A Part of That

Jason Robert Brown's popular Broadway musical, The Last Five Years, depicts a rather normal relationship in an abnormal way: by telling it from the point of view of the woman, whose timeline goes backwards beginning with the end of the marriage, and the point of view of the man, whose timeline goes forward, beginning from when he first met Cathy, his future girlfriend/wife/ex-wife. It is beloved for its heart-warming songs, its witty dialogue, and its avant-garde take on storytelling. One of my favorite parts happens about halfway through the musical. Cathy sits alone in her apartment and reflects on her dizzying, complicated, and passionate relationship with Jamie, a struggling writer, in the song I'm a Part of That. In it, she expresses how proud she is to be in love with Jamie, and the connection she feels with his life, even from afar, even when things are less than ideal. As I sat at the Franco-American Thanksgiving dinner last night with a less than American sized portion of turkey and sweet potatoes, I had the beautifully unique chorus replaying over and over in my head. I watched my friend Abigail's host parents laugh at her jokes, the assistant director of the IES program swirl about the tables hosting like only a French lady could, and the president of the Franco-American Association in Nantes give his speech half in English, half in French, in silence. I knew that there was something about this world that both included and excluded me at the same time. For a moment, I'm a part of this. I'm a part of Nantes and all the people here. But my part in all of it is limited, and at any given moment, I'm shocked backed to my reality where I fight the bureaucracy and lose, lost friends and made mistakes, and ultimately have to return home.

My days are full of ordinary happenings - coffee with friends, grocery shopping, calls to my parents, preparing lessons -, unique moments of pleasure - people watching on the train, chats about cultural discrepancies with my chill flatmate Anthony, walking down the street and smelling a boulangerie, passing by one of Nantes' many elaborate churches, basilicas and cathedrals -, and long stretches of time that infuriate me as they drag on, like my classes, sleepless midnights tossing and turning in my little bedroom, and the perpetual, unshakeable feeling that my life here is almost over. Like Cathy, my emotions are mixed to say the least. In this little corner of the world that I never officially called my home, I met people and taught children and traveled and watched the world go by. For three months, I was a part of this tiny city that is caught between improvement and history; between Breton identity and French identity; between who I was and who I will be. The bipolarity of my life here is strangely reminiscent of I'm a Part of That. Every hour, every day, every moment is different. Unique and loved. Special and hated.

As we finished our impressively gourmet Thanksgiving dinner last night (that included a mango-passion fruit pudding in an edible dark chocolate cup - did y'all have that at your Thanksgiving?!), I asked Abigail's host parents how long they'd been participating in the exchange program with IES in Nantes. The answer shouldn't have shocked me, but it did: six years. Abigail is their eleventh student. Their enthusiasm for American students was shared by the other middle-aged French people who shared our table. Some had been hosting for three years, some five, and one couple said "ten, but we've stopped now, since we're too old!" I asked them each why they decided to host American students semester in and semester out, and while their responses were all slightly different, Abigail's parents summed it up the best: "Ils deviennent une partie de nous." - "They become a part of us," said her host mom, smiling warmly. The host mom sitting next to me replied, "And we are always a part of them."

My adoration for host families is hardly a secret; in fact my life and happiness has all but depended on them for the past three years or so and I dedicated an entire blog post to my love for them. But these responses stretched far beyond the meaning of a host family and into the realm of understanding life as we know it, life as a whole. It is also hardly a secret that I don't enjoy teaching, but everything I loved about Nantes culminated on Thanksgiving evening in a three star restaurant overlooking the suburb of Saint-Herblain. I had taught a class earlier that day on the significance and history of the holiday of Thanksgiving as one must when amongst French teenagers, where we read a dozen silly Thanksgiving poems, made hand-turkeys, and watched John Green's Mental Floss video called "25 Little Known Facts About Thanksgiving" For the first time, I felt like I was getting somewhere with these kids. They were actively learning, fully engaged, and happily entertained as they asked me questions like "What is the meaning of the word gobble?" and "How do you pronounce pumpkin pie?" We were laughing the way I laugh with my sisters (which is to say, loudly, and often), and the time flew by. Just before the bell rang, one of my students raised his hand and asked me a question I didn't expect.

"Madame (their teacher) told us that you are leaving at the Christmas holiday. Please, Kathryn, is it true?"

I heaved a great sigh and examined all their faces, so full of hope and energetic as they focused directly on me. "Yes, I said, it's true."

Thankfully, I was saved by the bell, so I didn't have to explain myself in front of all of them. But the boy who asked the question came up to me afterward and said, "I am sorry you are leaving. You know you are one of us, right?"

He melted my heart as he walked out the door. One of the many complaints of teachers, school counselors, youth pastors, and other people who work with children is that when they leave their school/church in search of greener pastures or a better opportunity, they feel guilty about the lives they are leaving behind. Up until that moment, I didn't feel guilty, because I was almost completely sure nobody's life had changed at Pierre-Mendès France since I entered into it, and I wouldn't miss much about my life in Nantes other than the obvious fact I could use my French every day and gain weight on the delicious food and walk past a castle on my way to the train station. I mean, how could I possibly affect these children's lives anyway? I rarely saw them - between their absences, class cancellations, numerous French holidays, and their teacher's absences, I'd only seen each one of them a handful of times. Still, as I watched the students chatter into the hallway to their next class or the bus waiting outside the classroom, I was struck by the overwhelming feeling that I was important to them. Perhaps not every week or every class, or even more than one lesson. Like the rest of my life in Nantes, however, I was important to them for at least a split second in time. Maybe they left my lesson after an otherwise awful day with a smile on their face. Maybe they told their parents about that abnormally tall American teaching assistant over an otherwise tense evening dinner. Maybe they'll get a better grade on their English oral exam because they remembered the definition of the word "to gobble".

And I'm a part of that.

I Want To See You Be Brave

For one brief two hour period twice a week, I become something of a curious cross between a linguist, a journalist, and a cultural anthropologist. Or, in teacher lingo, I conduct individual oral exams with small groups of 17 and 18 year old French students. It is an integral and common experience for most of us language assistants, and many of my cooperating teachers have requested this service of me. At first, I confess it was boring and frustrating. Most students only knew how to regurgitate sentences from the textbook and refuse to elaborate when asked. With time, however, I learned more from these students than I have from anyone else in my life. Nobody expects a surly 16-year-old to give you life advice, which is probably why I find their words, whether haphazardly strung together in nervousness or calmly expressed with grace, so poignant. Sometimes, life's greatest lessons come when you least expect them. 

Since the beginning of my work here in France, the majority of these mock exams have centered around the topic of "Myths and Heroes"; a popular fall subject among English curricula, primarily because (or at least, to my understanding) the students who study this topic are also relatively familiar with the American Civil Rights movement and 20th century history of the English speaking world. Because the 20th century was arguably one of the most successful eras in American conscience, these French students know quite a lot about Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy: American heroes who stand immortalized in the breadth of time. And let's be honest: it's easier to pronounce their names with an Anglophone accent in English than it is with a French accent in French. 

My opening question is the same with every student, "Who is your personal hero?" Their answers range from overwhelmingly generic to happily sublime:

"Nelson Mandela."

"Mahatma Gandhi."

"Barack Obama."

"Rosa Parks."

"My dog."

"My mom."

"Nobody."

More often than not, their responses are the person they remember the most from the latest chapter in English class - a scramble to find an adequate response, or, as is the case with "my dog" and "nobody", a complete and unequalled hatred for English class and the fact that they are required to take an oral exam. Sometimes, however, their answers catch me off guard, as was the case earlier this afternoon. 

"Alima**," I said, straightening my oral exam rubric in front of me, "Let's start with you. Who is your personal hero?"

"That's kind of personal," she replied coldly, her long, swoopy bangs covering half her face. 

"Well, you have to pick one and talk about him or her for the exam, so I recommend you talk about them now."

She cast a sideways glance at the two snickering boys in the room - my next victims - and I suddenly realized I  wasn't the reason she didn't want to proceed. Regardless, she took a deep breath and said, "Adele."

At first, I didn't know why this was a "personal" example, but the French are the French, so I went with it. "And why is she a hero to you?"

"Because she has stood up for women's image all over the world and proved that you don't have to be skinny to be beautiful, loved, or successful. As a kid, I was bullied because I'm fat. Adele makes me feel like a person again."

Not only was I first blown away by the exceptional way she had phrased the sentences and by her positively American accent, but her reasoning, which was indeed rather personal, caused the two boys in the room to continue to snicker and the other female student, who, quite frankly looked like a supermodel, shrink down in her chair, covered in embarrassment from the top of her shiny black hair to the tips of her muddy brown Oxfords. 

I peered at Alima rather quizzically for a moment before continuing. I would hardly consider her "fat". In fact, she and I were probably the same size. However, I am considered one size away from "plus size" in France, Italy and the rest of Europe (though this is probably because I am very tall and inherited my mother's hips). I found Alima to be quite pretty with her long, chestnut hair piled on top of her head and her startlingly blue eyes smiling up at me. Perhaps she was "bigger" than the average French girl. But in all honesty, I wanted to give the "average sized" French girls a pack of sugar meringues, some butter mashed potatoes, and a nice piece of steak so that they resembled human beings rather than emaciated aliens. What's more, I wanted to strangle the two boys whispering to each other in the corner, since their combined weights were easily triple hers. 

Still, I had to press on, for the sake of the oral exam. "And how does that make her a hero?"

"Well, for one thing, a hero has to be courageous, strong, and fearless. I think she is all of those things together. Some people think it's silly to admire pop stars because they don't think their music is good or because they don't think pop stars are smart or important or nice. But Adele is different. She is really a wonderful example of a woman who has self-esteem and respect. We should all have more of that."

I painstakingly moved on to discuss more superficial and academic questions, like "What is a myth?" and "Is philanthropy important?", mostly because I couldn't stand the treatment this girl was receiving from her peers, but also because I didn't want to pry more than I was required to. I was, however, touched by her honesty, and felt a deep pang in my heart. Everyone is bullied in high school - I certainly was. Up until this moment, my classroom discussions of myths and heroes had been primarily focused on Steve Jobs, Oscar Pistorius, and the American Civil Rights movement, which meant I could interject with my own anecdotes and discussion questions. It gave me a distinct kind of pleasure to know a little bit more about modern American history and I enjoyed discussing it with these high-schoolers. But this? Nobody taught me how to respond to a situation like this, where a student trusted me enough to tell me the truth about her role model in a way that was both personal and global. To make matters worse, I have never considered myself a feminist, and I've never been bullied for being "fat" (except perhaps in my own head).

The deeply personal stories from these students, however, were only beginning. Over the next two hours, I didn't hear a word about how fantastic Steve Jobs is for the industry of technology or how Barack Obama can change the world. Rather, I heard real stories about Moms, Dads, sisters, brothers, humanitarians, heads of state, former hostages, and Holocaust survivors. Some students spoke only what was required of them and others, like Alima, opened up to me like no other teenager ever has. And when class was over, I heard one boy say, "I guess Adele's pretty cool, anyway."

We underestimate high school kids because they're young, hormonal, and haven't got a clue. They're what some people call 'baby adults' because they can no longer associate themselves with a child's identity, but are very far from fully formed adulthood. Yet, as I continue on my journey to becoming a fully formed adult, I am growing more and more aware of the fact that the biggest myth of all is adulthood as we imagine it in our preconceived adolescence doesn't really exist. It is a silly notion constructed to make us feel better about growing old, leaving school, and dealing with life's most inconsistent and unfortunate eccentricities, like paying the rent, getting married, keeping a job, making a career, or having children of our own.

Who are we to judge these teenagers, then, whose thoughts regarding the world are unjaded from experience? Shouldn't they be judging us for the way we live our lives and the mistakes that we make? After all, we're adults: we should know better. We should know discrimination is foolish and a waste of energy. We should understand that going to war doesn't create jobs. We should be aware that famous celebrities are far more than media constructs.

For the rest of my time as an assistant - an approximate three week period - I vow to keep an open mind regarding these teenagers. They may be hormonal and occasionally unmotivated and usually sleep deprived for their eight a.m. class. But in all honesty, we are, too. So perhaps it is time for us to take the image of Adele and the image of Alima and meld them together in a brave kind of adolescent, whose fearless ideas concerning bullying could inspire change. We could all be as brave, especially myself.

**Note: The following names mentioned in this blog post have been changed to protect student's privacy. Both students were asked for permission before publishing this post. Their quotations are used as I remember them to the best of my knowledge. No privacy has been violated.

A Special Kind of Strength

The sun rises on a crisp late autumn day over a small bunch of brick and mortar buildings. They're constructed in the French style, meaning they have more elegance and ease than  the majority of  buildings in the US. They are older, and their appearance pierces right through to the middle of my heart. France seduced me, and I have been in love for two years. But like all relationships, the best moments are restricted to a given point in time when each side gives and loves equally. Some relationships go on endlessly. Others, however, have an expiration date. Friday, November 22, 2013, was the expiration date of my love story with France. I received two emails containing horrifying news. The first was that my premier student loan payment of an obscene amount of money, was due, at the very latest, January 1. The second was from the French bureaucracy, informing me that I do not have the right to work a second job while here in France, regardless of the fact I am hardly paid a living wage and work less than 12 hours a week on average.

In other words, it was official. After a tumultuous forty-eight hours of decisions and paperwork and meetings and phone calls, I decided I am coming back to America.

I made this decision from the most extensive pro and con list I have ever written in my life. Unfortunately, my reasons on the "pro" list were exclusively devoted to my happiness and my interaction with French culture: something that is an intrinsic part of my existence. My "cons" were practical. Money, job prospects, and a future. I have a complicated relationship with France and with my home country, and I am not proud to say I am leaving the TAPIF program after only three months of work. I confess I am not proud of anything I have done in this experience so far, except that I tried.

I was sitting alone in my apartment when I received the news, and immediately called my mother. The desperation in my voice was the only thing keeping me from tears. As per usual, Mom always has a way of reading my mind, and she knew I felt alone, lost, and a failure. So she said, "Honey, it takes a special kind of strength to know when something is not going to work. It does not make you less of a person, less qualified for other jobs, less talented, or less intelligent. In fact, it speaks volumes to the contrary. And whoever employs you next will see that."

I then called my older sister, unable to hold back the  tears. Always bubbly, complimentary, and practical, Maggie was full of sage words I never thought I would hear her say. "So you found out you do not enjoy teaching. So your first job out of college did not work out. It hardly means you will fail for the rest of your life. It means you are capable, driven, motivated, and incredibly smart. You will find a job that is worth you, I promise. Because we are Melchiors. Nobody works harder than we do."

My heart aches today. Not because I am leaving a job I hate in a foreign land where being a working American is complicated. Because I love and have always loved France.There is a long list of things I will miss about France, and I will share them with you, my readers, those who have maybe been to France, never been, have no plans to go, or like me, are French majors. Here goes.

I will miss the Saturday markets, where a kilo of clementines cost one euro and include a fresh and free bunch of bananas.

I will miss the public transport and the ease by which one can travel anywhere in Europe and even across continents with the click of an inexpensive button.

I will miss the beauty of the French people: how they smile, how they laugh, how they breathe and say "oui oui" at the same time, how they can eat extraordinary meals and not gain a pound, how they all wear scarves and perfume and value vacation, how they say "voilà" at the end of every sentence, how their speech trails off in a melodious murmur when they are about to finish speaking, how they value their children and their kitchens, and how they vow to live out solidarity and fraternity every moment they live on French soil.

I will miss the bakeries. I will miss the fact that you can smell them before you see them and that bread usually costs less than a euro and that every bakery has croissants, pain au chocolat, buche de Noel, and those beautifully decadent rasberry tarts shining with freshly sprinkled sugar. I will miss that they each make their own special cake or sweet and try to sell it to you when it is fresh out of the oven.

I will miss how all the vendors say, "Thank you, have a good day, goodbye" after they have sold you something, instead of just sloughing you off like someone they wish they had never met.

I will miss the history and the architecture and the dedication to the arts and the beauty of Nantes, Bordeaux, and Paris in the winter when the sun sets and everything shimmers with possibility.

I will miss the Christmas markets and the legends of Père Noel that French children whisper to each other between kiosks on Saturday afternoons.

I will miss the fact I can blend in; that the French people accept me and want to speak French with me and value me as a person.

I will miss my host family, my French friends, and my roommate.

I will miss the quiet of the early mornings and the way the streelights flicker off when the sun peeks out from behind the nineteenth century buildings.

And yes, I will miss the incredible wine, cheese, the duck confit, the foie gras, the bread, and all the other wonderfully French foods (though my waistline will thank me for it) that are more often than not raised sustainably and organically.

I will miss their commitment to the environment, public transportation, the future, and politics.

Yes, I will miss France. The culture shock will cripple me and unhappiness will consume me as I search for a job in the states, back home with my parents in cozy little Sarasota. I will not be satisfied, but I will be able to pay the bills.And with time, perhaps, I will fall back in love with France.

When I first arrived in France, I made a very long list of all the places I wanted to do and see before I left - from Morocco to Switzerland to Greece and back, I wanted to see it all. In making this exhaustive travel and experience list, I forgot one very small detail, and that is that I am young. I may be returning to a world where vacations are minimal and money is tight, but the great and unforgettable news is that I have the rest of my life to travel and experience the world and all it has to offer me. I can learn Spanish and go to Buenos Aires someday. I can visit London with friends. I can go to Greece on my honeymoon. It will be regrettably harder than it is right now, but as I have learned, anything worth having is worth fighting for. And if it is not worth having, it is time to muster that special strength, pack up your bags, and go home. Reality hit me like a ton of bricks, and it is harsh. But it hardly means that my life or my dreams are over.

The word that comes to my mind the most is gratitude. And indeed I am grateful to have had this experience at all, to have met the fantastic (and not so fantastic) French once again, to have worked abroad, and to have felt the amazing support that my friends and family offered me from ten thousand miles away. Yet, most of all, I am thankful for being who I am: unapologetically and happily American. No longer blind to my country's faults and no longer claiming France is a paradise, my view on the world is tempered and fair. I see my country's flaws (and there are many), but I am hopeful that the strong and talented of America's youth will, like me, return to their country and improve it in small and important ways.

I have decided that I will keep blogging until my program's termination and until I find stability. Phase one of my great perhaps may be finished, but I am still wandering in this world, amongst the wind, the sand, and the stars, on the seemingly endless quest for my place on the planet.I will continue to watch and interact with humanity and history, even if it means it will take a little more work and some unofficial investigative journalism.

Here's to strength; gratitude, the great perhaps, and all the people who have, are, and will help me along the way. Here's to whoever it is I am.

This American Melody

Over the past week or so, I have been wading through an obscenely bottomless pit known around the world for its intricacy, complication, and frustration. It is known as the French bureaucracy and it is one of the most inefficient governments in the Western world.

I know, I know, it seems impossible that me, myself, and I would say something like this. I am a francophile to a fault and I would honorably defend all things French (and have) for days, if asked. However, I am an immigrant. I have "temporary work" status and I have the "right of French soil". This means that I am obligated to spend my days on the phone, writing out emails, and sitting in government offices until something gets done. Today was one of those days, concerning my work visa and the possibility of getting a second job that I desperately need.

My coordinating teacher and one of the liasions of the program, helped me through the uncharted and frightening waters of French bureaucracy. In her fifties and wonderfully warm, she came to France for the first time when she was twenty from a cozy little British town on the southwestern coast. She details her first time in France with the wistful and loving voice that grips just about every foreigner who comes to France speaking the language and fascinated by the culture, but there is an unmistakable bitterness at the bottom of her tone. She has knowingly and voluntarily put up with the government and all its red tape for some thirty odd years. "When you come to France," she told me with a smile, "It is just one of those silly and eccentric things you learn to put up with."

Silly and eccentric would not necessarily be the adjectives I would use to describe the way I feel about it, but since this blog is rated PG (and public), I shall refrain from expressing the unsavory words that I think describe it best.

On this cold and blustery morning in La Roche-sur-Yon, I sat in the train station and awaited her arrival. When she appeared at the door, twenty minutes late, - because at this point she is far more French than she is British, and so lateness is culturally acceptable -, she wordlessly motioned me to her with a slight flick of her head. I shut my book with a loud clap that disrupted the otherwise silent peace of everyone else sitting in the station, rammed it into my stretched out purse, and joined her on the other side of the glass doors.

"It's just appalling weather, isn't it?" she asked me in her posh British accent, unfettered by her life in France. "I mean it's bad enough for me and I am used to it. I can only begin to imagine what it must be doing to your fragile Floridian psyche!"

"Yes," I muttered, my fragile voice carried away by the blustery wind, "I am so cold that I now have a cold."

She laughed at my play on words. "You know, we ought to talk more often. I was just chatting with the other teachers and they just love it when you speak in English with them. Your accent is so musical and vibrant and worldly."

In a way only an American could, I loudly burst into laughter in the middle of the French street, drawing attention from the provincial passersby. "The American accent? You think it's pretty?"

"Oh they love it, and I do too. It's quite unlike anything else we've ever heard."

We were meandering through the nineteenth century cobble stoned streets of La Roche-sur-Yon, searching for a mythical complex of office buildings where she swore  all the bureaucracy for the schools in the département (or county) was centralized. As we walked, she hastened between topics, talking about her visits to the United States to make me feel more at home, and expressing remorse for the fact that she raised her children to be world travelers - one lives in Québec and the other in Mexico City. I was enraptured by her and grateful beyond belief that finally, someone had taken pity on my ridiculous American situation in France and was going to help me figure it out, or at the very least, help me get home. I knew she was interesting, but I hadn't counted on her being so kind or so good at conversation.

We entered the complex almost completely by accident: the large stone archway held no signs that alerted us to its governmental significance. Instead, a small plaque all but hidden by browning vines read "DIRECCTE: Education" on the right lower side of one small brick. "Oh great, we've found it!" she said happily, marching through the archway. Confused, I followed her. I decided that now was not the time to ask questions.

We went to the first floor and were immediately greeted by the angry twinge of fluorescent lighting and the silence of a government waiting room. We plopped down on the tattered plush chairs and I shot her a hopeless look.

"Don't fret now, Kathryn, really. I don't think it can get any worse than your situation at present, so you may as well keep your chin up."

Couldn't get worse?  I did not say my thoughts aloud, merely nodded and turned my head to the other side. I was lonely, angry at the French, moody because of all the rich food I was eating and shouldn't have been, foggy-headed from the duck liver medicine and wanted nothing more than to go home. In fact, over the last 48 hours, I had done nothing but assume this was a worst case scenario, and that it was time to give up and buy a one-way ticket back to Florida. In short, the last thing I wanted to do was wait for the French government to get its act together.

As it happened, we were on the wrong floor anyway. We went to the second floor and then to the third, redirected multiple times by various unsympathetic and irritated French office workers. When we finally reached the last floor, we met a middle-aged man who promised he could help us before walking away to make copies of some unknown document in his hand. "N'inquiètez pas, je reviens," - "Don't worry, I'm coming back", he muttered, before ushering us into his office. I had my doubts.

Twenty minutes later, my coordinating teacher, me, the gentleman, and another "language assistant specialists" were having a heated discussion over whether I could have a second job and whether I had the right to work at all. After the first twenty minutes, they spoke so fast and heatedly to one another that I could barely make out one sentence from the next. "But it's ridiculous! We don't pay her a living wage, and she's American for heaven's sake - she has all these student debts to pay! She's stuck in France, we ought to help her," insisted one lady, rather ardently fighting for what was minutes ago a lost cause.

"But the work she wants to do is far too much, and it's in Nantes!" said another, "That's an entirely different county and we have no jurisdiction there."

The argument went on for about twenty minutes, as most French arguments do, before it died down and my advocate was declared the winner. "Well, I'm not making any promises," she said, crossing her arms over her chest, "But I think it's silly you can't work. So send me a copy of your work contract and I'll write up an official document that allows you to work as much as forty hours a week anywhere else you'd like."

I couldn't express my relief or my shock in either French or English, and since the muscles in my face had been rendered all but immobile from the French cold medicine, I could only give her a half smile and mutter "Thank you so much, Madame, it really means a lot to me."

"It's no trouble, really," she replied as she headed toward the office door with a stack of paperwork under her arm, "I rather like Americans, anyway."

As we walked back to the high school for our 11 a.m. lessons, she said, "I was thinking - would you like to have a coffee with me and the other teachers around one? We've just had a meeting and we all realized we don't know you as well as we'd like. We have this great brasserie that we seem to frequent and well-"

She didn't have to finish convincing me before I replied with an enthusiastic yes. My social life was at an all time low, and I rather liked the English teachers. "But I have class at two, so we'll have to be back by then."

"Perfect! We'll meet you in the staff room at noon thirty then."

Over coffee in a noisy brasserie, I got to know five of the ten French people I assist in class on a weekly basis. They are by far some of the most interesting people I have gotten to know while in France. More than this, they are honest about their culture and its pitfalls, and like to indulge themselves in political debates more often than any hot-blooded Americans I know. They flow effortlessly between topics and our table conversation was ultimately a bilingual experience: shifting from English one sentence to French the next.

I was grateful beyond belief that they were all on my side. I hadn't said a word to them about how unfulfilled I felt, how I sometimes ate alone in empty classrooms with my eyes full of tears, how I hated the program and its lack of support, and how alone I felt: a wandering American waxing philosophical and downright annoying to everyone else with all her negative energy. But French people are admirably subtle and they are far more attuned to the emotions of others even when they themselves seem so dispassionate. I could only sit there in silence and listen to their consoling thoughts.


I glanced at my wristwatch nervously and noted that  I only had five minutes to walk back to the school before our two p.m. class. "We should go," I proposed bravely, ruining the lively ambiance of the coffee date.

"We should talk in English though," said one of the teachers. "It will give us an excuse to listen to that melodious accent of yours."

I'm still on the fence as to whether or not I should just give up on this great perhaps I once thought would be a grand experience. While on the phone with my mother a few nights ago, she imparted to me some fantastic wisdom I do not think I shall ever forget. "Honey, it takes a special kind of strength to know when to quit. To know when something is not going to work out. There comes a time in our lives where we must give up on a dream and find another." Is she right? Is it time to give up on France, in spite of all the things I've endured and all the muck I've waded through to return home without prospects, stuck in the proverbial mud of young adulthood during a financial crisis? Should I go back to dancing every day, to eating only salad, to writing dissertations and memorizing Italian diction? Is that even an option for me?

Every morning I wake up, I question myself. Who I am, who I was, who I am becoming, and who I should be. If I am being honest, I am far from happy. I've gained weight, I'm broke, and I hate my job. I rarely work and don't get along with many other people. I feel out of control. But at the end of the day, I have to remind myself that I'm living in France, and even if my jeans don't fit, my bank account is in a sorry state, and my internet rarely works long enough for me to write a blog post successfully, I can always have a coffee at the local brasserie with an eccentric and funny group of people who want nothing more than to give children the skills they need to succeed in the future.

And at least, when I speak in English, people listen to me because my accent - and the rest of me - is unapologetically and musically American.

Hurry Up and Wait

The boredom that chronicles my daily life engulfs my existence in a deafening silence. My life is defined by free time. On paper, I work twenty hours a week between two separate jobs. In reality, I work ten hours maximum. This is the kind of life I dread. I walk around like a ghost of myself, unable to rejoice in the experience of living in France because I have nothing to occupy my time. I have little (if any) money to spend on amusements and an exorbitant amount of freedom. I rarely interact with anyone and spend more hours per week on a train or using public transportation than I do actually working. I am so unproductive that my stomach churns with anxiety and anger. The kind of frustration I experience on a daily basis due to cancelled classes, teacher’s strikes, and accidental holidays is unbearable.

This is hardly what I envisioned when I boarded a plane two months ago to chase after my life’s purpose and discover the world in a romantic notion I whimsically called “my great perhaps”. I am one of those humans who revels in challenge, multi-tasking, and the act of being busy. I thrill in the joy of learning, adore planning things out to a T, and enjoy going to bed feeling accomplished. During this busyness, I may feel stressed, and after ten weeks of Lawrence-level studying, practicing, dancing, and planning, I am of course exhausted beyond belief. Regardless of my exhaustion, it is something to which I am accustomed and something I prefer.

When I am not walking around Nantes with an uneasy and unsettled stomach, I am in the classroom doing nothing more than babysitting teenagers in English. I attempt to get them talking to no avail. When I play games, I feel that I am not doing my job. When I propose coursework, the students turn off and despise me for the entirety of their fifty-minute class period. Nothing I do pleases anyone, and even if it pleases one party or the other, it never pleases me. Is this even teaching? Is this even a job? How has this become my life?

My friends and relations from the states have been helpful in many respects and I am forever grateful for their support. Still, there is something about this life that I cannot explain to them. While they struggle to muddle through 60-hour work weeks, hellish college schedules, social and familial conflicts, I call them and complain I am bored. I know what they’re all thinking, How dare she complain about that! She’s in France! And she finally has time to relax! Nobody tells me this outright, of course, because they love me too much and I love them too much to say I am jealous of their lifestyle – the one I call familiar and wonderful now I am no longer a part of it. Their suggestions and solace have been irreplaceable to me: find a dance studio! Buy a library card! Go to the museums! But even when I spend my free time writing this blog, reading books they lend me, watching podcasts, or calling my family, I am gripped with this indescribably awful feeling of vexation. Even as I sit here and write this, I can feel a knot rising in my throat. How am I going to live through this for another six months? How can I wake up every morning, not knowing whether I will work but knowing that if I do have the chance, I will hate it and so will the teachers and students I work with?

I want to use my talents to help people. I want to make a difference in the world, use my skills, and make a daily effort to solve problems as Lawrence taught me to solve them. However, I am barred from using my incredible education, talents, and intelligence because the school I work for hardly values me and refuses to use me to my best ability. It is an incomprehensible system fostered by a program that I cannot work within. No matter how hard I try or whatever methods I attempt, I cannot win. Already, after two months, I am at the end of my rope.

This month is especially difficult for me emotionally because I am “teaching” my students about American Thanksgiving. At the end of one of my boring and unsuccessful classes, a short, dark-haired teenage French boy came up to me and said, “Miss? The most important thing about Thanksgiving is family, right?”

“Of course,” I replied, forcing a smile as I packed up my papers and searched for the keys to the classroom.

“But you are in France for Thanksgiving, so you won’t be with your family.”

He meant no harm by this statement, but it cut deep – through my skin, to expose the raw emotion that I hide beneath my usually composed outward appearance. “No, I won’t.” I made eye contact with him and watched him blink at me, his unfairly long eyelashes battering back and forth, back and forth.

“Well, I’m sorry,” he murmured, and left me alone in the classroom with a picture of a Thanksgiving turkey on the teacher’s desk.

My closest friends and my sisters will tell you that I rarely laud American values or the American way of life. It is easy to dislike one’s country – it takes no effort, because you know it best and masochism comes easily. It is even easier to detest it when you do not live there because you are literally detached from it. You are disgusted in its downfalls and disappointed when it does not yearn to improve. Before this experience in France, I was one of those Americans who took at least one moment of every day to hate my country. “We have no public transportation,” I would argue, “We have no health care, it is dangerous to go about daily life when people can enter any public building with guns, and most Americans are ignorant”. While there is truth to these statements, I cannot help but feel a pang of homesickness every time someone mentions America or asks me a question about the United States. To make matters worse, I am in many ways a stereotypical American. The act of being busy and enjoying stress, rushing around in life, occupied by work and school is a purely American idea. The Puritan work ethic literally defines my life: when friends and professors are asked to describe me, one of the first things they say is “Katie is one of the most dedicated, hardworking people I know.” And it’s true. The pleasure of work does not exist in France. French people do not understand the desire to work because most only do it out of necessity. This is another reason why most French people I meet do not understand my unhappiness, either.

“You have six weeks of vacation! You work twelve hours a week! Surely that must give you joy,” said one of my cooperating teachers with unbridled enthusiasm when I left my high school last week at the end of the day. Oh, if only you knew me.

Even though I make goal sheets for myself (this month’s include: read one book per week, go to one cultural event per week, update your blog every five days, experiment with cooking a new food you’ve never tried, go to mass every Sunday, and go to dance class three times a week), the result of checking something off the list is hardly satisfying. All these things are “fun”, and my “work” is more leisure than labor. I feel extremely guilty complaining (if you cannot already tell) about my life, but cannot help it because the incompleteness that grips me each morning when I wake up leaves me feeling angry.  My life is punctuated by a kind of uncontrollable discontentment.

If we’re talking about self-discovery, however, I can say I’ve learned a few things, as is evident by this post:

1)   I like being busy, making a difference, and using my skills.

2)   I do not enjoy teaching. At all.

Until I learn more things about myself in the next six months, I’ll just sit here idly, in this train station, people watching, on a gloomy day in a gloomy French city where everything is more expensive than it should be and my morning bus is always late.

Pasty, Privileged, and Heteronormative: Tales from a French Train Station

On a soggy Tuesday afternoon, I entered the train station and sat down on the wrought iron bench. I pulled out my iPod and began my usual "kill time until the train comes" routine: a game of solitaire with the Beatles on low. I wasn't sitting there for more than ten cold minutes when a large group of policemen and women with the zords "Customs and Border Control" imprinted on their uniforms entered, flanked by three memebers of the French army in full camouflage and military-grade rifles. They spoke to each other as any other group of colleagues would, joking about how awful and strange the weather had been, and describing their wife's awful cooking skills. "What am I going to do with my teenager?" asked one policewoman to her army compatriot. "He never listens!" Were it not for the presence of their standout blue uniforms and combat boots, one would think they were a normal bunch of French citizens awaiting the next train.

It all happened in a matter of seconds. When the train from Paris arrived in La Roche-sur-Yon, the profiling began. The police picked out every person of African and Arab descent in the station, demanded their papers, and began frisking them; searching their luggage, throwing off their coats, and manhandling their purses. In the middle of the unadulterated chaos, a little Moroccan boy began to cry. I wanted to assure him that his mom, who was proudly sporting a fashionable hijab and adjusting her trench coat as the police searched her luggage, would be ok. But she wasn't. And neither was he.
They traipsed through the family's personal belongings, paying no mind to their dignity or the unspoken French rule concerning the absolute separation of private and public life. I sat there, appalled and enraged as they took the woman and her child away in handcuffs while she insisted she had no idea what they were talking about or accusing her of.

Until this point, I had only heard whispers of Franco-Arab racism and tension on the news and in my classrooms. It is something I find purely fascinating and absolutely revolting; partially because Americans are also overwhelmingly prejudiced against Arabs and my own father (sorry Dad) relentlessly despises their existence. Tensions have been especially high as of late because of the death of five French journalists who were taken captive and tortured by extremists in Mali. Yesterday, I was shocked to hear one of my students whisper, "She's not smart as  the rest of us because she's Arab - you don't have to answer her" when a young Lebanese girl asked a pertinent question regarding American culture.

I admit, as a middle class white American female, I have rarely encountered this kind of unabashed racism and penetrating fear. I have studied its causes and significance from a purely academic perspective and often read about it in the paper. But in essence; I face no kind of discrimination in my day to day life because I am pasty, privileged, and heteronormative. So I sat there feeling utterly helpless as the French police senselessly dragged away a dozen people, divided families, and broke the human spirit. I thought we were better than this. I thought we learned our lesson in the twentieth century. I thought we were finally moving to a new age where anyone could walk this planet with pride and identity and share in the cultural differences that make humanity so incredible and precious. I seem to have thought incorrectly.

As one of my cooperating teachers pointed out, the French love discussing topics that are considered taboo in America: politics, science, sex, and religion are all fair game for discussion in French classrooms and family diner tables. But the things Americans enjoy discussing, like history, racism, social change, and our opinions regarding current events, are forbidden and rarely talked about in France. When I asked why this was, she replied, "Remember, the French are subtle. And that is just the way things are."

It didn't make any sense to me, either. What's more, I truly detest such gross over-generalizations concerning culture, especially because many Americans accidentally do it with staggering frequency. The French are smelly. The Russians are communist. The English are cold-hearted. The Arabs are terrorists. The Mexicans are illegal.

The more I see of humanity, the more I am disgusted, as is evident by this unfortunately scathing commentary. However, I refrain from harsh judgements as much as I can because I know these things do not apply to all of us. Because after the horrible affair concluded, the fifty-something Frenchman sitting next to men picked up his tiny, anxious Yorkie and muttered, "Unbelievable, isn't it? A harmless mother surely had nothing to do with those killings in Mali."

I nodded, and the unuttered agreement from the others in the station created a heavy silence that weighed upon all of us - from the little French girl in a baby-sized trench coat to the elderly woman composting her train ticket on the platform. Some things are better left unsaid. Others clearly ought to be discussed. But regardless of nationality, we ought to try and be a little more humane to the people who share our core DNA. If not, we'll surely end up destroying the one thing that distinguishes us from the animal world: our ability to understand each other.

The Daughter They Never Had

            When I was 17, I made the heart-wrenching decision to move far away from my parents to the magical frozen tundra of central Wisconsin. Lawrence University was perfect for me, and more than this, they offered an incredible amount of scholarship money – far more than I could have ever imagined from a private school. Regardless, my family had fallen on hard times all throughout my high school career, and as I watched them drive away that fresh fall morning of freshman year, I could see tears in my mother’s eyes. I was the middle child. I caused the most drama and the most grief, but also made (and still make) my mother laugh in intangible ways and my father so proud he is reduced to tears. Regardless of all my family’s struggles, triumphs, and failures, we are close; closer than many other families I know. We tell each other everything and we support each other when times are hard. We drive each other crazy and we all have our little personality quirks, but at the end of the day, we’re family. We’ll love each other until kingdom come.

The fact that I was over 2,000 miles away from my Floridian family really didn’t hit me until halfway through my sophomore year. Until then, I struggled in college like most kids, but my mom was a phone call away and my older sister lived relatively close to Lawrence in a small Wisconsin town. Things were difficult but endurable until I realized music was no longer my passion and needed to re-evaluate my place in the world. Heartbroken, I returned home to Florida over the summer to spend time with my family, but the re-entry was harder than I could have imagined. I still loved my family but they had changed and so had I. They adjusted to life without me, as everyone is wont to do, so having me around once again changed the dynamic. And while my mother and I still maintained our quiet afternoon talks, my little sister and I went for Starbucks at midnight, and my father still sang in the choir with me early on Sunday mornings, it was clear something was not the same. To make matters worse, I was bound for the wonderful shores of France for my first ever French immersion experience. I was “like a horse in the starting gate” as my mother said, pawing to get started and get gone. I was convinced I didn’t need a family any more.

Oh, how I was wrong.

Living in a foreign country, even for a semester, is both a trying and rewarding experience. When I arrived in Paris, my French host mother, Madame Saintoin, spoke with a lisp, rarely smiled, and appeared downright cold. For the first two weeks, I was terrified of her and I avoided the bourgeois Parisian apartment like the plague. I could not call my family and the internet was too testy for Skype. I would cry myself to sleep and often thought of changing host families until one Sunday afternoon when she invited her children and grandchildren over for lunch. It was here that I saw the warmth of a family I so desperately needed and wanted to be a part of. From that moment forward, Madame and I were inseparable. We made espresso for each other on Saturday afternoons, exchanged recipes (she tried to make cheesecake and I attempted coq au vin), and danced the night away lip syncing to the Mamma Mia! soundtrack in her living room, the searchlight from the Eiffel Tower cheering us on. I fell in love with Madame and with her cool mid-twenties/early thirties children, who invited me out for soirées on the town, introduced me to their friends, and taught me how to navigate the intimidating and complicated Parisian bus system. When it came time to leave Paris, I was just as reluctant to quit my new family as I was to leave the city of lights, even if it meant returning to my own family - who I loved and missed dearly.

However, my luck hardly changed upon my return to Lawrence and I fell into a rather deep pit of despair. Once again far from my family and turned off from my friends, I was desolate, depressed, and misty-eyed. It was the kind of depression people are prone to during their mid-life crisis, so it hardly suited a 20-something college student with the world lapping at her feet. My family was too removed from the situation and didn’t understand my distress. A rift formed between us that I felt I could never repair. Bound and determined to stay in Wisconsin for the summer, I desperately searched for housing and found nothing until the last dark hour when I was two steps away from homeless. I frantically e-mailed my church choir director, begging him, “Do you know anyone who can house me for two weeks, until I get back on my feet?” Within hours, I had a place to stay.

In mid-July of 2012, I moved to a wonderful home in north Appleton owned by two of First United Methodist Church’s most beloved members, Jeff and Shelby. Lost and confused, unaware and broke, I had no idea what to expect. Within a week, we'd all fallen in love with each other. Shelby’s fresh herbs and genuine smiles, Jeff’s sense of humor, their warmth and conversation, and their openness and accepting natures all convinced me that I was in the right place at the right time. I was stubborn and out of luck but I had two incredible people in my life to substitute – temporarily – for the parents who were far away and at a loss to understand me. Long story short, I stayed with Jeff and Shelby for an entire summer, and the invitation had been extended for the summer after graduation as well. At the very least, I was a great cook, so they had to profit from my skills, right? What’s more, their warmth and unconditional acceptance of my person prompted a complete turnaround in the relationship I had with my own family, and we were closer than we had ever been. I had changed, and the last time I remembered being so happy was in Paris with Madame.

Throughout my senior year, Jeff, Shelby, my parents, my sisters, and Madame Saintoin became irreplaceable parts of my life. When my senior recital rolled around, both sets of my American “parents” gave up nearly an entire week of their lives to plan so as to ensure the event went on without a hitch, and my French mother requested a CD as soon as it was available (she also sent me some Chanel perfume). Shelby gave me her pearl earrings and my mother gave me her pearl necklace to wear for the occasion. Holding back tears in the dressing room, I held them both so tight I thought I’d never breathe again. When I fought with my older sister in December, it was Shelby and Jeff who invited us over to dinner to reconcile our differences, and when a conflict between my roommate and I occurred in late February, they took me in for a weekend - no questions asked.

I stayed with Jeff and Shelby all summer after graduation; anxious for my independence but grateful beyond words that they were once again taking me in without asking for anything in return. They lent me their car so I could get to work. They threw a party and invited my friends over for my birthday. When I badly sprained my ankle, they unexpectedly met me at the hospital. They even let me stay longer than we had originally planned.  And when I found myself confused and angry, they reserved all judgment and forgave me regardless of the fact that they shouldn’t have. I loved Jeff and Shelby right then with the same amount of love I had for my parents, but I was ready to move on. No more host families, I thought to myself as I flew from Chicago to Paris. I’m ready for my own place and my own adventures!

Life, however, has a sadistic sense of humor.

When I arrived in Nantes, I found myself in a housing situation that was hardly ideal. While it looked perfect on the internet, it was messy, dirty, noisy, located in an unsafe neighborhood and filled with strange young men I would rather not have met in my lifetime. I searched for an apartment to no avail and suddenly realized I wouldn’t be paid in full for another month. Things were desperate and I was close to homelessness once again. As a last resort, I contacted the director of the study abroad center in Nantes and begged her for a contact, a relation, anyone who would take in a starving, terrified 20-something American girl. Within hours, it was resolved. The next day, I moved in with my third host family: Patrice and Marianne.

The best way to describe them is to say they are a younger, French version of Jeff and Shelby. They are warm and funny. They love to garden, never fight, laugh more than any other couple I've ever known, and adore their children with every fiber of their being. As it turned out, they’d already decided I would be their fourth child. I cooked for them and surprised them by cleaning the kitchen, vaccuming the stairs and bringing Marianne cut flowers from the market. In return, they helped me find a second job, let me borrow their bike, and introduced me to some amazing French people (including their wonderful children and their children’s friends) who have imparted quite a bit of knowledge to my young and impressionable self. Not only have Patrice and Marianne renewed my faith in humanity, my relationship with my parents and strengthened my relationship with Jeff and Shelby, but they taught me how to relax, how to trust other people, and how to love the skin I am in.

I am writing this blog post about host families and my own family because it has finally come time for me to leave these little nests I have called home for over two years. Today, I will move to an apartment in Nantes – a real apartment with utility bills, contracts, my own kitchen, and a roommate. I will leave the cozy provincial home of the Garniers and leave behind the fantastic memories I shared with them.

It is utterly terrifying to end this chapter in my life and truly begin the real one:  the one that means adulthood and uncertainty. But after two years of help from some of the kindest, warmest, most extraordinary people I have ever met, I think it is time. As I leave them, I am making several promises to myself:

1.     Never be afraid to ask for help, because the people who are willing to give it do so out of the goodness of their hearts, not because they expect something in return.

2.     Never burn bridges and always, always give thanks to those who help you.

3.     Never underestimate the power of your own cooking, smiles, warmth, and conversation.

And lastly, I promise to become a “host-parent” myself someday, for there is surely to be a lost 20-something in need of council, support, food, and safety in their darkest hour.

Simply put,  I would not be the person I am today had I not stayed with these host families. Their impact upon my life has brought me to tears, inexplicable joy, and a kind of gratefulness and humility that is difficult to describe. To all my family, whether natural or host: if you’re reading this: I love you and my thankfulness is truly beyond words.