Я скучаю...?
I just had my first "I miss Russia" moment. It occurred in thinking about Irina Ivanovna, and the apartment, and even the city, and the fact that, as crazy as it all was, I did call it home for about 4 months.
I felt this was probably important, so I thought I'd share.
Midterms à la française and other ramblings
This week officially marked the end of a long drag of midterms. With three before break, and two in the past few days, it's been a fun couple of weeks. It also reminded me how hard this whole taking college classes in another language thing is.
I was studying for my Lexicology exam Monday night and I was re-reading (ok, fine. reading for the first time. you all know me too well.) one of the articles my teacher had passed out. I got through a paragraph and suddenly realized that while I had basically understood every word I had just read, I had no idea what the point of the paragraph actually was. It's as though I'm a fourth grader trying to make my way through a college textbook. Actually, that's exactly what it is. My French is at the fourth grade level at best, and here I am taking a course that I easily could take back at Midd, in my
native language. Of course there are words that I don't understand, but I can always look them up in a dictionary or online if I'm really stuck, and I can usually get the gist of it. However, when it comes to really wrapping my brain around these ideas, I just can't do it in a foreign language.
Sometimes, when I have to write a French paper, I will write an outline in English first. I need to get my ideas down and realize what it is I'm thinking at all before I can then put it into French. They tell you that you are truly fluent in a language when you can think in it. But what they don't tell you is that before you get to that point where you feel fluent, you may be "fluent" at a level that just isn't up to your standards. Sometimes, on a lucky day, I can think in French. And generally my words come out without much need to plan them out in my head beforehand. But there's another level there - the level of ideas and concepts - that I still can't get in French mode. I first need to understand the words, and then the sentences, and only then, once I'm back in English in my head, can I truly understand the concepts. It's this level of language that I've never really thought about before. It's no longer for communication purposes, but rather it becomes an expression, because sometimes the hardest part is actually putting them into words. And the concepts are so large that even when we can't get the words out, and we no longer realize that we're using language to express them, we just can't grasp them without the ease of our native tongue.
And this post just suddenly became nothing like it started out as. The bottom line? Languages are hard. Especially when you thought you knew all the words (or even thought you knew a few...) and suddenly the words are no longer the only thing that matters.
Exotic Switzerland!
This weekend I discovered the reason that all Frenchies ask "Why?" when you tell them you're going to Geneva for the weekend. Because I went to Geneva this weekend, and there wasn't a ton to do... Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy I went. It's a very pretty city - right on Lac Léman and surrounded by mountains. Everyone was very friendly, and spoke at least 2 or 3 languages. It's literally two seconds away from the French border, but I was surprised at how international the city was. French tended to be the default language, but everything was always written in French and German, and often English as well. And not until I arrived back in France did I realize how little French I actually heard on the streets of Geneva. Again, French was in the majority, but English, German and even Russian and Spanish were also very prevalant. We went to the Patek Phillippe watch museum, the Red Cross museum and a national Swiss museum housed in a beautiful chateau. We also took a train out to a smaller town just outside of Geneva, and went to a cute little market and saw beuatiful views of the lake. And of course, and most importantly, we ate tons of cheese and chocolate. All in all I consider it a successful weekend and other than skiing the Swiss Alps, I truly feel as though I've "done" Switzerland.
To backtrack a little, the night before we left for Switzerland, I stayed in Paris with Kristen because we were leaving pretty early the next morning. That evening, I went with Kristen and some other Parisian Middkids to a little get-together with a number of French kids. It was organized by Midd as a way for the Americans to meet French kids and the French to meet American kids. So for a few hours we switched back and forth between English and French and talked a lot about our different universities or interests and things. It was one of the best evenings I've spent in France so far. I felt for really the first time that I was able to connect with the French kids, probably because we were switching between the languages and there was about an equal number of French and American kids present. It was just a really fun, relaxing experience and rewarding because I felt completely comfortable conversing with these kids, either in French or in English. Unfortunately, they were all Parisian so I probably won't be seeing them again, but it was still fun to really interact with French kids for a night.
La gare, c'est par là?
Today, a random guy on the street asked me how to get to the train station. Not only did I know exactly where the train station was and could explain it to him fairly quickly and easily without having to think too hard, but he understood perfectly, said "Merci", and continued on his way. I consider this a breakthrough.
In other news, I just got back from a long weekend in London with one of my favorite Febs, Miss Becca Steinberg. It was a fabulously exhausting weekend, filled with London sights, Windsor Castle, AVENUE Q!!, and free Ben & Jerry's (oh yes, free). I'm pretty sure neither of us stopped talking the entire weekend, and it reminded me, just as Paris did, what it means to hang out with your
best friends, and what a wonderful feeling that is.
Just to put me in my place after my breakthrough earlier today, Pierre my 8-year-old host brother totally showed me up on the use of the subjunctive at dinner tonight. Damn Romance languages and their complicated subjunctives...
