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.