the same place that Babette's daughter goes, hence why she knew them and contacted them to be a host family) in the morning and pick them up for rugby and swimming practice afterward. I got driven to class the first day and they showed me where the stop for the bus is, which turns out is only a short walk past a field with horses away. I got lost and wandered into the wrong gated cul-de-sac the first time around getting back, but no problem. I just want to find a grocery store or some point of commerce nearby, though. Is that too much to ask? You can see how this is all extremely familiar already. Culture shock? What's that?

This is my view every day. Have envy.

On Modern Convenience, or What is French for "Easy"?

So I got on my plane after the encounter with that fine, fine Middle Eastern man, perfectly content and a little surprised to be boarding already. The flight was completely normal fare, except the stewards and stewardesses on the plane were unquestionably French and not French Canadian. Everything from their coldness to those unfamiliar and their accents gave it away. Not bad though, I must say, even two not-Jack and (Diet) Cokes later.

They're a little behind the times in Montreal, it appears.

Some observations of note:

First I thought I was terribly unlucky, not only to have not been on the same flight as G, but also because I had the very last row. Again. Always. Turns out it was not the last row, but the next to last. Clearly a significant upgrade.

Then I thought I was in fact terribly lucky, because not only did I have the aisle seat, a two seat row, but there was no one sitting next to me! Yay, no one else's bacteria to share immediately adjacent myself for 6 1/2 hours in a pressurized metal tube! Except then no, a young and antisocial girl sat down next to me. Shit. Plan thwarted, the bacteria...not so much.

The girl was a Muslim girl of unidentified southeast Asian origins. Malaysian? Indonesian? I didn't ask. She looked like she was 12, but I could see from her homework that she was in college. I have never seen a more efficient use of 6 1/2 hours. She whipped out her iPad and a keyboard, some paper, and a highlighter and made even the most studious of my acquaintances look absolutely lazy. I sat there reading Jen Lancaster's My Fair Lazy feeling less than erudite. (But laughing more. A lot more.)

Real food! Real food! They gave us real food! Suck it, LOT. And ...oh, that's not Diet Coke.

Laughing to yourself while drunk reading a book with pink slippers on the cover on a plane is one really great way to make French people think you're absolutely insane.

The blue lights were for when we were supposed to sleep. Like Virgin Airlines, Canada-style.

The drunken epiphany that I was, in fact, "tout seul" on a plane flying to France somehow produced a happiness of being as far as things go within myself in relation to F that I haven't had since all of the problems began in November. It's interesting, and sad, that it would have to take so many months to come full circle with problems that are not working themselves out in my favor, which I am not entirely convinced is not willingly so. The realization that I can have "rencontres" with people like G and that life isn't actually completely static perhaps aided in this. And the whiskey.

Arriving in France was perhaps easier than even Russia, something that surprised me, not having been used to western Europe previously. The utter lack of red tape from getting off the plane and into an Air France coach to my train terminal was as bizarre as it was delightful.

Attempting to use Russian words when you don't remember French words because they are the first to come to mind is never a good idea.

The Air France coaches are a little too easy and convenient. I found my bus before I found my ATM. Crisis averted, a walk almost entirely around Charles de Gaulle Terminal 2 and half an hour later. My delight at not being immediately recognized as an American knows no bounds. An American girl wanted to sit next to me and spoke in bad French, I simply nodded my head, and then one "oh, uh, mer see" later we were well on our way to Gare de Lyon.

Hello, train station that is almost as old as my home town.

Three hours of waiting around a Parisian train station with no internet and plenty of luggage is not made any more pleasant having gotten just two hours of sleep in transit prior. It is made nicer by taking photos of the old scenery like a typical gawking American tourist.

Of course I had to arrive the one day the Virgin store was closed, meaning I had to wait to get a mobile phone.

I was so tired that my joints actually started to hurt. I'm not sure I remember the last time that happened. Perhaps I am malnourished? That would probably be my own fault.

The TGV is spectacular. It is smooth, the cabins are quiet, it is modern...and then I slept. I slept so much. I missed all of the French countryside, and only a little bit of the Carrefours that dot it. I woke up only to have my ticket verified and at Aix-les-Bains, the second to last stop en route.

Tu me trouves sexy après le voyage un peu long? Un peu gras? Non? Si?

I was so tired that I almost walked entirely out of the station looking for my host family when in fact I exited the train right past them. They are extremely nice, own a vehicle (!), and live in what really does amount to a French-style suburb. Their house is modern, sleek, extremely nice, and made out of ticky-tacky and looks just the same as every other house in Annecy-le-Vieux. Despite my exhaustion, I managed to speak decent French, refresh myself in a real shower (до свидания Russian-style shower heads!), impress the family, and then sleep for 11 hours straight, right through dinner and the company that came over for it. I awoke at an absurdly early hour to another barrage of French, which has not stopped since.