Learning Life

When with my friends on the program, we speak English in general.  I’ve jumped back and forth between feeling guilt for doing so – like I’m cheating myself from getting the most of my experience and learning French in the fastest way possible – and feeling like it is completely necessary for my sanity.   I’ve never understood how frustrating it can be to not be able to say what you want to.  Here, it takes so much time to say what I am thinking.  It’s frustrating to have extremely slow conversations when my brain is thinking up ideas faster than I’m capable of speaking.   I’ll be excited at the end of this semester when hopefully I’ll be able to express what I want to without slowing down the pace of the conversation.  It’s also frustrating to only understand half of what is going on, all the time!

One of the cool things I’ve learned about myself here is how much my leadership style has changed.  In high school, I was much more shy and passive.  I was the “mother hen” of every group I was in and never took charge.  But here, I find that I’ve been leading a lot of the things we do.  I think it is because I really want to make sure I’m always doing something and getting the most out of my experience.  I don’t want to waste the little time I have to live in Europe!  Today, I made the plans of where to eat and what to do.  We ended up eating at a great restaurant in Place Grennette and watching a movie called Tu seras mon fils. 

I’m also learning how to live in a city.  I’m not used to all the crazy people you meet in cities.  Every day on the tram, something exciting happens.  Someone does something bizarre and kind of scary, but it’s normal.  I’m learning not to stare and to keep to my own business.  There’s a time to be friendly and help others and there are times when you need to step back and watch your own back.  For example, on Thursday night when Elliot and I were coming back from London Pub, a fight broke out between this couple that was in the same general area as us for the tram at 1 in the morning.  The man started getting angry at the woman and talking really fast, loud, and drunken French, of which the only thing I understood was "Tabernacle" and something about her grand-mère.  He aggressively punched the plastic wall in our seating area and freaked me out.  Using my newly acquired city smarts, I didn't stare too much and tried to avoid eye contact since he was trying to add others to their conversation.  He wandered off and left the girl sitting alone.  Instinct told me to go and make sure she's all right, but street smarts told me to back off.  Street smarts were right, she ended up chasing after him anyways.  Glad I didn't get involved in that mess!