Yesterday marked the official halfway point of my French adventure - I can't tell if the days are passing by quickly or slowly... The good thing is that I'm definitely keeping busy here - when I'm not in class I'm either at a workshop or activity or movie night, or improv show, or party, or just somewhere doing something with someone. When I'm at home I'm having a meal with my Chicouti-family, or doing homework or concentrating very hard at understanding what's going on on the TV. Spent my last two weekends travelling around, doing awesome outdoorsy stuff. Spent Tuesday at a cottage on the tiniest, most perfect lake owned by the university.
Just wrote my very first examen. Am currently crapping my pants at the thought of my upcoming oral exam IN FRONT OF THE CLASS. And I've been totally getting lazy with my French - eep!
Funny Anglo moment of the weekend: When I said, Je suis salé as opposed to Je suis sal. I wanted to say that I was dirty (after a long hike), but instead said that I was salty. 10:06 am
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Longtemps
I suffered a bout of extreme nervousness the other day in class when I realized something: I haven't studied French since I was 16 years old. It's been EIGHT years since I've done anything with this language and somehow I get placed into the advanced class of the second highest group here?! There's definitely something wrong with the placement system. Though, this isn't totally unlike the time I taught myself Spanish during my flight overseas and ended up in the intermediate language class after just a week in the country... (Also: here's to my third eye or my fourth? Cantonese, English, French, ...Spanish?) Anyway, admittedly, I'm ...not exactly struggling, but not exactly breezing through my class either, which is filled with people who study French as a minor in university. I have yet to completely figure out imparfait vs. passé composé and catch up on my subjonctif. Le sigh - I await the day when French permeates my life so that I dream en français.
It's been exactly one week since I arrived here. I feel like I've been here a lot longer than just seven days. There's a million and one things to tell about, but for now: I live in a house out of a decorating magazine with a bonafide Super Mom and a hot tub. There's two rivers here, gorgeous hills, and I can't wait to bike along the paths in the woods. Downtown is quaint; went to the public library yesterday to read children's books and take naps. Danced my face off two nights in a row; first at the welcome soirée, then at a reggae and ska show. Went on a little excurion today to Lac St. Jean; saw myself some wild animals, a ghost town, and Quebecoise countryside. The other two students who live at the house have become my sisters; we were all born in May of `84 (all within eleven days of each other!) and as Tauri, we get along fabulously. We are the Chicouti-soeurs, the couple de 3, and other dorky things like that... Tomorrow: Class, lunch, canoeing, aerobics, supper, film.
Et maintenant: les devoirs! (For the Anglophones... And now: homework!)
We signed up for an excursion in Morocco that I like to refer to as a "desert trek", even though we went from cities to mountains to valleys to deserts and back. Somewhere between Ouarzazate and the Erg Chebbi I sat beside one of our informal guides in the front of the mini-van and had a conversation wth him about language. He and I tried to converse in all three of our common ones: English, Spanish and French (he also knew Arabic but I had Cantonese!). Admittedly, I don't remember much of the things we learned during the excursion, but I do remember one thing he said during that conversation that we shared, squished in the front seat of that van: Knowing another language is like having another eye.
Among the list of other things I haven't told you about, moving to Quebec is one of them. Granted, "moving" might be too serious a word here - I'm only here for five weeks, but it kind of feels like I moved because I technically did start a whole new life. In French.
I'm living with a Francophone family (mere, pere, cute 16-year-old fils, and a big dog), two other students and just had my first full day of school. I pack a granola bar for a snack in my backpack in the mornings and off I go just like I did when I was 10 years old. I've only been here 48 hours and every time I come home from campus, I feel utterly exhausted. It takes a lot of energy to listen, comprehend and respond to people in a language that you're not entirely familiar with.
Of the six language levels here, I got placed into the advanced class of the second highest level. Which pretty much means that they think I'm actually very good at this French thing, which makes me entirely nervous. This morning we signed a contract promising to only speak in French the entire time that we're here and I plan to stick to it (even during evenings at home, and at the bars on weekends!). Despite all my anxieties, I'm only immersed for five weeks and already I know it's going to fly by, so I'm going to make the best of it (with the exception of blogging - which I also plan on doing very little of - I won't be using English at all).
I think one of the things I like most about myself is the fact that I'm hard to pigeon-hole. I'm fairly versatile. And this might sound familiar because I know I've mentioned it before: I'm the kind of person who knows a little about a lot of different things, and not only can I talk to you about them, I also find joy in partaking in a whole variety of those activities. I can't be just the Dance Girl or the Outdoors Girl or even the Theatre or Food or Travel Girl. And I definitely can't just be the Shopping Girl. If you replace those "or"s with "and"s then maybe we're starting to get on the right track. There's a part of me that's Crunchy Grow-Your-Own-Granola Hippie, but there's also a part of me that's a Consumer Whore. And I embrace both.
See, there's the music purists who will listen to nothing except bands that nobody else knows about (and the second the band becomes anything more than entirely obscure, they're immediately not cool anymore). There's the foodies who sneer at fast food. There's those ...jerks who look down their noses at people who shop. I find that kind of thinking so utterly debilitating. Opinionated to a fault. I'm all for indie music and fancy, organic eating and conserving and getting used stuff (I call it well-loved), but I don't see the harm in thinking that Britney's songs are really catchy and good to dance or run to, in finding greasy McDonald's food delicious, in buying myself a new purse because I've been using the same seven-dollar one for seven years. I don't see the problem with being diverse in and of myself. Nor do I see anything wrong with changing your mind or growing to learn about and accept new things.
So maybe the anarchist rebel became a settled-down corporate suit. Maybe he's a sell-out, or maybe he saw that the IT industry and suburbs weren't so bad afterall. Is a born-again Christian someone who (re)discovered faith? Or a sell-out too? I've got no real ideas, but I also don't have any judgements. Neither anarchy and suburban offices are for me right now, but maybe one day they will be (but probably not at the same time). One day I may own a cell phone and get myself on Facebook. Heck, I just got my full license today and that's something I (and most of my friends) never thought I'd do. So, who knows? Change is the only constant, right? Maybe the unshaven yeti wants to clean up and look nice every now and then.
On that note, I never thought I'd be "the type" to like, nevermind be into, So You Think You Can Dance, but hey, a good thing is a good thing and my goodness, these dancers are good things.
I feel this:
I want this:
I like the fact that I'm watching TV every now and then, because I never really used to. I like the fact that I think Mark looks amazingly sexy in that suit and that Chelsie is beautiful with that floofy dress and her hair like that. I think about the choreography and the costumes. I like the fact that I can appreciate the dances as forms of entertainment but also as art forms. I see the physical skill and the intangible beauty. I love the fact that the dances evoke emotion from me, that I can see and feel the symbolism and oh- I think that just pushed a pin right into that spot in my heart and oh- yes, yes, yes, I know exactly what that feels like (and it's expressed exactly right). I love that the song Beautiful is from the movie Lost and Delirious, which no one remembers, but which I have a soft spot for. I get goosebumps.
I do this with everything I choose to have as a part of myself: I see neat facts, the shallow and superficial, I go deeper, I relate it to other things that are meaningful to me. It makes me feel things. I appreciate and embrace. Yes, I mean this with shopping too. I'm cool with my choices, the good ones and the bad ones (I have to be especially cool with the bad ones), even if it means something as flimsy as spending the day at the Eaton Centre. I own myself, all of my choices. Regretting something is the opposite; its wishing a choice you made isn't a part of you anymore, like disowning yourself. So the rebel will own a suit, the hippy will buy things, the yeti will embrace the clean-cut hunk that he is. And no one will say anything mean about it.
I once thought I wanted to be a girl with A Thing - you know, like a talent, a Master of something. Turns out I might just be a Jack of All Trades. A Renaissance Woman. I'm liking the life I'm starting to carve out for myself, and all the million and one good and bad things that go with it. I guess I'm not really a 'type' after all, but a million and one little types.
I'll take a million and one pigeon-holes, please. 3:22 am
