A Cheery and Optimistic Christmas Post

Hey everyone! It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything, and so I was planning on doing a giant photo dump and write a huge post just covering everything in between Thanksgiving and Christmas. When I sat down to write this though, it just wasn’t happening.

To be honest, I went through a rough two or three week period in November/December where I was incredibly homesick, and so I think it’s worth talking about.

When I tell people I’m an exchange student, the first thing they usually ask is, “But don’t you get homesick?” and of course the answer is yes. However, when I try to explain homesickness in its complexity, people lose interest. It isn’t that they don’t care, but it’s simply that explaining your deep emotional issues isn’t polite small talk.

I don’t think that we talk about homesickness properly. We picture it as this vague, nostalgic emotion, almost romantic in some ways. We write about it using flowery metaphors, talking about being lost at sea or feeling hollow. And at every predeparture orientation, we artfully danced around the topic of homesickness, dodging all real or honest questions. I remember I even directly asked a retournee about it at my gateway orientation and he responded with, “Homesickness is just a thing that happens.” 

Brilliant advice, thanks.

But the truth is that he didn’t want to scare me. He didn’t want to tell us that the sickness in homesickness is not a metaphor, it is the reality of it. It’s a chronic illness that I have to live with for a year. There will a good two weeks where I’ll feel perfectly fine, and then it will flare up again. It’s sharp and painful and erratic. It comes and goes in waves, strikes hard and fast, and leaves behind a profound sense of isolation. It’s the ache of the uprooted plant.

Everyone wants to say that the cure for homesickness is to get off of Facebook, to skype your parents a bit less, to try to immerse yourself fully in your host country. But these solutions are cures for the side effects of homesickness: the loneliness, the frustration, the depression. They aren’t cures for the actual problem. The cure for homesickness is simply going home.

Home is the place of the concrete. Home is the place where I understand all of the inside jokes, where words roll off my tongue without thinking, where I live in a consistent and reassuring state of comprehension. Home is the state of knowing. And goddammit, I miss that.

So, yes, I’m homesick. I’m sure my friends here in France are tired of hearing about it. Believe me, if I could stop, I would. The reality is, though, that I’m not going home anytime soon; I just have to learn to coexist with the sickness for now. It’s a work in progress, and I have to be alright with that. I don’t have a choice.
I’m experiencing something different here that I don’t quite understand yet--I haven’t yet reached the state of comprehension, I’m not yet in the state of knowing. I figure by the time I get there, I’ll have to leave, and I’ll have a new type of homesickness all over again. At least I hope so.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Laicité: Lexical Gaps and Why they Matter

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the English language has 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. Additionally, there are 9,500 derivative words that are listed as sub-entries. And yet, somehow, we're still missing some. 

For example, we have no word for the circular mark a water glass leaves on a table (cualcino in Italian), a person who asks a lot of questions (pochemuchka in Russian), or the feeling of being in forest alone (waldeinsamkeit in German). Most notably, there's no you plural or formal in English, which causes a bit of confusion for those who learn it as a second language. And what is the word for not having a word for something? A lexical gap.

You can check out Hank Green's rad video on them here: 

So, lexical gaps are pretty much everywhere, and the really interesting thing about them is that you can really see what a culture values. Take Green's example for a non-virgin; in our western culture, virginity is so important that if you aren't a virgin, there literally isn't a word for you. Crazy, right? 

It gets a bit more complicated when we decide to look at the effects of language on our comprehension of the world around us. Essentially, when we don't have a word for something, our brain quite literally cannot comprehend the subject. This has been proved over and over again (if you want to know the science behind it, you can check out this NPR RadioLab podcast), but it's most notably demonstrated in ancient Greek literature. 

For example, let's analyze Homer's The Odyssey. If you count the number of times each color is mentioned, black totals to 170, white to 100, red to 13, yellow and green are both under 10. But blue? Not once. Homer would even refer to traditionally blue things by using other descriptors-- the sea is not "blue," but "wine dark." This is because the Greek language had no word for blue, and so the Greeks didn't see it; their brains didn't comprehend it. This is the problem with lexical gaps. 

The problem with untranslatable things isn't that you can't translate it perfectly, but that the other person will never have perfect comprehension. If you don't have a word for something, you can't understand it. So how do you explain a concept when there are no words for it? How can you translate an cultural mentality? 

Such was my case in EMC class (Enseignement Moral et Civique) a few weeks ago when we began discussing laicité. This is essentially the concept of separation between church and state, but a bit more extreme than what we have in our own country. France values this enough to have invented a word for it, unlike America. Yes, separation between church and state exists in our country, but you could hardly call our state "laic." We have "in God we trust" on our money, our president is sworn into office with his hand on a bible, our pledge of allegiance says "one nation, under God," and prayer even exists in some schools. None of these would ever happen in France. 

However, we also have some privileges because of our non-existent laicité. Americans have the right to express their religion whenever or wherever we'd like. In France, you can't wear the veil, a star of David, or a cross in a public space. This is where we begin to see the lexical gap-- I see this as a privilege, because I was raised in America. "Thank God we have freedom of expression!" Americans cry, while my French peers are thinking the exact opposite. And honestly, I can't really understand why they would want to live that way. I can't comprehend something I don't even have a word for. 

I think what this really boils down to is each nation's idea of liberty. In France, they view liberty as equality; how can you be free in a classroom if you are not all equal? How can a girl wear a veil and still be equal to her peers? And yet, in America, we see liberty as the ability to make our own choices, including at school. Isn't there value in the diversity of a group of students, and so shouldn't we celebrate that diversity? Shouldn't we try to understand and accept each religion as it is? 

That's the really incredible thing about lexical gaps. Language is a window with which we can view another culture and what it values. Laicité doesn't exist in my language. Laicité doesn't exist in my culture. Laicité doesn't exist in me. 

Pray for Paris or Pray for Humanity?

On Saturday morning, I woke up to ten new Facebook messages, all from the United States. My mom, my brother, my best friends, people that I hadn't even spoken to in months had all written me. 

"Hey Maris, what's up?"

"You're not in Paris, right?"
"Just want to check in. How are you?"

I knew suddenly that something wasn't right. 

I don't even know how to begin to describe the state of France. As my Facebook news feed fills with #prayforparis, Eiffel Towers, and statuses from my American friends about how sad they are, I can't help but feel a bit uncomfortable. How can you describe a massacre with a three letter word and a hashtag? How is a peace sign supposed to console a nation seized by panic and despair?    

And yet, on the other hand, there is a good number of people who are utilizing the tragedy as leverage to assess an entire nation's white privilege. Last week, 147 people were killed in a bombing in Kenya. People die each day in Syria, but there are no pretty Facebook filters for these victims.  I haven't yet found a way to describe this without devalorizing what has happened here in France at the same time, and I don't know if there is a way. Living here, I frankly don't think I'm capable of remaining unbiased. 

Struck by a patriotism for a nation that isn't my own, I find myself with a foot on each continent. Grief has simultaneously hollowed France out and swallowed it whole. Although I do not have a French passport, I mourn with it all the same. 

Today was a sandpaper day; we have been emotionally rubbed raw. 

From Trenches to Bridges 2015

For one week, 300 exchange students from France, Germany, and Switzerland all got together to talk about world peace and intercultural learning on the centennial anniversary of World War I. Because Alsace has done it's fair share of border hopping, was the center of combat in WWI, and is home to both the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, it was the obvious place to host a forum about war and peace. 

I haven't written much about my region, yet, but it's incredibly important to me and my exchange experience as a whole. Almost everyone on exchange develops a particular fondness for their host community, but I wasn't expecting to feel genuinely connected to my region. Now that I'm here though, I almost can't help it. Sometimes, I just feel this overwhelming admiration for where I live, for its culture, for its language, for its history. I like to think that I wouldn't feel that way about anywhere else in France. During the forum, whenever someone mentioned how beautiful Strasbourg was or how much they liked Alsace, I found that I had this sense of pride; I really live here. I don't think I realized it until now.

We officially began the forum on Sunday night at the Mimram Bridge, which connects France and Germany. All 300 exchange students and our host families, representing 45 countries, crossed it together as a symbol of global community. This sounds really touchy-feely, and it was. At first, I didn't even want to go to a youth forum about world peace; talking about unattainable goals or having that warm and fuzzy community feeling doesn't interest me. Overall, though, it was actually a really incredible experience. So, yeah, we're a group-hugging global community at AFS, but I guess I can get behind it. 

The first of many group photos in foggy Strasbourg weather.

Dancers wearing traditional Alsatian clothing

After we crossed the bridge, there was a giant party with traditional Alsatian food, music, and speeches about Alsace's historical influence. This region has a really complex history of nationality. It was French until 1871 when it was ceded to Germany after the Franco-Prussian War. The French retook it, however, during WWI (this was partly because the occupation of the Vosges Mountains was extremely beneficial for military strategy). During WWII Germany captured it again, and then proceeded to lose it promptly following the end of the war.

Monday morning started bright and early at the Council of Europe. As it was the official start of forum, we heard speeches from the president of AFS France and the French representative at the Council of Europe. Mostly, we talked about the history of AFS as an organization and its connection to World War I.

Flags at the Council of Europe with a replica of the same model ambulance used by AFSers in WWI. 

Inside of the Council of Europe

During the beginning of WWI, the USA was adamant that it did not want to be involved in the war. People referred to it as the "European War" and didn't want to become a part of it. However, many young Americans wanted to get involved somehow. The American Field Service started as just this--a small group of men who wanted to make a difference in the war. They joined the French as ambulance drivers for wounded soldiers, first in the center of France, and later on the front lines. At the start of WWII AFS was revived to do the same work, and afterwards, the survivors got together to talk about how to prevent a third world war. They settled on the idea that the only way to ensure peace is to ensure education and empathy through cultural exchange. Thus, AFS in its current form was born: an exchange program for secondary school students.

Oh, hey Caroline.

Group photos seriously take forever. Gathering 300 people in one spot is not an easy task. 

You can see here there's still barbed wire
and a protective lookout, both from 1915.

This is the communication trench,
originally, this would have been about
2 or 3 meters deeper.

Keeping with the whole WWI theme, we spent Tuesday at the Hartmannswillerkopf Memorial. I love history, so I found this to be particularly cool. We took a guided tour of the battlefield where we had the opportunity to literally walk through the trenches. Throughout the past hundred years, they've been filled in with earth, so now they're more like well worn hiking trails. However, you can still see the stone sides of them, some with writing that the soldiers carved in, bullet holes, and lookout points. We walked through the French trenches, and then across the no man's land and into the German ones. Our guide told us about how each time Alsace was retaken, some Alsatians would relocate in order to remain French or German. Thus, Alsatians lived and still live on both sides of the border, which meant that in wartime, they were often killing their own friends and family on the other side. Knowing that, the trenches suddenly became a bit eerier.

Thankfully, I had a chance to study WWI in depth this past year at school, and I definitely think I got way more out of the experience than some of my peers because of it (shoutout to Sensei and Ms. Berry--thanks for making me read All Quiet on the Western Front). 

Seeing the battlefield, in a weird way, made me a bit homesick. I knew that my dad would absolutely love this; he's a huge history buff. There are so many things like this when you're on exchange--so much melancholy about experiencing new things and feeling like there's no way to share them. In a way, it feels selfish to do a year completely for myself to experience new things. I always have this mental debate: I know that spending time missing home is a waste of my opportunity to be here, but on the other hand, it's impossible to be positive all the time. After all, we have to experience negative emotion to appreciate positive emotion. Where is the balance between validating one's feelings whilst ensuring that it doesn't become self pity?

Shabana is love, Shabana is life.

Life has a way of giving you things just at the perfect moment to appreciate them, and the next day, I had the opportunity to hear Shabana Basij-Rasikh speak at the University of Strasbourg. She was absolutely brilliant, and, in a way, answered all of the angsty and existential questions I'd been asking myself. We heard a lot of speeches that week, but this was definitely the most important. Maybe the most important speech I've ever heard.

Shabana was born in Afghanistan and raised under the Taliban regime. As a young girl, going to school was illegal, and so her parents sent her to a secret school. Until age thirteen, she was educated in someone's living room. She and her sisters would carry their books in grocery bags, and take different routes every day so that the Taliban wouldn't see a pattern in their movement. They took immense precautions because they couldn't afford not to--going to school was punishable by death for both them and their parents. Shabana resented this at times, and questioned why it was worth it to be educated if it was such a daily struggle. Her father was adamant about her schooling, and would tell her that even if he had to sell his own blood to pay her school fees, he would do it.

At age thirteen, when the Taliban's ban on girls' education was lifted, Shabana went to a public school, wore a school uniform, and learned in an actual classroom for the first time. All of her classmates, however, were six years older than her. They had all stopped their schooling when the Taliban came, and now at age eighteen, they were in the seventh grade. Shabana also went on exchange to the USA at age fifteen, and focused a lot on how it shaped her life. She spoke about the struggle of being the sole representation of one's country and how one's actions really do affect people's perceptions of said country. I've definitely sensed this pressure since I've gotten here. When people ask me questions about America, I have to reflect carefully before I respond. It's both challenging and crucial to be truthful, and I doubt myself too often, worrying that I'll give the wrong answer. After all, America is massive and I've only lived in one very small part of it. How can I tell someone what it's like to live in America? She told us a story about a time when she gave a presentation about Afghani culture to her class. The first question she was asked was, "Do you know Bin Laden?" How can the truth ever compete with stereotypes?

Shabana was one of the 10% of literate women in Afghanistan, and one of the 6% of women with an undergraduate degree (she returned to America to attend Middlebury College). After she graduated, she could have easily found a job in the USA, but Shabana returned to Afghanistan to begin a secondary girl's school. The way that she spoke about her moral obligation to her country fascinated me. Is feeling a moral obligation to one's nation the same as patriotism? Or, as a citizen of a developed first world country, do I have the same moral obligation as she does? I don't know, but I should probably figure that out soon.

If you want to hear her story first hand, you can check out her TED Talk here. Honestly, it isn't nearly as good as the speech she gave last week, but it's still incredible and I highly recommend it:

Shabana's incredible honesty definitely resonated with me. In the middle of her talk, she just flat out asked us, "Why are you here?" And honestly, I didn't have an answer. But I want to have one, and I'm going to keep looking for it. Why am I on exchange? What does that accomplish? It started with just becoming bilingual, but it has to be more than that now, and I can't quite put my finger on it. So few people have the opportunity that I've been given: 12 years of guaranteed schooling. Education may be a right, but I have the privilege, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with it.

We wrapped up the week at the European Parliament, which was astounding (although not as astounding as Shabana, unfortunately). For one thing, it's absolutely massive. It's usually only open to the public one day a year as well, so we were given some special treatment. 
I was stupefied by seeing translators in action. Not only the ability to translate precise and specific language, but also to translate it rapidly in real time was so impressive. Honestly, it would be so stressful. That job is definitely not in my future.

I basically spent the entire time pinching myself. I sat in the same seat as a world leader. We presented an actual peace treaty to the Parliament. We actually watched people sign papers and make decisions as if they were important. My nerdy self had a field day. And then, suddenly, everything was suddenly over. 

Heaps of people were crying at the end of this week because they had made such incredible friends. For so many people, this week was literally life changing. I wouldn't really say that about my experience, but it at least made me slightly less confused about what I want to do in life, and gave me more drive to pursue whatever it is. I will say, though, that I'm different now than I was last Sunday. Maybe not a lot, but different all the same.

You see, that's the incredible thing about being on exchange. Your entire life becomes devoted to celebrating the impermanence of everything and everyone around you; we were 300 people from 45 different countries but we are no longer a "we." I will probably only see a few of them again. And, in eight months, when my exchange is finished, it may be the same with my friends in France. When I left America, I was afraid of impermanence. I thought of it as a pressure to experience as much a possible, as a deadline, or as cloud looming over me, but now impermanence seems to be more of an inevitable state of being. I've always embodied it and always will. 

Within it, I think, I've found a sense of self. 

A Weekend in Nancy

Hey guys--I know this post is long overdue, and everything I’m updating happened actually a few weeks ago. Late is better than never!

Periodically throughout a year abroad with AFS, there are obligatory weekends with the other AFSers in your chapter. Because Alsace only has three people, we joined up with the Lorraine chapter in Nancy for our weekend. During events like this, we have loads of activities to try to get us to express our emotions and talk about our cultures and all of that stuff, but mainly, it’s just to hang out with other exchange students. Yeah, we all have friends at school and people we connect with, but the only other people who get it are people who are going through the same thing.

There are only three people in Alsace (myself, Caroline from Denmark, and Lorena from Brazil), so we took the train from Strasbourg together to meet up with the Lorraine chapter. We had a bit of free time in Nancy, so we wandered around a little bit, bought some incredibly overpriced macaroons, and generally had a great time.

Caroline is such a cute human. 

For dessert on Saturday night, we all brought dishes from our home countries. I brought the traditional American pie and Abi (the other American) brought chocolate chip cookies.

It tasted like wholesome family values and freedom. 

Eating American food made me weirdly homesick. In general, when I get homesick, it isn't for America; I miss my best friends, doing theater, my boyfriend, my brother, or my parents. I miss my people, but not my country. Eating American food, though, made me really miss my country. I miss California--the fields, the hills, the ocean. France is beautiful, but France isn't home. 

 

Myself and Abi--we spent a lot of time talking about how we miss people who hug and big Sunday brunches. 

However, there are few things that sugar can't fix, and homesickness is not one of those things. Our chapter has people from Brazil, Argentina, Costa Rica, Turkey, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Bosnia, China, Italy, and the USA. There was definitely a lot of chocolate to go around. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

We were staying in a really beautiful chateau-turned-youth-hostel. When the woman from AFS picked us up from the train station in Nancy and told us we were going to a chateau, I thought I had translated something wrong. We're staying in a castle? 

 Yep, we stayed in a mini-castle. Because France.

The grounds were gorgeous. We took advantage of the gorgeousness and Lorena's fancy new camera.

Pretending to be Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music. 

Shameless white girl photo shoot. 

Indie girl band album cover. 

The main room of the chateau being rented out for a birthday party, and they invited us outside to watch them shoot off the birthday fireworks.

After the fireworks, we all sang happy birthday. We sang it first in French, and then in the other ten languages represented. It took a while. Everyone was too pumped up from the sugar high and the fireworks to get any sleep, so we wandered through the woods, played foosball, and just messed around for a few more hours. 

Alessandro getting his t-shirt signed in different languages. 

After about four hours of sleep, we all got up again for the typical french breakfast--coffee and bread, with Nutella or butter. We went for a walk, did some more activities, and then all parted our separate ways. 

Denmark and Italy 

#alsacefilles

The selfie stick the most glorious invention of our time. 

  Yep, it was a pretty rad weekend. 

Why French Girls Aren't Afraid of Getting Fat

Today marks one month in Westhouse. It feels pretty surreal. I suppose it's because I’m not on vacation anymore. I’m just living here now, and in its own way, it’s nice.

If one thing is for sure, when you move to a foreign country, the learning curve is steep. Really really steep. And so I compiled a list:

Six Things I Learned After Spending a Month in France--

• Dessert is only ever meant to be eaten with a spoon (and eating it with a fork is sacrilege, but they’ll forgive you mostly because you have a funny American accent).
• On the whole, the French are not crazy about color. If you decide to wear your favorite bright yellow sweater to school, you will stick out like a sore American thumb and your friends will definitely offer to take you shopping. Probably for something grey or black.
• Wearing the same outfit for a few days in a row is totally socially acceptable (and probably more eco-friendly). Honestly, when you roll out of bed at 6 AM, who wants to put in effort to pick out something new?
• If you are Californian and you move to Alsace, a mild version of Seasonal Affective Disorder will likely take hold. Combined with some homesickness, that can make for a pretty bad day.
• Chocolate (particularly French chocolate) and exercise can pretty much fix any problem, whether it’s SAD or homesickness.
• Food is an experience, not just calories.

In relation to that last bullet point: French girls aren't afraid of getting fat. As vain and superficial as it sounds, gaining weight is probably one of my biggest fears. This worry isn’t that uncommon in the USA; according to the National Association of Anorexia and Associated Disorders, 42% of 1st-3rd grade girls wish they were thinner and 81% percent of 10 year-olds are afraid of being fat. It's a pretty standard fear in America. So naturally, it surprised me to see French women eating whatever they want. I haven’t heard a single women mention being on a diet or trying to lose weight, and strangely, it’s almost freeing. (Disclaimer: There is, of course, a pressure in France to be thin. I don't mean to devalidate the issue of eating disorders among French youth, however there is a mentality difference within the culture itself.)

Since my arrival in France, I’ve been eating a lot. And I mean, a lot. Pastries, chocolate, cream, butter, pretty much without thinking about it. I was pretty shocked when I stepped on the scale yesterday, and found out that I’ve lost weight. How did that happen? Maybe my brain just burns more calories speaking French. Okay, probably not. I don’t actually know how, but I can say that my lifestyle, as far as food is concerned, is a lot different here.

There’s this really excellent poem called “Shrinking Women” by Lily Myers (you can check it out here) in which she talks about the pressures of femininity. In one of my favorite quotes from it, she’s having a conversation with her brother:

“‘How could anyone have a relationship to food?’ he asks, laughing, as I eat the black bean soup I chose for its lack of carbs.”

And there lies the huge difference between my relationship with food in the US and my relationship with food here in France. In America, we view food as something that nourishes the body. We eat whenever we’re hungry; we talk about superfoods and antioxidants, about eating six smaller meals instead of three large ones, about obesity and eating disorders. Food is something that, particularly for women, is very controlled. We count our carbs and calories and percentages of trans fat. That isn’t an inherently bad thing--if anything, it’s proof that we care about what we put in our bodies. However, it can breed almost a stigma around food, an idea that if we don’t know at all times what we’re eating, that somehow this tower of cards will come crashing down.

In France, people almost never use the word “nourriture,” or “food.” They talk about meals, about experiences, about specific dishes. There isn’t a sense of shame about finishing your plate. Unlike in the States, snacking between meals is definitely frowned upon. You’re expected to eat well at each meal and not in between. It’s really difficult to grow vegetables in Alsace, so all traditional recipes are usually types of pasta or bread, potato dishes, and cream sauces to serve with red meat. People don’t seem to be preoccupied with their impending heart disease, though. They don’t eat for health; they eat for happiness.

When Someone Offers You a Tractor Ride, You Say Yes

I’m almost certain that Westhouse has had more rain in the past two weeks than California has had in the past year.

Of course, as the cliché goes, there can’t be rainbows without rain. And there we have it--the view out of my living room window last week.

Because lycées here don’t have the same extracurricular programs that we have in the US, I joined the church choir with my host mom as a sort of artistic outlet. On Saturday, we sang a special service for a couple’s Noces d'Or, the 50th wedding anniversary. It seems like everyone here got married when they were sixteen; couples who aren’t even that old have been married for fifty or sixty years. This was the first time I had ever been to church in French, and I understood nothing. Well, not nothing. I understood amen.

Afterwards, we went to visit my dad who was working at his brothers vineyard that day, hand picking wine grapes. They had just finished and were eating lunch when my host mom and I showed up, and offered to show me the processing plant for the wine grapes. I’d never seen two tons of wine grapes be mashed up at once, so I figured, why not? 

Two tons. I wasn't kidding.

My host uncle hopped into the tractor and patted the the window ledge beside him.

So, I took a fifteen minute excursion through the French countryside with the left half of me sticking a window of a tractor. There's a first time for everything here. I'm digging it.

Settling in to life in a foreign country is hard. It’s really freaking hard. Each day is better, though. My French keeps improving and things become more routine. As my host mom  likes to tell me all the time--il viendra. It’ll come. In the meantime, I’m having a totally rad experience.

And, on a completely unrelated note, here are some nice landscapes.

View out my bedroom window

Sun rising over the village while I walk to the bus stop in the morning.
Hashtag blessed.