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.