Life Update

Here's an update on my life, starting with college, including my back injury, and finishing with a reflection on my timeline of emotions of my year abroad.

Last I left off, I was deciding where to go to college, between Madison, UCSD, UWash, McGill, U of Minnesota, and UCSC. I got rejected from Berkeley, which didn't surprise me at all and only disappointed me for an hour or two. I posted a question to the world about UCSD's vibe and got overwhelmingly negative responses; people telling me that UC Socially Dead is very weak on extra-curricular activities and is not friendly and open. Further research also showed me that much of UCSD's reputation comes from biology and engineering, while Madison is very strong in the humanities. This means that Madison is a better school in the subjects I'm more likely to major in, as well as having a better vibe for me. It's not that I want a party school, exactly, because I don't really like parties. I just want the attitude of a party school, where everyone is looking to be friendly with everyone else, and you can smile at people as you walk down the street and sit next to strangers in the dining hall and strike up conversations.

Anyway, after a lot of research and reading the many facebook messages I got on the subject and soul-searching, it became pretty obvious to me what my best choice was, which is actually the school I've wanted since the beginning: The University of Wisconsin-Madison. So on April 6^th I signed my online confirmation, finished signing up for housing, and declined all my other offers. WOOOOOO!!!

Excuse my unprofessional writing, but WOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! Let's put on some happy music. (I'm actually not very good at happy music, so this is the best I've got: My Evil Plan to Save the World)

I'm really excited. It feels like the right choice, and I'm also really glad to be done making that choice. My best friend Grace got a really stressed angsty 3am Gchat conversation with me the weekend before. Now that that choice is over, I can theoretically get a good night's sleep!

Theoretically, because Life Update #2: I have back issues. I posted a week ago about my accident that ended me up in the hospital (Socialized Medicine). Unfortunately, my back issues weren't getting better, so on Wednesday (6 days after I fell) I went to see a kinésthérapeute/ostéopathe, which is a very generalized French doctor who does physical therapy, chiropractics, osteopathy, etc. He was very attractive and kind just like my emergency room doctor was, leaving me with the impression that all the rumored good-looking Frenchmen I was promised are all hiding in doctor's offices, because I certainly don't see them very often. He showed me that I had one leg 2 inches longer than the other, which is not normal, and put my pelvis back on its hinges. After he finished cracking me back into place, he showed me that my legs actually have a normal half-centimeter difference, which is why I often have back problems because my pelvis likes to jump off its hinges. Then he turned his attention to my upper back which is where it actually hurt, and said “Does it hurt to breathe?” “...Yes, especially if I sneeze or laugh.” “Well... that's normal. You have a muscle caught between your spine and your ribs that catches every time you breathe.” “...Oh.”

I guess eventually I will learn that whenever I hurt, I actually have a pretty bad medical problem. Obviously an out-of-place back is nothing I could die of, but it is nonetheless painful and every time I've needed to see a chiropractor they've been astonished that I didn't come in earlier. This problem runs in the family: we have high pain tolerance, don't like asking for help, and assume the problem will go away if we ignore it. I am writing all of this down to try to help me see how stupid this is so I won't do it anymore. It was especially stupid of me because I was on maximum dosage of paracetamol for 4 or 5 days and it was doing absolutely nothing for me and I couldn't sleep, so I should've known that I had a problem that wouldn't go away with time. Now, fortunately, I'm doing much better, am off the pain meds, and even went back to frisbee practice last night for the first time in two weeks. Yay!

In other news, springtime decided not to come this year. We went straight from a cold, gray, rainy winter to summer. Last Sunday was the first day of summer, and I went fishing with my host brother and father in the grandfather's boat.

Bare feet!

Fishing, meaning I lay on the top of the boat and sunbathed. Yes, I did get sunburned, but it was worth it.

With the sudden arrival of summer, a lot of things are changing. People are happier, we hang out outside during lunchtime instead of inside, and everyone's starting to count down the days until school's out. My friend Sarah, the other American, is going home in less than a month. I have less than 2 months until I see my parents and less than 3 months until I am HOME for real. 3 months from now, I'll be picking up my host sister at the airport.

You know how smell is the sense the most strongly linked to emotion? This has always been especially true for me because I have an acute sense of smell. The warmer weather means my sense of smell has come back in full flood, oddly enough reminding me of when I first came at the end of August. The smell of the soil and the plants in the garden, the smell of cows and green things when I go running, the smell of my sheets and the particular laundry detergent that they use, the smell of the house in general, they all remind me in a vivid, gut-wrenching sort of way how terrified I was when I first came, how sick and lost and alone. It's a weird feeling, but somewhat triumphant because it reminds me just how far I've come. In August and September I didn't talk much, I barely ate because I couldn't stomach the heavy food, I didn't know what to say or how to say it or how to act or anything. After two weeks I went to my first frisbee practice. I was terrified of everyone, didn't understand a word the coach said, and especially hated the fact that all the frisbee players say hello to each other with a cheek kiss. Seriously, isn't that a little overkill? In the States we just show up and say “Hi guys!” and start playing.

At the end of November, I went to my first frisbee tournament and declared that weekend a turning point: I had finally found a reason to stay in France. Now, my coach is one of my favorite people I know, and he's determined to send me to the national women's championship (more on that later) because he said he's proud of what I've become and how much I've improved.

I'm gonna miss these guys!

So for a brief summary:

In early October, I broke down for the first time and cried, just because I was homesick and alone and felt like the months ahead of me were so very long. (For the record, I broke down twice this year, once in October and once in... January? Anyway, the middle of the year.) In late October I had an angst crisis: sure, I was starting to get used to life in France, but what if it didn't fulfill my dreams? What if my life at home was actually, well... better, in most respects, than my life here? Considering how often I had told myself “Just X more months and I'm out of this high school, out of this boring city, out of this whole messed-up country!” before leaving, that was a pretty sad realization and took awhile to get over.

In mid-November I was in Paris, mostly alone, getting lost and daring to ask for directions and even starting to walk with the confidence that made people think I was a native – I got asked for directions three times. In December I sold oysters at the market, and celebrated Christmas away from home. In February I went to England with my class, which was the other most important turning point during my year abroad: I finally started feeling like I belonged with my class and with my friends, like I deserved a place on the bus instead of feeling bad for tagging along and annoying people. I also turned 18, which has honestly given me a sassiness +10 bonus. I'm a responsible adult, and no one can mess with me! In February or March I finally started being best buddies with my host sister – we got along excellently since the beginning, but now I never do my homework because we're too busy hanging out, watching bad reality TV, and making fun of each other. April 4^th, when I went to the hospital, was the first day where I forgot to be embarrassed about my accent in front of strangers. I just started talking to the nurse and the strangers at the hospital without stopping to explain, timidly, that I'm American and I'm sorry for my accent. And guess what? It worked just fine – my doctor talked to me in perfectly normal French. Even though they obviously knew I was foreign, they respected the fact that I speak fluently and didn't make a big fuss over my foreignness.

That leaves us at the present. Up until quite recently, I didn't think I was going to be sad to leave France at all. Sure, there are a few people I'll miss. I'll miss some people from my class and my frisbee team and most of all my host family.

 Les copines me manqueront!

But recently my life has just started to take on a greater degree of completeness, a sensation that I'm actually not in withdrawal of anything. I miss my parents and my friends and my music and my hometown, but I also have a life here that is becoming more and more rewarding, and it's going to be more difficult to leave it than I had imagined.

I know this was a very rambling update. But to conclude, I'm very excited to be going to Madison next year, my back issues are better, and France is starting to smell like summer.

Here's a love song with very repetitive lyrics that are adorable, since I haven't done any complementary French songs for awhile. T'es Belle – Volo

“You're beautiful when you smile... and when we see your teeth... when you make a lame joke in the middle of a silence... when you get mad and it's not the right time to tell you so... You're beautiful in all circumstances.”

What language do you think in?

“Et alors ? Tu penses en quelle langue ?”

This is one of the questions I get asked a lot. “Since you're bilingual, what language do you think in?” (I like to contest the “bilingual” assertion, since I reserve the word bilingual for people born with two languages who don't have an accent, and prefer the word “fluent” for those foreigners like me who have simply become adept in their second language. But the French of my acquaintance are less linguistically picky, and tell me to stop being silly.)

Up until now, my response would've been: “Well, in English, obviously. But I don't translate from English into French when I'm speaking to you.”

Recently I've discovered that this is not true. I wake up from dreams in vivid Frenglish. I catch myself thinking in Frenglish. I rarely think in pure English or in pure French, but a sort of mix of the two.

One caveat: as anyone who has ever read The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker (which I think of as Linguistics 101) would know, we don't actually think in language. We think in what he likes to call Mentalese, which makes perfect sense if you realize that sometimes you have a concept in your head but can't think of the right words to explain it, even in your mother tongue. Being at a loss for words is only sometimes not knowing what to say, and other times it's not knowing how to say it. And I think that a lot of the time, the thoughts in our heads are in pure Mentalese that we don't bother translating into English. Sometimes we do think in English sentences, especially if we're thinking in a check-list fashion, or trying to lay things out very clearly, or rehearsing conversations in our heads. For example, “Okay, laundry, then homework, then shower and sleep.” Or “I don't know how I feel! Billy is being mean to me, but I still want to be his friend, and Jennifer only wants to be my friend if I stop hanging out with Billy, but I don't like Jennifer as much!” Or “Mom, I have some news for you... But let's just keep in mind that report cards are not the only thing in life, and it's not the end of the world, okay?” So my instances in Frenglish are mostly this sort of thing: everyday checklisting in my head or the other types of things that we think in actual English and not in Mentalese.

This morning I realized that the bathroom window was open, so I should close the bathroom door if I didn't want it to bang shut in the wind later and scare me. (Yes, this happens all the time.) And I caught myself thinking “Gotta close the porte, sinon ça va slammer.” Slammer is not a verb in French. French for “slam the door” is “claquer la porte.” So what is interesting about this sentence is threefold:

1. Porte (French for door) came more easily to mind than “door,”
2. I started in semi-English and finished in semi-French (although it happens just as often the other way around)
3. I invented a verb à la française, turning English “slam” into “slammer,” conjugated into near future “va slammer.”

In math class, I'm likely to be thinking in French because I was just listening to the teacher and my classmates in French, but as soon as I start counting I have to switch. “La somme de toutes ces probabilités doit être égale à un, donc un demi... I mean one half, plus one fourth, plus one eighth.. the last option must be one eighth, c'est un huitième.” Which, all in English, goes “The sum of all these probabilities (possibilities) must be one, so one half... I mean one half, plus one fourth, plus one eighth.. the last option must be one eighth, that's one eighth.” By the way, here's a really good explanation for why math in French is hard, although I believe most people have trouble doing math in their second language. My English teacher (who speaks very good English for a French person), says that she can't do math in English, either.

There are also certain words that don't really translate, or are just better in one language than another. For example, I use the word “awkward” in English a lot, as many teenagers do. We use it to describe an uncomfortable situation in which we did not act appropriately. I explained this word to my French friends using the example of asking a lady when the baby is due and having her inform you that she is not actually pregnant. This has never happened to me, but it's the quintessential awkward situation. In French you can say that something is “embarrassant” (embarrassing), but it's really not the same. Especially if you want to say “I'm a really awkward person... I always say the wrong things in social situations, and I never know how to act around other people.” I wouldn't know how to translate that into French. Maybe they just don't have any awkward people.

In French, I really like the word “chiant,” for which Wordreference.com suggests “a pain” or “a bloody pain”. It manages to express at the same time something being boring, annoying, and unpleasant, in a slightly vulgar way. “C'est chiant” sort of takes the place of “that sucks,” but is slightly stronger and less immature-sounding. I have a feeling in the US I'll still be inserting “Mais nooon, c'est trop chiant ça !” into my sentences.

Sometimes there are just words that are more specific in one language than another. French, for example, has one word “culpabiliser” for “to make someone feel guilty.” They have a word “pisteur” for the ski patrol, which signifies both their capacity as slope maintenance and as first aid workers. In English we have awkward and creepy and all sorts of other words that don't translate. So in whatever language I'm thinking in, I'll often use words specific to the other language mixed into my sentences.

Sometimes I invent words that are either very rare or don't exist at all. I do this a lot on Skype with my mom. The other day I said something was “exigent,” which made her laugh because that is a real English word that means challenging, difficult, or picky, but is not a word you hear every day. In French it's “exigeant” and is much more common. I also invented “emission,” which is English for something being discharged or emitted, e.g. an electron emission, when what I meant to say was “episode” (of a TV show), which is “émission” in French.

Sometimes I hate speaking French. I hate my accent, which I can hear but am incapable of eliminating. I hate not being able to find my words sometimes. I hate the fact that I'm not allowed to speak like everyone else – you know how when you hear a foreigner swear in English, it's hilarious? Well, same thing goes for me. If I use the same bad words as all my friends, they laugh at me, so I don't, which just distances my language usage even more from theirs. And because I'm full of contradictions, I also hate the fact that I talk just like everyone else: the fact that I learn by imitating others means my language is much less colorful and whimsical and special than it is in English. I love my native language because I play with words and use words in odd ways that sound a little bit funny, and use big words and can make my word choice match my identity of someone a little bit odd and little bit well-educated. I can't do that in French – I imitate the people I hang out with, so I sound just like all the other teenage girls, which is definitely not a part of my identity.

I also think the language you speak changes your personality because of all the cultural differences present as soon as you switch languages. In French they are more politically correct and tell meaner jokes, are more aggressive in their speech, more judgemental of appearances, and much less private. Sometimes I translate the jokes I laugh at into English in my head and realize Oops, that's actually really mean. But it isn't in French. Racist jokes, fat jokes, even Holocaust jokes are much more fair game. Making fun of people is easier. My host sister might come home and yell “Salut la grosse!” which means “hey fatso!” which is not really something we'd say in English, even as a joke. They also tend to announce when they've farted instead of politely ignoring it, they share details about their morning poops, and talk about how much periods suck even if they're surrounded by awkward teenage boys. I am aware that plenty of people are like that in the States too, but I have observed as a general trend that people are more open and more verbally aggressive in French than in English. I had to inform my host sister, who loves Chinese jokes, that most of my Asian friends back in the Bay Area are not fans of white people telling Asian jokes. At all. I remember once getting a really bad reaction when I made a Chinese driver joke.

I have a feeling that as much as I miss speaking English, I'm going to have trouble speaking English too. I enjoy having no accent and having whimsical phrases, but maybe I'll miss the blunt openness of French. I'll stumble over my words sometimes and beat myself up over it. WTF? This is supposed to be my native language... Because maybe, after all this time, the easiest language in which to express all the cultural knowledge that I have now acquired is actually Frenglish. I have a hard time telling my parents about my classes because the concepts are different. How do I explain the “TPE” which is a semester-long research project class? In French, all you have to say is “TPE” and everyone understands, but in English I have to stutter and say “So today in TPE (pronounced Tay-Pay-Euh)... I mean, you remember that research project thing I told you about?” which is not exactly well-said either. Conversely, the other day I had to explain to the family why I was on Skype with my mom for an hour throwing a hissy fit about how bad college websites are. It was to sign up for placement tests, a concept which doesn't exist in France and I couldn't even find the words to describe. A lot of the time I want to share something about my life, but there are no words to describe it because it's a cultural concept completely foreign. I'm a senior and have spent this entire year on my laptop writing college essays, researching colleges, and laboriously applying from overseas, and yet I'm pretty sure they still only have a vague idea of how college works in the US. I've done my best to explain it, but I have a feeling it would work out better if I just plain drew up an ideas map/flowchart thing, which would look better if I knew more about computers and weren't lazy:

Football games and stuff → Colleges have a big social component in the US ↓

College is important! → Pressure to get into good college → strong college identities

Colleges have a big social component in the US ↓

College applications contain a lot of non-academic stuff, like extra-curriculars and essays

And so on. And then, after explaining American football and the concept of extra-curriculars and how our essays are really questions about your personal life philosophies and struggles and triumphs instead of the cold French cover letters, you might finally start to understand the college process in the same way that we do. So clearly the phrase “college applications” itself can't translate into French because it is such a different concept, with so many cultural differences behind it.

Until rather recently, I missed the confidence I had in my native language. But recently I've realized that I over-analyze what I say and what is said to me way less in French, and now that I've gotten over being ashamed of my accent (mostly), that means I'm less shy in French. I really hope I won't come home and be shyer than I was in France. I feel like I've spent a whole year being so acutely uncomfortable with myself and my surroundings that I've become immune to embarrassment by simple overdose, and I profoundly hope I won't lose this immunity with another language change.

This morning I was home alone with the cat. And realized I was talking to him in French, because obviously it would be weird to talk to the French cat in English. And yet I remember at the beginning of the year, I thought it was hilarious that my host mom spoke to the cat in French, because it seemed so obvious to me (not understanding French very well) that the cat didn't understand French. I think this is a universal hilarious moment, thinking it's obvious that animals don't understand foreign languages and then realizing that animals don't understand your own language either. If you speak French, I highly recommend this sketch by my favorite comedian Gad Elmaleh. At the end of the clip he talks about his bizarre experience in the Netherlands hearing people speak Dutch to their dogs. He also makes fun of cats, which is, you know, always funny. And as long as we're talking about Gad, I can't resist sticking in my other two favorites as well, les français where he makes fun of French people and la cigarette where he makes fun of smoking.

Anyway, so I was talking to my cat this morning, and I was telling him “Non, Nuts, dégage ! T'es tout mouillé, c'est degeuelasse !” which means “No, Nuts, go away! You're all wet and gross!” And proceeded to dump him off and go put more wood on the fire, thinking to myself “Le feu va crever, oh shoot I'm getting smoke everywhere.” Vive le franglais.

Socialized Medicine

I have oddly enough been looking forward to the day when I could finally have a personal opinion of the socialized medical system. Granted, anecdotes should not be the basis of political opinions, but there are so many numbers and statistics around to analyze that sometimes it seems better just to get a feel for the vibe – just like choosing colleges!

I have already written a little bit about my medical experiences here in France: I had to pass a physical to get my Ultimate Frisbee license, and I've gotten a cold three different times. The physical was remarkable only in how much less paperwork there was than in the US. In the US, every time I went to the doctor I had to fill out a lot of forms with my weight and blood pressure and if I ever felt depressed or gay or like taking drugs. My physical in France was much less complicated, consisting quite simply of taking a few basic measurements (height, weight, blood pressure), asking if I had any health problems and if I do any sports, and having me do ten squats to prove that I wouldn't keel over. Then he declared me quite healthy and sent me on my way.

My colds proved to me that French people really like medication. Here's a chart showing that France really likes antibiotics, as an example:

I tend to think that my body has evolved to take care of itself pretty well, and it often seems to do its job without my messing with it. Research has been controversial over the usefulness of fever, but I prefer to take the safe path: I don't run screaming to the medicine cabinet at 98 ºF, but anything over 101 ºF I will try to lower. Just like hand sanitizer, fever might not be that good for you, but it's a heckuva lot worse for your bad bacteria, and immune responses can be sped up with increased temperature. So whenever I'm sick, I take an ibuprofen or two if I'm too feverish, but never any antibiotics because colds are viral and every time I'm sick it's a cold. Furthermore, I was suspicious of French medication at the beginning just because I didn't recognize it, so I refused to take anything. This left my host family with the impression that I'm extremely anti-medication, which, compared to them, I guess I am.

So those were my experiences of medicine in France up until today, when I got a new insight into French hospitals. In gym class, we finished our running unit (where I had one of the best grades in my class) and the badminton unit (where I had the worst grade in my class) and now we've moved on to gymnastics. I am even worse at gymnastics than I was at badminton, unfortunately. In my defense, I am quite athletic. I go running every weekend through the empty cow-strewn countryside of my commune, and I play frisbee twice a week. But I am not the most coordinated knife in the drawer, and I am incredibly inflexible. Dance is something I've long known to be impossible for someone as awkward as me, and gymnastics therefore combines three things that I'm bad at: dancing, being flexible, and being coordinated.

Long story short, I cannot do a handstand. I told the teacher that I couldn't do a handstand, or a cartwheel, or even a somersault, and that I'll hurt myself or someone else or both (or all three or four, if I'm lucky). But he said “Nooon, tu ne vas pas te faire mal ! Je te le promets.” (Nooo, you won't hurt yourself, I promise!) Which is how I ended up in the hospital today. Because I can't do a handstand.

...Okay, have you stopped laughing? Can I finish my story?

When I do a handstand, I either go too far (and fall over on the other side) or not far enough. For all of us who couldn't do a handstand, the teacher said we should have our partner catch our feet as we go up in the air, so that we'd get a feel for what being balanced on our hands should be like. The first time I tried, I realized I pushed way too hard and was going to kick my partner in the face if she wasn't careful, so I dropped into a rather painful somersault instead of holding my arms rigid. The second time, determined to succeed, I locked my elbows and told them not to bend. Since I can't do a somersault on the mat because I don't tuck my head in (I can do one by pushing up on my arms!), my whole weight fell on my unbent head and unbent arms and it was my back that folded in half, right in the middle where it's not supposed to bend. I'm pretty sure I screamed some inappropriate Anglo-Saxon words that my classmates are probably familiar with despite their low level of English, and I proceeded to lie on the floor for a good half-hour, incapable of movement or breath. Eventually after a few false starts I managed to get up, which I only had the willpower to do because my teacher wanted to call the firefighters to bring me out on a stretcher. I kept insisting that I was fine, and even went to physics class afterward, but they got mad at me for not following instructions and going to the school nurse like I was supposed to, so they escorted me there. The nurse then said I should go to the hospital and get an X-ray, just in case. I knew nothing was broken, but since I couldn't breathe very well, I couldn't explain myself very well either, so I don't think that helped our communication.

By the way, the nurse thought I was German. Not the first time I've gotten that. Generally I'll take that as a compliment since Germans speak better French than Americans.

Anyway, the nurse drove me to the hospital and left me there (since I'm 18, which suited both of us just fine – I hate being hovered over). After 40 minutes or so of time in the waiting room, I got half of a room walled off with a curtain from an old guy having heart troubles. The nurse took my blood pressure and the doctor was not long after, asking me lots of questions starting with “So you're American?” and “But you speak good French?” and segueing right into the medication questions and how much does it hurt questions. He was a very charming and handsome young man – younger than doctors in the US usually are, considering that med school in France is 3 years and you don't need an undergrad, compared to the 8 years of total college needed in the US before you even start residencies. I just felt like this needed mentioning, that the French socialized system managed to provide me with a very aesthetically pleasing doctor. These things are important to the morale of the patient!

So he took a look at my back, checked that pressing on it didn't hurt, and said that obviously nothing's broken and an X-ray would be useless – it's just some painful muscle trauma. So he sent me off with some painkillers and anti-inflammatory pills, as well as a strict note against doing sports for the next two weeks.

“Uhhh... is this negotiable?”

“Sure, I'll make it one week if you promise not to overdo it.”

“I have a frisbee tournament this weekend. If it doesn't hurt by this weekend, can I play?”

“...I really should say no, but if it doesn't hurt, go for it. Just go easy on yourself, okay?”

So he sent me off with some painkillers and anti-inflammatory pills, as well as a strict note against doing sports for the next week that I'm allowed to break if I want to. Woohoo! And next time my gym teacher wants me to do a handstand, I'll just show him my little doctor's paper that says “Contusion dorso-lombaire d'allure musculaire” (which is exactly what it sounds like: a muscular contusion of the mid-back muscles, but in fancy medical language) and tell him I told you so. I TOLD you I would hurt myself.

I got to spend the rest of the day at home in bed, keeping my back muscles warm so they wouldn't seize up. I'll probably be back to school tomorrow, but I am not altogether unhappy with my little emergency room visit, as I have proved once and for all to my teacher that I really truly am incapable of doing gymnastics.

What this allows me to say, furthermore, is that I have now dipped my toe into a socialized medical system, and I have no complaints. I didn't have to wait a long time, my doctor was nice and said exactly what I thought he should say, and it was a generally good experience.

However, I am aware that there are blacker tales of this country's medical care lurking just around the corner. You remember my host sister's broken collarbone? Well, they should have operated right away, but they didn't. So now, since her bone healed in a still angular fashion, chances are that they'll have to re-break it and re-set the bone. She is not pleased at all.

Next up, keep your eyes open for a post about college decisions. That is, the decision is made... it just has to be finalized. *Suspense!*