What does it really mean to delve into a culture ? True immersion, for me, began when I started my internship at a café at the beginning of March. Day in and day out since then, I have been smack dab in the middle of the action of how a lot of Aixois start out their morning. Getting an internship for school credit was what my French academic advisor insisted that I do before I came here to Aix. I decided to do it (entrusting that it would be for my own benefit) and now I see exactly why she encouraged it : while there is undoubtedly a wide spectrum of things to be learned in the classroom, the amount I have learned with the experiences I have had at Coffee To Go is not comparable.
My responsibilities are numerous ; I wash the dishes, do general clean-up, complete accounting duties, converse in French with my boss Adrien and the customers, run errands to buy items for the café...but probably the most extensive work I have put my time into throughout the past two months has been a compilation of coffee drink and dessert recipes that I translated from English into French. The recipes will be sent off to the bakery that makes the desserts to be sold in Coffee To Go. Now that it is officially completed, I must say that I am proud of it, 24 pages, 8 thousand words in all. I feel so much more knowledgeable about desserts now, which is an extremely important life skill for anyone to have. And the funny thing is, you do not realize how much you are learning until you reflect on how it was at the beginning of the process.
Au début, I remember looking up words very frequently...so, with the need to pause every so often to do that, in addition to the slow internet connection, I was not moving along very quickly. Adrien would come over to check on my progess on a regular basis. Then maybe about a couple weeks into my translating, something clicked and everything just became faster. Adrien came over and was, for once, surprised at how many recipes I had translated that day. To be honest, I surprised myself as well. Everything I have learned this semester as a whole has just been incalculable. I love learning ; which is good because learning throughout life is a continuous, never-ending process. Let it continue...
My responsibilities are numerous ; I wash the dishes, do general clean-up, complete accounting duties, converse in French with my boss Adrien and the customers, run errands to buy items for the café...but probably the most extensive work I have put my time into throughout the past two months has been a compilation of coffee drink and dessert recipes that I translated from English into French. The recipes will be sent off to the bakery that makes the desserts to be sold in Coffee To Go. Now that it is officially completed, I must say that I am proud of it, 24 pages, 8 thousand words in all. I feel so much more knowledgeable about desserts now, which is an extremely important life skill for anyone to have. And the funny thing is, you do not realize how much you are learning until you reflect on how it was at the beginning of the process.
Au début, I remember looking up words very frequently...so, with the need to pause every so often to do that, in addition to the slow internet connection, I was not moving along very quickly. Adrien would come over to check on my progess on a regular basis. Then maybe about a couple weeks into my translating, something clicked and everything just became faster. Adrien came over and was, for once, surprised at how many recipes I had translated that day. To be honest, I surprised myself as well. Everything I have learned this semester as a whole has just been incalculable. I love learning ; which is good because learning throughout life is a continuous, never-ending process. Let it continue...