I flew from Minneapolis to Reykjavik to Paris, and took the TGV from Paris to Aix, or actually, to Marseilles. I woke up when we were stopped in Aix, dazed and jet lagged, and could only watch as our train pulled away from the station. When I was at last met by a nice lady who spoke only only French, it took me a while to realize she was not from the institute but instead my host mom, and I felt 5212562 times as bad and 95486484 as grateful.
Struggling to make conversation with her as every word that came out of my mouth was a mutated English-Spanish-French gibberish, we nevertheless managed to endure the 5 minute ride back to the apartment. I have my own room, with a bed, a desk, lots of bookshelves, cabinets and drawers for my clothes, wifi, and a balcony. I love balconies. Madame also told me I can use her laptop whenever, since I didn’t bring mine.
but AUIGHFGUHhfh…what is wrong with the French keyboard?!?! Z,Q, and W all seem to be relegated to one side of the keyboard because they’re not so common maybe? But then there is the A thrown in there to the top left corner. Basically, writing my name feels like a tongue twister for my fingers. Finding punctuation is almost impossible, and I think I might just stop caring and if I have to separate sentences with semicolons so be it;
Is this what they call cultural shock? The keyboard thing, and the food, are basically the only two things I had to adjust to France (the amount of people who smoke are nothing after four years of liberal arts college). But the food…
The first day, for lunch, I ate a four cheese Panini. That is too many cheeses. Thinking back on this experience, I realize I ate basically a 2x4 sized, 12 inches of nothing by melted cheese. Breakfast is also basically junk food. I’ve been trying to find healthier options, even though the first few days it was perfectly normal to me that I was eating cookies and chocolate as a meal. Dinner is always pretty rad though. My host mom has cooked roasted chicken, pan seared fish, and beef stew. Though, like every other host mom I hear about, she thinks Americans have super human appetites. She literally gave me six boiled potatoes with the beef stew dinner. Six potatoes.
And, the weirdest cultural shock might be to the American Institute itself. Four years at a liberal arts college of 2,000 people, where we self replicate day after day our vocabulary of “problematic” and our lifestyles of smoking, drinking coffee, and frowning , it was suddenly strange to encounter students from other colleges who all of a sudden aren’t interested at all in being offended by things.
IAU is exposing me now not only to one but two new cultures. Another challenge this semester is to learn to become interesting to and interest in a totally new demographic which I have no problems communicating with in terms of language, but in terms of life experience and interests and outlooks. Maybe a bit difficult because I’m now spending everyday thinking about a job when I graduate in December and some stuff with La Colmena as well. Oh well. Here’s to learning to live in the moment, even when the future is not so far away;
Struggling to make conversation with her as every word that came out of my mouth was a mutated English-Spanish-French gibberish, we nevertheless managed to endure the 5 minute ride back to the apartment. I have my own room, with a bed, a desk, lots of bookshelves, cabinets and drawers for my clothes, wifi, and a balcony. I love balconies. Madame also told me I can use her laptop whenever, since I didn’t bring mine.
but AUIGHFGUHhfh…what is wrong with the French keyboard?!?! Z,Q, and W all seem to be relegated to one side of the keyboard because they’re not so common maybe? But then there is the A thrown in there to the top left corner. Basically, writing my name feels like a tongue twister for my fingers. Finding punctuation is almost impossible, and I think I might just stop caring and if I have to separate sentences with semicolons so be it;
Is this what they call cultural shock? The keyboard thing, and the food, are basically the only two things I had to adjust to France (the amount of people who smoke are nothing after four years of liberal arts college). But the food…
The first day, for lunch, I ate a four cheese Panini. That is too many cheeses. Thinking back on this experience, I realize I ate basically a 2x4 sized, 12 inches of nothing by melted cheese. Breakfast is also basically junk food. I’ve been trying to find healthier options, even though the first few days it was perfectly normal to me that I was eating cookies and chocolate as a meal. Dinner is always pretty rad though. My host mom has cooked roasted chicken, pan seared fish, and beef stew. Though, like every other host mom I hear about, she thinks Americans have super human appetites. She literally gave me six boiled potatoes with the beef stew dinner. Six potatoes.
And, the weirdest cultural shock might be to the American Institute itself. Four years at a liberal arts college of 2,000 people, where we self replicate day after day our vocabulary of “problematic” and our lifestyles of smoking, drinking coffee, and frowning , it was suddenly strange to encounter students from other colleges who all of a sudden aren’t interested at all in being offended by things.
IAU is exposing me now not only to one but two new cultures. Another challenge this semester is to learn to become interesting to and interest in a totally new demographic which I have no problems communicating with in terms of language, but in terms of life experience and interests and outlooks. Maybe a bit difficult because I’m now spending everyday thinking about a job when I graduate in December and some stuff with La Colmena as well. Oh well. Here’s to learning to live in the moment, even when the future is not so far away;