J’ai déjà appris beaucoup de choses pendant mon séjour à Tours.
I’ve only been in Tours for about two and a half weeks, and already it seems that I’ve learned so much already! Both in class (where at times it seems like my brain is about to explode) and outside of class, where it seems that you learn so much, mostly about things you’ve never thought about before.
It’s kind of interesting to be in nothing but French (or French-themed classes) all week, and it’s also a little strange to think that I’m in the equivalent of 20ish hours of classes a week. It doesn’t seem quite as overwhelming as one would think, though, since the work isn’t incredibly strenuous and the vast majority of our time is spent in two main classes: Reading/Writing and Oral Comprehension/Production with the lovely Stéphanie and Fabien, respectively. Some things I have learned in these classes thus far:
· French people on radio broadcasts speak about 10,000 times faster than Americans. It’s a miracle I understand anything. And it will be an even greater miracle if I’ve passed our first listening exam, which pretty much put the AP Language exam to shame.
· The French grading scale is quite different from the American grading scale. I remember learning this in high school but it’s still a little hard to get used to. All grades are out of 20, except that it’s rather impossible to get a 20/20, because there is the mentality amongst educators that perfection does not exist. 10/20 is considered the lowest passing grade, and 15/20 is roughly the equivalent of an A. For someone conditioned with a system where grades are based on percentages, seeing a 16.5/20 on a test you thought you did well on is almost like having a heart attack, haha. On the bright side, the tests are very much like Paper 1 of the IB French exam.
· SMS (text message) writing. Though there is much doubt as to whether I have mastered this at all, haha.
· French grammar is complicated—there are lots and lots of nuances, and several little rules. Granted, I think I also knew this already, but let’s just say these classes are very good reminders of this fact.
· Vocabulary. Beaucoup de mots. BEAUCOUP.
· And speaking of which, rules regarding expressions of quantity.
· Hearing yourself trying to speak French is amusing, disheartening, embarrassing, and encouraging at the same time. Especially when played back to you. And especially when you try to make the nasal sounds. Un, On, An…oh dear.
· I have been misspelling La Guingette for several days. And I’m pretty sure in an earlier entry I misspelled Place Plumereau as Plumerot, or something like that.
· The European notion of time is very different from ours; in general, things seem more low-key and casual.
Aside from the typical grammar lessons, we’ve had several fun activities—the writing assignment topics are usually interesting (e.g., the “bookcrossing” phenomenon), and as fun activities we’ve listened to French songs, (and tried to write some ourselves), had debates on text messaging, had lessons on “faux amis” (false cognates), learned various slang words, and done similar things.
The atelier classes are very interesting as well. I’m continually amazed at the fact that I’ve sat in a literature or art history class taught entirely in French and actually understood most of it. And I’ve learned such interesting things—the divisions and political leanings of various social classes throughout history, for example, or the differences between the earlier and later impressionistic painters. Before Friday, I knew next to nothing about the realism movement in painting, or why it was considered scandalous, or about any impressionistic painters besides Monet and Manet, or about how thematic evolution can accompany technical evolution. And I’d never really analysed, at an in-depth level, the stylistic nuances in French fictional writing. How one creates a sense of distance by using certain pronouns. It brought back the good old days of English essays and poetry analysis. Also, having world issues such as the development of dominant languages, the work of NGOs, and other things like that presented to you in French is quite interesting.
And we’ve learned so much outside of class, just by living here in Tours. Despite my general timidity, I have had some really interesting conversations with my host family, mostly about music and the cinema. And Harry Potter. And painting. And, of course, birds. When we talk, the members of my host family never hesitate to correct my grammar or my speaking, which I greatly appreciate—without that sort of thing, I’m sure I would continually make the same mistakes over and over and over again.
I think that one learns better by living than by dryly memorizing, at least where language is concerned. Those psychological phenomena concerning autobiographical episodic memories being easier to recall certainly hold true, at least in my case. I’ve learned so many new words through experiences, and I’ll probably retain them longer than some I’ve learned on vocabulary lists because there are memories attached to them. For example, I highly doubt that I will ever forget that a “cornichon” is a pickle after I accidentally ordered a sandwich with several of them on it. And I’ve learned the names of several flowers simply by walking through the flower markets all the time.
And oh, the lessons we have learned when we have gone out. After a lovely dinner at a Moroccan restaurant courtesy of our program director on Thursday, we went to La Guingette, and discovered that on Thursdays (or at least this past Thursday) they played old-time swing music…and that apparently everyone who goes to La Guingette on Thursdays has had dance lessons since they were children. Amazing talent! No matter, though, for us USC students, who quickly brought the shag to the dance floor. We were quite classy with our shag dancing and our wine. We also felt like deities at one point, when a group of rowdy French youth wanted to go to a discotheque with us. (Note: The term “rowdy”, when used here, is all a matter of perception—in America, they probably would have just crossed the “excited” threshold. In fact, they seemed very much like USC students excited about a football game, even chanting the theme from “Seven Nation Army”; I still wonder where they got that from. But compared to the rest of the French people in attendance, they were quite loud. That’s another thing we’ve learned when going out: that Americans as a whole tend to be loud. And that it’s very easy to pick out groups of Americans walking down the street, even a few blocks away.) At any rate, these youth were going to a discotheque as well, and since we were planning to go to one the next night, we decided to accompany them to see where it was. As we were walking down a street that quickly became less populated, they started talking to us about their grades in English class, and we realized they were high school students. We had two primary fears:
1. The small children would lead us to a dark alley and rob us. Ridiculous, but you never know.
2. We would be arrested for accompanying minors—lycéens who had probably just been allowed outside of the house at night—to a discotheque, or being otherwise sketchy/predatory.
Let’s just say we jumped that ship pretty quickly. And that was Thursday night. We learned how to evade ecstatic French teenagers.
On Friday we went out again, to more thoroughly explore the night life of Tours. It was very interesting to see the variety of different establishments offered by our host city. Starting out at La Guingette as usual, we then spent a good few hours wandering around Tours trying to find the discotheques—I definitely worked off my dinner. With all of this walking, I felt as if the Nutella Panini (one of the many delicious French creations) I purchased later was well-deserved. We were apparently quite novices at the French experience of nightlife, and went to some discotheques too early (and were slightly perturbed by the fact that only a handful of people were there) and the bars too late (everything closes fairly early in France, which was unexpected). And when we finally went to a discotheque that wasn’t empty, we discovered that it really wasn’t that fun—crowded and with expensive drinks and a very sticky floor. And that was Friday. We learned all about what the French mean when they say “Je sortirai ce soir”.
Artsy shot of my first-ever purchased bottle of wine. Is it sad that I purchased it partly because it looked pretty?
Shakhlan and I at La Guingette.
Saturday was a relaxing day, albeit one marked with getting lost and miscommunication, which rendered it incredibly amusing as well. While waiting at the basilica for mes autres amis and writing postcards, I had a very interesting conversation with an old, slightly intoxicated French man, and was rather impressed with myself that I understood most of what he was saying, despite the slurs. One linguistic benchmark met? I do believe so. Mark and I then spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find Shakhlan and our other friends for a picnic in a nearby park—almost getting lost then again—and feasted on wok à emporter (when in France, eat Asian food…) along with pain chocolat and flan. The lunch of champions, bien sûr. We spent several hours by the river and by chance met up with our long-lost picnic friends on a quest for ice cream (it’s a small world after all…or at least when all of us are equally food-obsessed) and then went our respective ways. We went on a quest for karaoke that night, but apparently it is not very popular in Tours. Despite a few later attempts, karaoke was still not found. Another thing we have learned: sometimes Europeans have different tastes in entertainment.
Sunday was interesting in that it brought much more exposure to actual real-life French people, not just the students at the Institut. For my project I went to La Guingette in the early afternoon, and after brainstorming on a bench next to the river for an inordinate amount of time (and being mistaken as a poet several times—it was rather flattering) I finally worked up the nerve to ask small groups of people whether they thought there were many differences in habits and such between different generations in Tours. I quickly discovered that this was a very complicated question, as each group I asked gave me a different answer. Most were rather neutral in their responses, but a group of hardened Parisians I encountered were true râleurs, and spent a good forty or so minutes explaining to me everything that was wrong with French society, especially with the youth. Their discourse was so lengthy and informational I managed to take a few pages of notes. Sunday also brought a large group dinner with friends of my host family, where I likewise learned several things: 1) I do not like pastis…and if you don’t like licorice, you probably won’t either; 2) Mediterranean food = delicious (I already knew this, but it deserves repeating); 3) French children can be just as obsessed with video games as Americans; 4) Casual French dinner parties are pretty awesome.
La Guingette on a Sunday in the early afternoon. Not exactly the most hopping place, but still pretty neat.
Our group, in front of the castle in Langeais!
Langeais!
Tuesday was again a regular school day, though in the evening I went to the movies with my host family. Yay experiences in French cinema! Le Studio, the local movie theater, is supported mostly by a group of volunteers (it’s one of the largest organizations in Tours—who knew?) and has the most comfortable seats of any movie theater I’ve ever been in. We saw “Une Séparation”, an Iranian film with French subtitles, which was a deep, fantastic movie but not one you would want to see if you needed a cheerful pick-me-up. Another thing I’ve learned: French people have a greater access to foreign movies than Americans typically do, which is quite splendid.
I’ve also learned that there are additional things I’ve had to get used to in Tours:
· No sales tax on items. Yes!
· Alleys. In the US, alleys seem very sketchy. But it seems that old European cities are composed almost entirely of alleys, so they really aren’t.
· Other things that appear to be sketchy but really aren’t. Like people lounging around in doorways.
· The amount of food I am capable of eating. It continually amazes me.
· Trying to explain where I live. When I tell people I’m from the United States they almost always respond with “Oh! Je connais New York!” or “Comme Chicago?” or “Californie?” and I have to explain that no, South Carolina is not anything like New York or Chicago or California, and that my home of North Carolina, despite the misleading adjective in the name, is not near Canada.
· People wearing cowboy hats. And leis. And other very anachronistic and non-geographically-accurate items. People are strange when you’re a stranger, I guess.
· People saying “chouette”. I had always been taught that “chouette” was a very out-of-style word, and that most people say “genial!” instead, but apparently in Tours this is not the case.
· Strikes. And how no one bats an eye when they happen.
· The gravel. It’s strange that something so mundane can be so different, but even the gravel is different. Here the little rock chips and pebbles look like marble, or jasper, or some other type of metamorphic rock. (Geology majors, please don’t hate me if I’m wrong here…I know next to nothing about rocks.)
· Well-dressed beggars.
· Expensive shoes. I walked past a store that had my exact $18 pair of Converses on sale for 54 euro. Ridiculous.
· Things that are dirt cheap in America but are incredibly expensive in France. Likewise, French things that are ridiculously expensive in the US are dirt cheap here.
· Early store/restaurant closings and long lunch breaks.
· Shopping. So much shopping. Mostly window shopping. I don’t even like shopping that much but here it’s pretty cool.
· The strange mélange of really good smells (from bakeries, cafés, restaurants, flowers, woodsmoke) with really bad smells (alleyways, sidewalks, storm drains…I don’t really want to know what goes down there…it’s probably not stormwater).
And that’s about it…so far, nothing as humorous as being trapped in a bathroom again. But maybe another ridiculous adventure will come soon?
Bisous! J
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