Europe pt 2

Venice is lovely. It is a peculiar city because it exists for tourism and tourism only. Slightly over half of the population is tourists, and the residents of Venice all work in tourism, whether it's driving watertaxis, cleaning hotels, selling plastic gizmos by the Grande Canale, or manning the many gift shops, restaurants, and Rialto market stalls.

You can't go into Venice hating tourists, as so many people do. You can't “beat the tourist traps” and try to find the “real Venice,” because the real Venice exists for tourism, and if you are going to Venice, you're a tourist, too. I find it marvelous to listen to the babble of different languages around me, the different cultures and fashions and faces. People from all corners of the Earth have come to admire the beauty of one common thing, and that makes my little humanities-loving heart feel warm and fuzzy.

All that being said, I believe we have succeeded in escaping the tourist-traps of Venice as much as possible, in all the right ways. We're staying in a monastery which is far cheaper than any hotel in the city. We seem to have the place almost to ourselves, including the roof which offers a view of the neighborhood, the skyline of churches and palaces, and a bit of the Canale di San Marco. The desk clerk didn't even speak any English, so we got by speaking some motley stew of French, Italian, and Spanish. (Linguistics is awesome!) We're right next to Garibaldi Street, where the shopkeepers don't speak English either (unlike the Rialto markets) and there are actual grocery stores that sell cat food and other household necessities for the few who live and work in Venice. Since Venice is famous for having overpriced mediocre food, we took advantage of this. My favorite meal was our rooftop dinner of meat and cheese sandwiches, salad, and chocolate pudding, bought at the grocery store and assembled and eaten with a view of the city below us.

Of course, we did take advantage of the many gelato shops around the city. The lemon gelato wasn't quite as good as the lemon gelato in Heidelberg, but their hazelnut flavor made up for it.

I guess there were opportunities we missed. We didn't tour the basilica of San Marco, the famous church, as we didn't want to wait several hours in line in the sun.

We didn't take a gondola ride, as we saw them meandering through the narrow canals that we were exploring on foot through the cobbled streets on the inside, so we were pretty sure we weren't missing out on much.

We also took the vaporetto, a water bus that took us from the station to our hotel, that gave us a lovely tour of the canals and was far cheaper and less over-romanticized than the gondolas. I loved that it was basically a subway on water. Our method of seeing Venice was just to explore on foot, since it isn't a large city.

I'm sure there's so much in the city that you could spend a week in there with a tour guide. But for practical purposes, you can do Venice in a day. You need to walk through the San Marco Square and through the Rialto markets, but after that you've pretty much seen what you need to see. We arrived late on Thursday, took a vaporetto ride, and left my very feverish brother and my exhausted mother in the monastery, while my dad and I went to find dinner. The next day, with the exception of Alex who spent the entire day sleeping off his illness, we explored Venice on foot. By noon we felt like we had seen everything we wanted to. We traded in my mom who had a heat-headache for Alex who was slightly more alert and got paninis. The afternoon was too hot for all of us so we took a siesta until it was cooler out, at which point we did some more walking to show Alex what we had seen in the morning and finished with rooftop dinner and gelato. And that is how you do Venice in a day.

Then we took a train to Sanremo, a smallish Italian beach town. We lost a day in transit, as the trains were neither direct nor speedy. That night we ate real Italian pizza: a pesto one with pine nuts, one topped with grilled veggies, and one with cheese and mushrooms. My dad complained of the creaminess, but I found them far superior to Domino's. Here's the view from our hotel:

The next day we spent at the beach. I can't recommend Mediterranean beaches at all, except for the fact that they're beautiful and the water's warm. Unlike in California, Italian beaches are not all public, so although we could see miles of beautiful beach, only a very small portion was public, and the 23 steps of shore were packed with squalling children and cranky old people. My dad sat down in a chair to take off his shoes, and was immediately yelled at by an old Italian lady because you had to pay for use of the chairs. So we moved our shoes to the area without chairs, and started playing catch on the shore with the frisbee we'd brought.

(By the way, this is the frisbee my team signed for me!)

 We had to inch out of the free beach a little to get enough space, but figured no one would mind. Pretty soon the same Italian lady was back, though not because we were on the wrong beach: “No no no! Ees dangerrrous forr zee bamBINI!”

That's when I knew I'd turned French. A year ago I would've placated her: “I'm very sorry ma'am, we'll be going now.” But I threw up my hands and said “Yes, yes ma'am, whatever you say, ees verry dangerrous forr zee bambini!” with a mocking look. Not that it did any good, of course – this response isn't necessarily better than the one I would've given a year ago. But in France they would say I'm finally standing up for myself and saying what I think.

So we came back 30 minutes later in swimsuits this time, as the day had warmed up quickly, and this time we played catch in the water, far enough from shore that they didn't mind. The water was warm and lovely, and shallow enough that we could still stand and deep enough that we could dive for the disk. That is how we spent a significant part of the day in Sanremo, and will be a fond memory even though Italian beaches are crowded and full of grumpy people. The Pacific is unfortunately not warm enough to play frisbee in.

That night we ate at the hotel restaurant, and made the mistake of ordering their special discounted 3-course meal. One course would have been more than sufficient. It started with a pasta course, but the pesto sauce was so creamy that all of us had trouble stomaching it, and I was the only one who ate more than half of my plate (being, of course, accustomed to fatty European meals). The second course, the meat course, had so much cow on it that any one of our plates probably would have been sufficient for the four of us. It was good, but we were already full. Europeans don't believe in doggy bags, but we played the uncouth Americans and asked to have it wrapped up (which they did with paper plates and foil, since they don't have styrofoam boxes). We ate it for lunch the next day in rolls, and then for dinner in pasta. I guess we got our money's worth. For dessert we had tiramisu and lemon mousse, both of which we managed to finish off despite barely making a dent in the meat course. My dad claims he will never be able to eat pesto again. But at least we can say we experienced a fancy Italian meal.

The next day was another day lost in transit: a train to Menton to rent a car, and then the 5 hour drive to Méribel. It was a relief to find myself back in a country where I speak the language, where I am not afraid to ask for directions or talk to strangers. I did survive the most embarrassing shopping trip of my life, however, as we stopped to get groceries before driving up to the apartment in Méribel. First of all, we had missed the machine in the produce section where you are supposed to weigh and identify your produce and print out price stickers for them before you go to the checkout line, so we had to run back with our basket of produce and weigh it all while our checkout lady stalled. Then we discovered they didn't take visa, and I had to run to the car to get more cash from my brother, since we were almost clean out. The lady's smile was getting more and more strained with every delay, and I always feel bad for perpetuating the stereotype of rude clueless Americans. I feel responsible for my family when we're in France, as I have to translate for them, and so I felt bad for the checkout lady and the line behind us.

But once we arrived in Méribel, everything was like what a vacation really should be: relaxing, unstressful, with exactly what we want for food and sleeping schedules and activities. After so many meals in restaurants or with makeshift sandwiches or leftovers, it is lovely just to cook ourselves spaghetti with leftover beef, spicy tomato sauce, and lots of parmesan. We've spent our time going on hikes up the mountain – my dad hiked high enough up to find the soggy patch of snow we could see from our balcony – as well as reading, cooking, and playing catch with the frisbee I'm so glad I brought with us. The mountains are green, unrecognizable from what I saw in winter, but breathtakingly beautiful.

There are just a few people around, construction workers doing repairs and some mountain bikers, but mostly we have the woods and the mountains all to ourselves. Yesterday on a hike some friendly horses came right up to the edge of their enclosure and shoved their noses in my hands looking for treats, but we all jumped back in terror when one or the other of us touched the electric fence I hadn't noticed. It took me a moment to figure out what had happened – at first I thought someone had thrown a rock at my elbow, maybe the owner of the horses who didn't like me touching them. I don't know why I felt the shock mostly in my elbow, since it couldn't have been my elbow that brushed the fence. But after looking wildly around for my assaulter, I realized it had been the thin wire between the horses and me, and that my eyeballs were buzzing with electricity. Enough shock to scare a horse is definitely enough shock to make a human hurt, and I felt it in my elbow and my eyesockets for an hour or two after.

This is me right before touching that wire you can see by my hip:

That's about all I can say about our adventures in Méribel. It was lovely and relaxing if uneventful. On the 27^th we drove to Paris (technically, to Roissy, the little city where the airport is) and checked in at the airport hotel for a night, which was far more luxurious than we would have expected. We also went to a Chinese restaurant, the first one I've seen in France. In the Vendée they aren't really big on ethnic food. Or ethnic anything. There's little to no diversity in the population, in food, in language, in culture... but at least in Paris there are plenty of immigrants. So we had good Chinese food, including one dish that seems Chinese-French fusion to me: fried frog legs. Despite the stereotypes, the French do not actually eat frogs very often. So this was the first time I had eaten frog legs, and it was from a Chinese restaurant in Paris. In this case, the stereotypes are absolutely true: frog legs do taste just like chicken!

Unfortunately, I had to take a different flight back from the rest of my family because my two-way ticket had already been reserved a year in advance, so while they had a convenient non-stop from Paris to San Francisco, I had to change planes in Reykjavik, Iceland, and in Boston. I left three hours before my parents and landed four hours after they did. I figured out the CDG airport without difficulty and got through the passport check in Iceland. The guys ahead of me in the line were clearly very proud of themselves when they said to the security guy that they'd been in Europe for a month. What world travellers! But when he asked me how many of the past 6 months I'd spent in Europe and I answered 10, he was startled and had to verify my visa. Hah. That's what it's like to really be a world traveller.

The Boston airport was slightly more problematic. My flights had nothing to do with each other and I even had to go through customs and then go back through security, changing airlines. The problem with this is that I couldn't find any way to get from one terminal to another, and it was the 5^th person I asked who actually gave me good directions. Once I got to the other terminal (on a hard-to-find shuttle) I wandered around with another woman looking for the same flight since we couldn't even find departures, only arrivals. We had to find a hidden staircase and go up a floor before getting to check-in, security, and our gates. Now that is a badly-designed airport.

Taking off in Boston felt like finally leaving. I've already left so many times – I left high school when my parents came, I left France nearly a month ago, I left our friends in Germany to go touring on our own, I left France again in Paris... but now taking off in Boston was the last time I would have to leave, the last goodbye to my year abroad. The real end. So I wrote a poem, because what else can you do?

Where to now?

A midnight sun on a sea of clouds

Where to now? Where to now?

Heartsick laughter and euphoric tears

It's been so long, so long.

Where to now?

The cows are laughing and cooing goodbye

The pigeons moo hello

Hello Stranger. Hello.

On wings of metal we chase the sun

Across the sky and the ocean wide

To see a bridge on the other side –

I am here, but who am I?

It's been so long, so long.

The other sights are still the same

Boy meets girl and goes to school

The seagulls caw, the smell is sun,

And on the other side the children play too

Sing songs, chase balls

And life goes on. It's been so long, so long.

Fin, and Europe pt 1

I haven't posted for two weeks. The longer I wait to post, the more I have to write about, the more I'm too intimidated to even start. I apologize for this absence which was started by wanting to take advantage of my parents who I hadn't seen for 10 months and enjoy my last week in France, and compounded by having too much to write about to even start.

On my last day of school, my class threw a party for me. It was the most touching thing that has ever been done for me, and I still feel incredibly spoiled and unworthy. My last class of the day was French, and my friends decided we should ditch and go lie in the sun in the grass outside. I didn't want to, because I wanted to say goodbye to everyone, but they convinced me to just show up 10 minutes late. When we showed up to French, muttering vague excuses about how sorry we were and how my friend was constipated, everyone ran to the back of the room and started singing to me. They wrote me a song based on this old French tune, Céline by Hugues Aufray. The new chorus is:

Non non non tu ne restes pas là

Non tu ne restes pas là

Tu as, tu as, ta famille là-bas.

Tu ne restes pas là non tu ne restes pas là

Mais nous penserons toujours à toi.

Which translates to:

No no no you aren't staying here,

No you aren't staying here

You have, you have your family over there

You aren't staying here, no, you aren't staying here

But we will always be thinking of you.

I won't even get into the verses because I don't feel like crying.

Then, as if that wasn't enough, they showered me with presents. They had all collaborated (even the teachers!) to get me a necklace, a book of photos of the Vendée, chocolate mogettes, a book of classic French children's jokes, a hat, and finally a white T-shirt that they all signed, with sweet messages wishing me well and saying goodbye. My French teacher even gave me two books of Doisneau's photography, since I had liked his work when we talked about it in class. Then we sat around and drank iced tea and ate baked goods that people had brought, and sung some Rihanna because one of my friends is into Rihanna. At the time I couldn't even express how touched I was by this, but this will remain one of my favorite memories. I had no idea they were going to throw me a party, and I am so lucky to have spent a year with such kind, generous, thoughtful people. They say that the French are hard to get to know, that Americans are much more open and hospitable. But French friends are friends for life, and once you have a relationship, they'll do anything for you.

That same night, my host brother came back from his internship in Germany to celebrate his 20^th birthday and to meet my parents. It was nice to see him, as we thought we wouldn't see each other again before I left. We threw a party for his birthday and my departure. Most of my friends couldn't come, but it was fun anyway.

The next day my parents came. Their train was 3 hours late due to flooding and landslides because France has been having crazy weather – it's still raining in the Vendée and in Germany, I can't go outside because I would probably get heatstroke. But eventually we were reunited. I was sort of expecting some climactic, satisfying feeling that would leave me writing “I can't describe how it feels to see one's parents for the first time in a year, but it made my year complete and wonderful.” But actually we were all just really tired, so we said hello and hugged each other a lot and then brought them home, and it was anticlimactic but nice anyway.

My parents stayed with us for a week. After they got over their jetlag, my mom got along very well with my host family, as she speaks decent French. My dad and my brother, who don't speak any French, were a little lost. Our week was filled with meeting the people who were important to me (extended family, my friends, my frisbee coach and team, etc.) for drinks and snacks, so my parents could meet the people I had talked about so much, as well as touristy outings. On Monday we went to the Puy de Fou, one of the most famous historical theme parks in the world. It was sort of like a cross between Disney and a Renaissance Festival. It wasn't really a problem that my family didn't understand any of the stories behind the shows they put on, because it was just visual eye candy – a falconry show, a viking battle, the three musketeers having a sword duel, a chariot race, etc. I highly recommend it.

On Wednesday we went to l'île d'Yeu, a beautiful island off the coast. We rented bikes and explored the coast.

Thursday was my last frisbee game. It was also the first week of good weather, so we went to the beach and played in the sand. Afterwards, I plunged in the ocean with a friend of mine, and upon coming out we gave everyone sopping wet hugs, despite their complaints. They then presented me with a frisbee, signed with all their names and lots of “bisous”, so I can continue playing with the Jets years after we're separated.

Needless to say, this was pretty special as well. I can't really think of how to describe frisbee except to say that if you've ever been in marching band, or done soccer or dance or theater, you probably know what I'm talking about. Even if the people in the group aren't your best friends, there's a certain sacred bond that makes them very close to your heart.

On Friday we went to Noirmoutier and went on a boat trip to take advantage of the good weather. Finally good weather after about 6 months of cold and rain.

I guess I ought to write about Saturday, the day of my departure, because the point of this blog is that I'm sharing my exchange student experiences. But I don't think I can. It's too personal and too fresh. But I will draw a conclusion from the final painful exchanges I had with my loved ones: Yes, I admit that I spent a lot of my 10 months complaining about things and wanting to go home. Particularly the first half was hard, and even during the second half I was just counting down the months, then weeks, then days until I'd see my parents and my brother and all that homesickness would be over. But in the end it was so hard to leave. It wasn't even “mixed feelings.” Leaving that house and boarding that train was just one of the most awful things I've had to do. It wasn't like leaving home – home is always there, and I knew I'd be coming back. But I don't know when I'll next be able to come back to the Vendée. In 3 years? 5 years? 10? My little cousins might be all grown up and have forgotten me, my frisbee team might not have any of the same members anymore, my class will have graduated and left the area. Essentially, I left for good. Nothing will be the same anymore. And suddenly I realized just how many good things I was leaving behind: how many good memories I have here with good friends. The interesting travel I got to do. All the people I met. All the boundaries and fears I overcame. The changes. The everything. It is pessimistic human nature to spend a year complaining about the bad things only to reminisce about the good times upon leaving. And I can't regret what I lived through, saying I “should've been more optimistic,” because my homesickness and loneliness and all the other bad parts were legitimate. But I guess I didn't give enough credit to the good times. Would've could've should've. The point is, it's worth it. It's painful to come and it's painful to leave, but all that means is that it was worth it, and those who I met and loved and lived with in France will always be in my heart.

Like emotional whiplash, the tears of the train station turned into joy at being reunited with our good old friends upon arrival in Germany. We spent a lovely week in Heidelberg with them. It was nice to do some touristy things (touring a castle and taking a riverboat cruise) but otherwise be with people who speak German and know the city, which made for lovely hikes, shopping, gelato expeditions, and hanging out in their apartment when it got too hot to do anything else. This is my favorite kind of travel: couch-surfing with good friends who know exactly what activities would make us happy.

I have also fallen in love with Heidelberg, which goes on my list of places to live someday. It's beautiful and has all the necessary components of a picturesque European city: a castle, a river, arched bridges, a very urban downtown and yet very green and forested surrounding mountains.

Heidelberg

View of the ruins from up top

And from on bottom

They have almost everything that I've been missing while living in France as a bustling university town with a strong foreign presence and excellent ethnic food. I have eaten delicious Middle Eastern food as well as the classic heavy German staples of bratwurst and schnitzel. You hear a surprising amount of English on the streets, from the soldiers who were here on the US base (that is now closing) or the scientists at the University. Most of the shopkeepers speak English, and speak it quite fluently. I also heard conversations in French, Japanese, and other languages I wouldn't know how to recognize. I would love to live in a place so used to foreigners that I would be commonplace, not a curiosity labelled by my own accent. I also like the fact that I look German. Oftentimes the French have mistaken me for German, and apparently the Germans do as well. I look just like all the other pale, blonde, blue-eyed girls on the street, and people often mistakenly addressed me in German, while our Italian-blooded host Cheryl seldom gets that treatment despite her four years in Heidelberg.

Unfortunately, the hot weather hit that week, and there were two days that were hot enough that we couldn't do anything except stay in the apartment in front of the fan and consume cold drinks. My mother and I melt into useless sludge in anything above 90°F (32°C). But we would go out for gelato as the day began to cool down, and that was enough activity for us.

The weather broke just as we left, and we got on a bus to Frankfurt-Hahn as it was raining. Flying with Ryanair, which is a cheap European airline, is very odd because they only use obscure airports that no one else uses, which means taking a 2 hour bus before even getting to the airport. Other than that we had good luck with Ryanair. It is notorious for charging you extra for everything (your carry-on is 5 cm too fat, so we'll charge you more than your plane ticket cost to put it in checked luggage!) and so it's a little like playing the lottery – you might win or you might lose, going with such an airline. But we won, and ended up safely in Venice. More later.

Just Human

In the last week of school, you could think we were in the US : the French decorum disappears, as does their strict unspoken dress code and their reservedness. It's theme week, everyone's sick of school, and the light at the end of the tunnel fills us with a euphoric laughter, edged with relieved insanity. Yesterday was Old School day ; they dressed in suspenders and plaid or outfits from the '80s from their parents' closets.

My favorite Frenchie, all decked out.

Today was neon day. Americans wear a lot more color than the French, but today you wouldn't have known it. At lunch practically the whole school made its way out to the empty field next to the campus where we watched the seniors play a game called Beret, where they all tackle each other to get a shoe and try to bring it back to their team's goal, like a crude, more entertaining version of American football. Sitting on the grass in a crowd of neon color and laughter and games, I felt like I was back home – except that no one from the school administration came to yell at us, which definitely would've happened at Homestead. Only the language of the babble and the laughter swirling around me and the little clouds of cigarette smoke liberally scattering the field gave away that I wasn't in California, and this winter hadn't all been a dream.

People ask me if the French and Americans really are different or not. The answer is yes and no. Yes, because we view a lot of things very differently. Just off the top of my head, Americans are warmer and more hospitable, more politically correct, more stoic and individualist. The French are more blunt and honest, more relaxed and accepting of Not Being Perfect, like getting bad grades and being young and stupid, smoking and drinking and all that jazz. Those are cultural differences that work their way into your brain just because humans imitate those around them. In French I have become much more like the French – I'll tell jokes that would not be funny at all in English because they're too racist, I'll be meanly honest when in English I'd have trouble even dancing around the subject, I'll be more assertive even though I'm a foreigner. Because like it or not, we become like those around us.

But in the end, we're all just people, and that's an inescapable fact. Seeing kids rough-housing barefoot on the grass in summer is enough to make those differences disappear. I can picture doing the exact same thing back home, just like that game of Fugitive we organized at home with half the high school participating. This summer I'd like to organize a game of Beret in Serra Park, because it looked like a lot of fun.

So yes, we're different. Yes, I'm nervous to meet my family and my friends for a second time, because I am a different person now, contaminated by these foreign ways of thinking. I am some amalgam of all the people and all the philosophies I've encountered – not entirely French and not entirely American. Yes, it's different. But at the end of the year, bored teenagers sick of school basking in the sun, we're all just human.

La pêche aux pignons

This weekend we went fishing for pignons, a small mollusk called Donax or bean clams in English. There are two methods for finding them: 1) you scrape off layers of sand with a trowel to expose the pignons and sift through the loose sand with your fingers to get any that were close to the surface. This method probably works better when there are lots of pignons, but since this year the weather was oddly cold, there are fewer than usual. 2) you look for small divets in the sand, the tiny breathing holes that give away the pignons' hiding places. You stick your finger in the hole and fish out the pignon. This worked quite well for me, because I developed a knack for spotting the holes. I filled a hole bucket with the pretty little mollusks, as did my host mom, sister, and grandpa.

I don't eat seafood, but the pignons were pretty good because they mostly just taste like garlic cream sauce, and they don't have that horrible ocean taste that shrimp and oysters do.

It was a lovely day at the beach, tinged with the nostalgia of my approaching departure. Being so close to the end makes me feel like I should document every good moment I have left.

Embarrassment

If I had to summarize my year abroad in one sentence, this would be it:

“I spent so much time being in hideously uncomfortable and embarrassing situations that now I am more confident and more immune to embarrassment.”

This could be restated in a more optimistic way by the more typical “Now that I've survived my year abroad, I feel like I can do anything!” They're pretty much the same thing.

Some parts of my embarrassment have been silly and unnecessary and I regret it. Sure, emotions are never logical, but if no one else understands why I was embarrassed, it was probably a less awkward situation than I thought it was. Being embarrassed about my accent is something I've struggled with these past 9 months. It is, of course, ridiculous to be embarrassed about one's accent. I'm proud to be American! And it's simply a fact of life that I started learning French at age 14 and not when I was a baby. Therefore, I have an accent, and there's no reason to be ashamed of myself when all I'm doing is studying abroad, which is pretty awesome. I think it partly comes from the curiosity that people naturally experience when they hear an accent: they often ask me where I'm from and what I'm doing in France and if I like it here. At home people probably wouldn't say anything, but I live in the Vendée which is both much less politically correct and much less diverse than California. This curiosity makes me feel like I need to explain myself every time I open my mouth in front of a stranger: “Yes, hello, I'd like fries and a burger please sorry for my accent I'm an American exchange student.” As a consequence of this awkwardness, I've always hated ordering food in restaurants, or answering the phone when I don't know who's calling, or anything else that involves talking to strangers. There's also the concern that they won't understand me, which is embarrassing for both of us. I was ordering a soda once with my host sister in a crowded bar, and the waitress didn't understand what I was saying until my host sister repeated it for her. She was horribly embarrassed and so was I.

I remember the first time I forgot to be embarrassed about my accent: It was actually more a question of forgetting I'm American than forgetting about my accent. I went to the hospital for my back coming out of place in gym, and I was talking to the doctor normally, describing what happened and answering that no, I do not take any medication and no I'm not pregnant, when he suddenly said “Wow, you speak really good French. What are you, German?” (People think I'm German all the time, because I'm blonde and I don't have such a strong accent that it's obvious.) I had actually forgotten I was American, forgotten to awkwardly explain myself and apologize for my accent, forgotten that I wasn't just like anyone else who came through the door of the ER. To his credit, he continued speaking to me normally, only pausing a second to make sure I'd understood when he used words like “anti-inflammatoire.”

Another part of my awkwardness comes from not believing in a thing I'll call the charity principle, which is just sort of a realization that everyone else is human too, with their own good intentions and insecurities. When I landed in Paris with my CIEE group from the US, we met up with some other future exchange students from other countries to be redistributed to our cities. I was put on the train to Nantes with a girl from Slovakia. I do not remember her name, but she was intimidatingly beautiful, well made-up and dressed, with designer handbag and shoes. She started out in English, in a beautifully lilting Slovakian accent – few enough grammatical mistakes that it falls into the “sexy foreign accent” category Americans have in their heads instead of the “ridiculous foreign accent” category most French people fall into. She asked if I spoke good French, and I said “sort of.” She apologized for her English and asked to switch to French, as she went to an immersion French school in Slovakia and her French was much better than her English. I agreed, but we didn't end up speaking anymore anyway. I pretended to sleep on the train, but didn't because I was nervous about meeting my host family. She listened to her iPod and stared out the window, like any beautiful, popular, normal teenage girl would.

We could've had lots to talk about, of course, just like how the 7 exchange students from the US who had met in Boston formed an immediate bond over our excitement and our fears. But we didn't, simply because she intimidated the crap out of me. I knew what I looked like in her eyes – a stupid, poorly-dressed American in sweats and a t-shirt, who spoke French less well than she did.

Maybe that was true. But on the other hand, maybe she was thinking about how it's cool that I'm American (because Europe is obsessed with American culture) and being nervous about her English. Maybe she had a neutral observation about how Americans actually do dress worse than Europeans, instead of assuming negative things about my own social skills. Maybe she didn't think any of those things at all, but was merely thinking about the year ahead of her and worrying about recognizing her host family at the train station.

My point is, I have trouble realizing that I have a right to be the way I am. Why would I be ashamed to have an accent, when I obviously have the right be the American that I am? Why would I be ashamed to simply not be into fashion, when it's not something I find interesting and I shouldn't be required to? I haven't done anything wrong, and I don't know who or what put the idea into my head since I was little that I should be ashamed of myself, but it's been pretty damn hard to get rid of. I think the blunt frankness of the French has helped, though. To give a crude example, an American farts and everyone in the room pretends it didn't happen. Shame on you, farter. A French person farts and (if it's my host sister, anyway) gives an evil cackle and pretends to wave the smell toward everyone else in the room, who groans and says “Becca! That's disgusting!” Which would you prefer? Honestly, I prefer the French. They are quite superficial in other respects including their assumption that taking care of your appearance is as necessary (and an obligation to others!) as basic hygiene, but they are less ashamed of things that are natural and shouldn't be shameful, like having an accent or farting.

But part of my awkwardness was normal. I do wish I'd been less shy at the beginning, as it took me at least 3 months to settle in and be comfortable with my host family. But that's a personality trait: I'm not a reserved person when you get to know me, but I'm extremely cautious with strangers, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Still, being shy does not have to mean being awkward. I always suffer from terrible body presence in strangers' houses – I do not know where to put myself because I'm scared of touching something they don't want me to touch. This is funny because in my own house I'm not at all like that. I tend to think it's ridiculous when people ask me if they can have a glass of water. Well, duh, the glasses are over there and the sink is over there, help yourself. Of course you can use the bathroom, it's right down the hall. Why the heck would that bother me? And yet in strangers' houses, I'm afraid to sit down in case that chair is not meant for sitting down in. What the heck, brain. Anyway, this is why having my own room was such a comfort to me at the beginning; it was the only place where I stopped thinking about what to do with my body and just let myself be.

It's also normal to be embarrassed about being the butt of jokes, which is just something that happens as an exchange student. It's not in a mean way, it's just something that happens. It tends to happen either when we make mistakes in French that are “cute,” or when we don't understand a joke that everyone else understood. Having people make fun of my accent is something that still bothers me, but that I've gotten used to. The only way I can stomach it is by pretending that we're all English speakers, and we're imitating our hilarious Spanish friend who rolls his Rs. If you hear a Spanish person say “rrrhinocerrros,” of course you're going to want to imitate it! You don't do it to remind the poor guy that he's an immigrant and different and will never sound like an American. You just do it because it sounds hilarious and awesome to roll your Rs. So when I run across the occasional person who finds it necessary to repeat everything I say with a chuckle and a fake accent, I just try to remember that it's because accents are hilarious, not because they're trying to make me feel like an outsider.

Once at a party, someone cracked a joke about not knowing what water is (because in Vendée, the most alcoholic department of France, they don't drink very much water). Everyone laughed, and I chuckled even though I hadn't understood the joke. This was way at the beginning of my stay here, by the way, and I didn't register that I knew all the words in the sentence “C'est quoi, de l'eau?” because it was a question “What's water?” and so I assumed that “deleau” must be a word that I hadn't learned yet, a word other than “de l'eau” (some water). Anyway, I shook my head confusedly. No, I didn't know what water was. And so then the jokester burst out laughing because the fact that I didn't understand was even funnier than the original joke, leaving my poor protective host brother repeating “de l'eau, water. You know, water?” trying to keep me from feeling too much the victim of everyone's hysterics. Awkward. So for things like this there's nothing you can do. You can't be perfect all the time, so there's bound to be moments where you're tired or not focused and you just completely miss the point of the joke. The best you can do is learn to laugh at yourself. Once you understand the joke, you laugh along with everyone else and say “Wow, that was a blonde moment.” See this other post for anecdotes about learning to laugh at myself.

I guess what I've been learning is that embarrassment is a horrible emotion from the inside that does very little from the outside. If someone else makes a social faux pas, you tend not to care, especially if you're American. If someone in your house is about to sit on a chair that is broken, you just tell them “Sorry, that one's broken, sit over there.” If someone is dressed oddly, you don't question it – everyone has their unique style, and every day you see goths and nerds and hippies, so why on earth would you question someone else's tastes, especially since there's no objectively right way to dress? If someone else doesn't understand a joke or is the butt of a joke, you probably don't even notice their embarrassment. We never think about the embarrassment of others unless it's a really bad situation, like, I don't know, someone peeing their pants in public. Embarrassment is one of the worst feelings you can have and yet it's not one that goes both ways, like affection or anger or other shared emotions. Therefore, if embarrassment is mostly all in your head and very little about negative social consequences, it should be possible to minimize embarrassment by convincing yourself that it doesn't exist. I do this by pretending I'm someone else. Since for some bizarre reason my brain has decided since I was very young that I am a martian and should be embarrassed about it (this is a post I will write soon, by the way. Keep your eyes peeled for “Being a Martian”), it works better just to pretend that I'm someone else. A normal person, who would have, of course, no reason whatsoever to be ashamed or awkward. So when I meet people for the first time, I pretend I'm a confident, worldly, socially competent individual named Jenna. It works pretty well, except when I see my reflection in shiny surfaces and remember that I'm actually me. (Moral of the story? Shiny things are bad.)

So in case after three pages of me talking about embarrassment you haven't figured it out yet, I have some issues with social anxiety. I am not intrinsically embarrassing, and don't sit alone in my room stressing about how awkward I am. This happens only because I find people terrifying and intimidating. But the best way to get over an irrational phobia is to expose yourself to it and to get over your fear by realizing nothing bad is going to happen. This has limits, of course. I'm not recommending you put spiders in a real arachnophobe's hair, because they'll probably just have a heart attack or an emotional breakdown and develop PTSD or something like that. Irrational fear is powerful and you shouldn't mess with it. But if you're managing your own anxiety bit by bit, exposure can be a successful way to get over it. So I have ordered food for myself in restaurants. I have asked strangers in Paris for directions. I have answered the phone to talk to strangers. I have dared to make friends at high school, and I even somehow ended up with the most beautiful and intimidating-looking girls in the school as my buddies. And gradually, it's been getting easier. My anxiety hasn't gone away at all, but I've become accustomed to overriding it, like a janitor getting used to cleaning the toilets even though the job doesn't become more pleasant. I also notice that the more I pretend to be confident, the more confident I am. By walking into the drugstore with my chin up and a smile on my face, I can buy a bottle of shampoo without cringing inside at how awkward I am. Because it's my secret. I'm pretending to be confident, so the cashier has no way of knowing that it's all just an act. It makes me feel powerful and secret-agent-y on the inside. Similarly, I can go to a party pretending to be a super popular exchange student who is way too worldly and interesting and far up on the social totem pole to be here, but kindly condescends to speak with the others anyway. And for all I know, no one figures out that I'm actually a nerd.

After 9 months of suffering from my worst anxiety nightmares over and over again (except the showing up to school naked one. I haven't yet managed a blunder that bad), I can do anything. Most of the time the only thing stopping us is really just other people. Do you want to quit your job to move to Zambia and teach little kids how to read and write? Well, you could. After you tell your boss and your coworkers, who'll be disappointed, and you bully an organization into accepting you and another one into funding you, after you manage to talk to the scary people in the embassy to get your visa and fill out all the paperwork. I wouldn't be surprised if this problem is not very common: most people would instead be stopped from fulfilling their dreams by financial worries, family obligations, or worries about the future. But I'm pretty good at doing crazy things like that and ignoring the consequences for my personal life. I just have trouble talking other people into it. But already coming to France in the first place was pretty difficult. I had to convince my high school to let me go, get accepted to CIEE, get a scholarship, say goodbye to everyone, get a visa, try to talk my bank into letting me have an account in France even though I was a minor (pro tip: don't try this, kids, it doesn't work), and many other terrifying steps involving talking to strangers. Once I got here it was worse, because I had to do many similar steps, like getting into my French high school, only it was in French and I was unfamiliar with the customs and politeness rituals and all that. And gradually, after doing scary human interactions in another language in a foreign country over and over and over again, I started getting a helluva lot more comfortable with being uncomfortable. I feel like I'm ready for just about anything now, like no matter what crazy things I decide to do in college, I'll have the balls to do it.

After my year abroad, I feel like I can do anything. I spent so much time being embarrassed this year that I think I broke my embarrassment circuits.