An American Girl in France

Today I ordered lunch in French. I woke up early  and roamed the streets till I found a quaint café where I ordered deux macaroons, un baguette and un croissant avec formage et saumon. A seemingly simple task to many, but to me it was as though I had passed my first initiation—to explore the streets and speak French without help.

I have traveled to different places in the past and beyond seeing the sights, my favorite part of any vacation is attempting to assimilate myself into the culture and speak the language. When I visited Rome a couple years ago I was breathless at the Colosseum and other historic landmarks, but I simply loved walking the streets and hearing the people speak Italian, smelling the Italian food and just feeling myself wade into this new world and try my hand at ‘living like the Romans do.’ Same thing here in France; this trip is less like a vacation and more like an experience of living abroad.

Before I left for France my dad talked to me about the difference between a dream and a reality; the dream being that image we conjure in our mind and the reality being…well, the reality of what we dream. While in the States it was easy enough to lose myself in the dream of being in France; whether from my own imagination or Hollywood’s I saw a montage of my French experience—sipping espresso with fresh croissants at an outdoor sidewalk café, walking along the streets, baguette in hand, beret on my head and smoothly speaking in French—my montage seemed easy enough to achieve, every experience would be accented by food and every moment would drip with European class as I assumed the role of an expatriate for a few months. Well daddy, you’re right (as usual) there is a big difference between the dream and reality and now that I’m here I know that slapping on a beret and carrying a baguette does not qualify me as French.

It is both exhilarating and scary as it dawns on me that I live in France for the next three months—the day-to-day things I did without thinking in the states are what I do here, but to the backdrop of Normandy outside my window, except they require extra effort as I attempt to do these day-to-day tasks in a foreign language. Nevertheless, each day brings new opportunities to learn and experience something new and although the transition is less picturesque than dreamed, the reality isn't too shabby.