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.

Cathedral at Strasbourg

On Saturday night my host parents and I drove to Strasbourg (about 30 minutes away) to see the illumination of the cathedral on it’s 1000th anniversary. We went to dinner at a really lovely (and also very old, although not 1000 years) restaurant called Bistrot des Copains. My host parents are both born and raised Alsatians, which is a region with a very unique cuisine, and they chose traditional Alsatian dishes for me off the menu. It was seriously exceptional. I think tarte flambée may be my new favorite thing.

After dinner, we walked over to the cathedral. It was just barely raining--the type of rain that you’re happy to walk in. Enough to need an umbrella, but not so much that it’s unpleasant. Strasbourg is already a gorgeous city, but in the rain it’s extraordinary.

Now, when my host mom told me we were going to see the illumination of the cathedral, I thought she meant that there were just going to be a few lights shining on it here and there. I could not have been more wrong. The illumination used lights to color each and every detail of the cathedral. The level of detail was incredible; it must have taken hours upon hours of work.

Standing in front of it, watching the mist fall down on a crowd of umbrellas, and seeing the art of the façade truly recognized was awesome. And I don’t mean awesome like “yeah, it was cool.” While I use that word a lot, I don't think very few things are actually awesome in the literal sense. Awe inspiring. The vastness of the universe is awesome. The the Big Bang was awesome. Noah parting the Red Sea was awesome. That pizza you had for lunch the other day was probably pretty rad, but not in the same sense. But this cathedral? Yeah, it was awesome.

France, you are so gorgeous.

Oui are in France!

(punny title credit to my friend Teagan) 

Finally, I'm in France!

I wanted to wait a couple days after arriving at my host family before I posted anything, partly because I needed time to adjust and to form a real opinion. 

But, here we are. When I arrived in France a week ago, I spent 2 days in Paris for an orientation. This was an awesome opportunity to meet other AFSers, which is definitely what I enjoyed the most. They also roomed us by chapter, so my roomates were girls that were placed in the same region of France. The actual orientation, though, was pretty dull. Even though the information was helpful in theory (lots of discussion about different emotions that we'll experience, cultural differences, etc.), I don't think any of it actually prepared me for what I've gone through in the past few days. Although, to be fair, I doubt much really could have. 

The experience of speaking french 24/7 is beyond exhausting, and that's something that they don't mention in any orientation or handbook. At first I thought I was just super jet lagged, but now I've adjusted to the time change and I'm still tired. I feel like an little kid--I can't quite articulate my emotions or needs and so I just smile a lot until people feed me. In order to actually say something that expresses how I actually feel in a given moment, I have to plan it out in advance and really focus on how to string the words together. Usually by the time I've done that, the conversation has moved on and so I just don't speak at all. This process--constantly needing to choose each word individually and combine them in a grammatically correct sentence--takes two or three times more energy than to just speak English. By the end of the day, I'm just drained of any energy. I can't even carry a conversation over dinner. 

For the first few days I was in a perpetual state of sensory overload. I still do feel like I'm standing in the eye of the storm, but just slightly less. In the US, I could do my work just fine in a class where everyone was chatting. Now, I can only focus on one thing at a time. If there are voices speaking French in the background, it's 10x harder to complete an assignment. This has been the biggest challenge with school. Surprisingly, I pretty much understand most of what my teachers say. Completing the work is the issue. 

However, even though school tends to feel like a vrai catastrophe, overall I've had an incredible time. My host parents are incredibly wonderful and kind people. In just a few days, they set me up with a new French SIM card, school supplies, helped me figure out my schedule, and gotten my bus schedule sorted. My host mom is basically super woman. 

Anyway, I figure that my language skills can only get better from here. Each day is easier than the one before it, right? 

How to Get Free Snacks

Fun fact: if you cry enough waiting to board your plane, a kind flight attendant will indeed take pity on you and bring you water and pretzels. I can guarantee it.

Although, I can't say it's recommended.

Saying goodbye to my brother and parents was hard. Really hard. I brought a gazillion tissues and used them all. And now, here we go. Takeoff.