Feelings about France

I’ve really began to feel at home here in Aix. It was difficult at first to get used to the French way of life, but now I’m really getting the hang of it. My day usually begins with a little bowl of yogurt and some granola, along with a nice cup of tea. I don’t have class until 10 or 11 every day except Tuesday (8 AM), so my roommate and I just hang out at home and then head into town together. It’s about a 15 minute walk to school from home, but we usually leave the house at the time our classes are scheduled to start because all of the classes start at least 15 minutes late. It’s so different and more laid back here, at least in school. Class usually doesn’t start until at least 15 or 20 minutes after the scheduled start time. Kids eat breakfast or whatever they want during class, and student’s cell phones go off all the time. There’s one girl in my language classes who’s cell phone probably rings every single class and she always runs out of class to answer it. In the US, that’s totally not ok!
Another thing that I think is just absolutely hilarious is how everyone in the US talks about how in France and Europe they’re all about eating slowly and having portion control, and that’s how they stay so thin. LIES! It’s all lies. Here, I don’t even eat lunch ever because if I do, I don’t have room for the dinner that our French mom makes. Breakfast is more laid back, I just eat yogurt and granola and some tea. Then usually I eat a piece of fruit or a croissant during the day, but for dinner, I’m usually stuffed to the brim. First of all, the French do not eat slower than us. I eat at the same pace as my French mom, but my roommate is the slowest eater ever! We always laugh about it at dinner because Mme. and I will be finished and Avery will be, maybe halfway through her plate. And there is definitely not much portion control here either. Last night, we first ate some vegetable soup, then pasta with beef and seasoning, then cheese (Cougar gold!) and salad, then yogurt, then coffee or tea. I almost couldn’t move I was so full. Of course all through the meal we eat bread also, and drink wine, so that doesn’t really help the situation much. So I definitely don’t believe anyone who says the French aren’t fat like the Americans because they eat less. I think the French are just genetically superior in that respect.
However, the Americans definitely got some things right. I get super frustrated trying to find anything around here because the streets are not organized into any sort of grid at all. The only way to not end up totally lost is to completely memorize the streets and just try and remember landmarks because there’s absolutely no rhyme or reason to it. Our first day of class was interesting at the institute last week because the rooms are all named after famous French people, but there’s absolutely no way to tell where the room is. Our schedules said stuff like, “Victor Hugo room,” and there was no map or anything. The institute’s not very big at all, but there are 3 stories, so when there aren’t any numbers to indicate anything about the location of the rooms, it was very difficult to find the rooms. What most kids ended up doing was wandering aimlessly and looking at every room they could find to just hope that one of the rooms would be the one they needed. It ended up working out fine for me!
I’ve finished my 2nd week in school here, and so far I haven’t found it to be too difficult or time consuming. My roommate and I usually spend 2 hours eating with our French mom each night, and sometimes go walking around Aix after dinner to walk off the food we just ate. The only thing that slightly freaks me out is that my English has definitely gotten much worse since being here. I speak in French most of the time, so when I do speak in English, it’s become exceedingly difficult to speak eloquently or even with good grammar. So I hope you’re not judging my writing abilities by this blog, because it’s definitely not very great.
Another thing that frustrates me is constantly sounding foreign. When I compare my French to the French people’s French, I can just tell that mine is foreign sounding. And it’s not necessarily my accent that does it, it’s more just the things that I way that I phrase my sentences. I can’t be as casual or as formal as I would like, and it’s really difficult to change the way I speak to correspond to the people I’m speaking with. For example, in English, I wouldn’t talk to my best friend in the same way that I would speak to a teacher. But in French, I feel as though I can always make my point understood, but I don’t really have any finesse or style of speaking. Though I suppose that will come with using the language more. And I also get annoyed with my lack of good idiomatic phrases that I use so often in English. But I am picking up some good slang! I should probably go more, but I will post more later!