Maeve Wall • France
Yesterday I had my first course at the Sorbonne. Because the directors at Sweet Briar pitied me and my nearly incomprehensible French mumbling when we were choosing classes, they allowed me to take an American literature class in English. My major being English literature, I took the class to ensure a easy credit transfer, though I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t have a problem with taking a class on a subject I’m fond of in a language of which I’m more and more fond everyday.
Thus, I was fairly excited to attend my first class at the ancient French university. Walking through the Luxembourg gardens to the nearby school, (casual) I had visions of former English classes where I sat on the edge of my seat as we analyzed the sentence structure of Henry James or willingly stayed up late to scour the lines of a 18th century feminist poem.
What I found at the Sorbonne was something a little different.
In many ways, walking into the classroom for my 2 hour seminar on Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence was like walking into a scene from the Twilight zone. The class was ostensibly similar to my literature classes in the States but something was creepily off.
Maybe it was the seminar room, whose ceilings seemed to be about 20 feet high and whose ancient bookshelves and large oak chairs had to be the inspiration for Hogwarts. Or maybe it was the professor who, with exaggerated eye-make-up, bright red lips, and unnaturally auburn hair spoke in a form of English I had never heard before. It was completely comprehensible, and yet I couldn’t help noticing uncomfortable shifts between an English and an American accent or the way her “f”s refused to leave her mouth, forming a “v” sound instead. Or perhaps it was the other students, who, similarly, would read a paragraph of the American text out loud in what was mostly an impeccable British accent with occasional lapses or mispronunciations (like the word guile which, understandably, became “gee-ile”).
The whole thing really gave me the creeps. Sitting there, listening quietly to these choppy English imitations, I felt irrationally possessive of my American dialect, of Edith Wharton and her references to New York and the “American Dream” which these imposters couldn’t possibly understand.
More shocking than my disgruntled feeling as I left the classroom was my immediate realization that this is very likely how all of France views me. The students in my seminar are reading complicated novels and speak nearly perfect English after years and years of intensive studies. I struggle to respond to e-mails or read anything over a paragraph and I don’t want to dignify my French oral skills with a comparison to the French student’s English.
While slightly discouraging to realize just how ridiculous and possibly infuriating I must be to the average French person, my experience at the Sorbonne has taught me a great deal. I can now more fully appreciate just how kind and patient all the French people I’ve met have been while I change from tense to tense unknowingly or confuse the word for legs with the one for ham. This course will also be a lesson in expanding my worldview, thinking of myself as more than an American citizen (which I was never really fond of thinking until I got here, anyway). I am learning to place myself more readily in global context instead, where connections can be formed and understandings reached between languages, countries, cultures, and continents.
Ernest Hemingway famously wrote, “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
Each day as I ride the metro all over Paris- with increasing agility although I always, always fumble over the manual door handles- I have been reading Hemingway’s novel about Paris, A Moveable Feast. The book, which recounts the day to day activities of Hemingway’s life as a 25 year old writer scraping to get by in the City of Light, has been thrilling and enlightening to read.
Hem, as his friends seem to have called him, dedicates each short chapter to something small and simple about Paris. The first, for example, is called “A Good Café on the Place St-Michel” and describes the conditions in which he liked to write, the lighting in the café, the beautiful passersby, and the empty, almost-sad feeling he would get after he finished writing a good story. His stories about mundane aspects of life and his strikingly simple prose (something, I have learned through the book, which he worked tremendously hard to achieve, often eliminating every unnecessary word in his works, phrase by phrase, attempting to make the “truest sentence” he could) is somehow enthralling and I find myself eagerly turning the page to discover whether he’d get coffee with or without cream or if he would go to the horse races or straight home after lunch.
More than that, though, I have found so much in this little book that I can relate to. As depicted in Midnight in Paris, Hemingway would often stop by the famous writer Gertrude Stein’s apartment to talk about his writing or the works of his friends, who happened to be some of the most well-known artists of all time- Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot (whom he called “Major Eliot” for some reason) and Pablo Picasso. The apartment was on 27 rue de Fleurus, directly across the street from my program offices here. Each day as I walk to my phonetics class or to the amazing boulangerie down the street, I literally take the same path that Hemingway and countless other American legends walked down.
Even without the nerdy, literary star-struck feeling I get while reading A Moveable Feast, each day I am coming to understand more the feelings Hemingway had while he was writing this book. He speaks often of hunger. Not only his literal hunger which was made more evident by each warm, welcoming café whose sparkling patisseries in the windows seem almost too perfect to eat, but also a hunger of a deeper, more complex nature. Paris is so beautiful and yet in some ways so unattainable that one almost always feels as if you will never get enough, or never fully digest it.
But for now, I’m happy with the little movable feast I’ve been consuming, walking down the rue de Fleurus with a perpetual smile on my face, Hemingway in hand.
Packing for Paris, I was unabashedly giddy. I couldn’t wait to bring my cheetah print high top boots and my hip, off-the-shoulder sweatshirt. I brought the trendiest clothes I own (mostly acquired from Brooklyn flea markets during my stint as a Williamsburg hipster). Since the buzzword while packing was “edgy,” I debated whether to even drag along my un-cool Uggs. (Until I googled the question in my title and got resounding “yes! Uggs are everywhere!”).
But when I arrived at my new home I was met with a much different type of Paris than the liberal, trendy one in my mind.
The other day at dinner I told my host-mom about the babysitting job I just acquired, watching a set of Franco American twins nearby in our swanky neighborhood, the 16th arrondissement– comparable to the Upper East Side in New York. She smiled and told me what a great idea it was and how good it would be to earn some cash while I’m here.
Then, she got very serious. The smile almost always illuminates the strong, Peruvian features of her bronzed face was completely dispelled. “Ma-eve,” she said solemnly (the French have a lot of trouble with my name and always pronounce it in two, broken syllables, like a GPS would). “Ma-eve, you need to take our your nose ring. Here, Ça ce n’est pas marche,” she told me. She went on for several minutes about the stereotypes of people like me, with piercings and tattoos, and how in this neighborhood they will often be publicly scoffed at. Her husband seconded the notion later that day and when I told him I would buy a small stud to replace my silver ring, he exclaimed “Do it, do it” almost urgently.
Since the conversation I have become more wary of stares on the subway (and there have been several) and of the conservative nature of much French clothing. Earrings, in my neighborhood, are looked down upon and pretty much everywhere, necklines don’t brave past the collarbone.
So, at least in the 16th, it seems as if I’m better off wearing J-Crew than my original thrift store ensembles (I’m still wondering about my neon green running shorts). But more than that, the conversation has made me wonder what other social cues I’m blissfully ignorant of while I hum on the metro in my cheetah print boots. Stay tuned while I find out this quarter, one way or another.
Well, I made it! This is my fourth day in France, though I feel as if I’ve been here for weeks! My living situation could not have been more ideal- I am in the 16th arrondissment, a swanky neighborhood comparable to Chelsea or the Upper East Side, in a beautiful little room with a balcony and fireplace. We live about 60 seconds from the Seine and the past two mornings I have run along the river, the Eiffel tower in the distance, thinking that I could not have been any luckier.
My host-family is also ideal. My host-mom is an incredible Peruvian woman who has had every job you could think of– professor, social worker, Spanish teacher–and now she is working on opening up a nursery as she has noticed a lack of early childcare in her neighborhood. She is unceasingly patient with my butchered French and consistently upbeat and cheerful. We have spent three dinners together talking for over an hour about everything from politics to Woody Allen. Her husband, too, is genial and sarcastic and has a knowledge of the States which is really helpful for mutual understandings. They have two daughters, Aoud, 15, and Laura, 20. They are both sweet, though a little shy, and their French is much too fast for me at this point. However, I got to hear all of them interact yesterday at dinner, and the parts that I did catch (very few) were hilarious (they made a place setting at the table for their Chihuahua, Applebee, and sat him in a chair) and I can tell that all of them are kind, fun-loving people.
Though speaking entirely in French is extremely difficult and tiring, I have been nothing but reassured and comforted by this city. In or out of my host-family, people have treated me with patience and kindness. The first night I got back from school, for example, I walked off the metro and couldn’t remember which direction I needed to go to return to the apartment. After wandering a bit, I decided to ask a couple walking, who directed me happily. Another, older, couple was nearby and volunteered their directions as well. More sure of where I was going now, I began to walk and then paused for a second at the corner where I thought I should turn. Then, from behind me, I heard the voices of the older couple inviting me to follow them as they lived only one apartment down from me. Thus, I walked home with the pair, who were very kind and practiced their English with me, and they didn’t even snicker when I mistakenly exclaimed “I was so lucky to meet us!” in my embarrassing French.
I could go on and on about strangers who have been kind to me thus far, though I don’t think I will because to do so only highlights the multitude of clueless moments I have had so far. Whether it be the woman working at the Metro who literally came out of her office to help me add money to my card, or the man in the phone company who listened for about five minutes while I recited my e-mail address using the letters of the French alphabet, I’ve only been encouraged to keep trying.
So, that is what I’ll do. Even when it’s hard, even when it’s embarrassing, even when my tongue literally hurts from talking from the back of my throat like the French, I know that my efforts will pay off when I’m able to speak to these kind Parisians with full understanding. Until then, I’m eternally grateful for the warm welcome they’re giving me.
It’s 12 in the morning and I’m on the plane to Paris. Well, actually, after a series of mishaps, I’m on a plane to Frankfurt, Germany and won’t arrive in Paris until 5 pm. The hours (many more than anticipated) before takeoff were tumultuous, to say the least. With a flight delay and missed connection that almost had me staying overnight in Toronto, not to mention Public Enemy #1, my mother, whose purse, sweatshirt, and keys each separately set off security on our way to catch my planem I would be lying if I said I didn’t have doubts about my trip. As I fumbled for my boarding pass in Toronto and pondered how to call a cab once I get there, I still questioned whether I, Maeve Wall, a talkative twenty year old from Columbus, Ohio, am really capable of living in Europe for five months. Not only must I learn how to live in a foreign country, but I must struggle to speak and write and learn in a new language, without any prior acquaintances in France, and with very little previous language education. As I mull over the challenges ahead of me, with a knot in my stomach, I find a part of me asking myself again and again, can I really do this?
Yet a larger part of me says that’s exactly why I need to go. I was told once that my greatest weakness is my inability to trust myself, and I wholeheartedly agree. I have a hard time making decisions without checking in with friends, I have a hard time declaring my answers to questions with complete confidence, and until lately, I have had a hard time writing anything without having it scrupulously proof-read and OK’d by someone I trust.
As I sit on the plane at 12:17 in who knows what time zone, leaving my family, my friends, and an entire continent behind, I’m already proud of how far I’ve come. Though this is most certainly a baby step (can I really call crossing the Atlantic ocean a baby step?) I’ve already seen myself handle situations flawlessly that in my mind seemed almost insurmountable. I thought that going through customs in Germany, for example, would be extremely difficult, and that I would find myself trying to rationalize the presence of a box of chocolates in my suitcase to a massive blonde man who spoke little English. Instead, I had a nice little conversation with the German customs man (who was, in fact, massive and blonde) about whether London or Paris is more beautiful.
I’m sure that, like my voyage to get there, my time in Paris will be full of ups and downs- turbulence in my transatlantic voyage. But I’m just as sure that it will be worth it and that the girl on the plane typing frantically into the notes section of her smartphone on the return flight this June will be someone wiser, smarter, and one who trusts that she is capable of anything.
Midnight in Paris is the valium to my Parisian anxiety attacks. I just returned from my second viewing of the film (by Woody Allen, my absolute favorite director and/or person), and I feel renewed, revved up and ready to embark on a journey to the city of light.
The film’s protagonist, Gil Pender, is a romantic, wishy-washy writer engaged to a domineering California princess who is visiting the city with his soon-to-be in-laws. Through the magic of the city (and Woody Allen’s screenwriting), Gil travels back in time to Paris in the 1920s, chats with Hemingway about the “movable feast” around him, falls out of love with his fiancé, and falls in love with the city.
Most of my winter break has been consumed with my anxieties about Paris. I know next to nothing about the city, have no clue about how life goes on in Europe (how do I call people or withdraw cash from the ATM?) and feel as if I speak the language like a French Neanderthal.
In a very Northwestern-esque way, I began break with the notion of “studying” for Paris. I rented 3 French films, 7 guide books, and attempted to read everything every famous author ever wrote about France. But every attempt to study for studying abroad left me more panicked, more anxious and more aware of everything I don’t know.
Then, suddenly, it hit me: that’s the point. The idea of study abroad, at least in my mind, is to expand your mind, to test your limits and to learn a great deal through life experiences in a foreign place. Though I’m sure the first few weeks will be tough, I think the best way to prepare myself is not to try to cram French history, culture and grammar through my post-finals brain but instead to embrace my not-knowing. As long as I show up willing and eager to learn, with a smile on my face and a French dictionary in my hand, I think I’ll get by (besides, I have the lyrics to Lady Marmalade memorized- doesn’t that count for something?).
So, my idea of molding myself into the perfect Parisian in three weeks has been discarded. Instead of coming to Paris as a rough clay sculpture, in the need of some retouching and polish, it seems like I’ll get there as a lump. But, all the better, á mon avie, for what better a sculptor than dear Paris, one of the most beautiful places in the world?
So, here I am, with 13 days until I say au revoir to the US. I’m sure there are plenty of panic attacks to come, but I think my first midnight in Paris will make it all worth it.
My name’s Maeve Wall. I’m a junior English major and a Brady Scholar in Ethics and Civic Life. I love adventures, social justice, working with kids, Mac Miller, and hipsters, preferably with moustaches. I’m involved with Wildcat Welcome, Alternative Student Breaks, and The Daily Northwestern here at school. I’m also Vice President of Recruitment of my sorority and am jet-setting from Bid Night, after selecting our new members, to the city of lights, where Sorority Recruitment will just seem a distant dream (or nightmare).
I consider my upcoming trip this winter and spring to be the journey of a lifetime. I’ve never been to Europe, don’t know who I’m living with, and I still don’t have my Visa. This will be my second time out of the country and my first time (since college) that I’ve lived away from my family in a new place.
I’ve heard that when you study abroad, it all works out- that the situation is “sink or swim.” Whether due to awkward language miscommunications or lost escapades with the directionally challenged (me), I am prepared to flounder a lot during the process. However, by the end, I hope to come out performing a confident, determined breast stroke.
Join me as I tread water (and avoid drowning) this winter and spring and learn about myself along the way!
