It’s been a month since I have come back from France. I returned to the United States on June 30, and barely passed a week here when my family and I flew back Trinidad because of the sudden death of a beloved relative. I am back in the States now, but even though I know that I’m supposed to be experiencing reverse culture shock—I really can’t tell.
I mean, it still is a bit of a surprise when I go to the movies and the ticket vendor wants to make small talk with me, or when I enter a store and the cashier smiles and compliments me on my skirt. In France, these people are at work to sell you their products and move on to the next customer, not to be your friend.
I realize that that last sentence may sound harsh, but the ironic thing is, I actually subconsciously accept—or at least expect—the French approach towards life now: Last week, while leaving a coffee shop (here in the USA), an American woman around 30 or so asked me if I had a lighter. A common enough occurrence in France, I replied no. Instead of abandoning me and turning to the next person like any self-respecting French woman, she actually started asking me about how I liked the coffee shop, did I come often, and what was my name. After giving her terse answers to these first few questions, I rapidly started walking towards the parking lot so the stalker woman would stop creepily interrogating me. I remember feeling weird about that moment and not really knowing why.
Looking back, I see that it was me who acted bizarrely in this context; not the woman. In France, when you go to a café with your friends, you are taciturn to everyone but your own party. You don’t talk to stragglers outside the café; what you do when you’re ready to leave is mind your own business and go home. However in America, the woman who was talking to me outside the coffee shop was just being friendly and didn’t want to seem like she was just “using” me for a lighter. See, in France they don’t care about that. They ask you for what they want, and they move on.
I will admit that it is driving me mad being here, at home, stagnant. For months while in France, I had wanted nothing but relief from the French, a break from school, and my own soft mattress in my “real” room back at home. Now, I can’t say that I regret having had those thoughts, but I will say this: it’s going to be so weird next year, not being able to just hop a 30€ plane and go to Barcelona for a long weekend, or Verona. I miss the exploring, the novelty of living abroad; the novelty of life itself.
It’s just so weird being back. Just the other day, I was supposed to meet a friend at a restaurant. I no longer have a car (sigh; long story), and both of my parents were at work with their cars. Let me tell you: it was a real struggle for me, fumbling online on the Philadelphia public transportation website, trying to figure out what combination of trains, buses, and trolleys would bring me to my downtown destination. In Poitiers, I would have been able to rattle off to any stranger the number and route of every bus that went to the train station, city hall, l’hotel de ville (“downtown”), and each major grocery store. Here I was in my own hometown, ignorant of how to get from my house to South Street.
So…typing all of that just made me realize, maybe I am in reverse culture shock. Perhaps I’m just in denial. But honestly, it really doesn’t seem as extreme as I thought it would be. The shock of being in France was definitely stronger than what I’m feeling now. However, being home makes me realize that there is no way that I can just docilely live my life in the United States forever. I want to live abroad again, or study abroad again. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those cliché students who’ve studied in Europe and come back to the United States “enlightened” and pronounce everything from cream cheese to the Oprah Winfrey Show “inferior” to their host country of ten months. I remember days in Poitiers when I yearned to go home, to see my family, even if just for a day. I missed Georgetown, I missed my friends. My heart ached when President Obama was inaugurated, and I couldn’t be there with all the Georgetown crew welcoming him in.
Being in France made me realize how strong a connection I have to America. The child of immigrants, I always felt a little outside the idea of being American. I felt awkward not understanding quite what Halloween was all about, or who was Clint Eastwood. But now I see that this country will always be a home to me. When I was a little kid when my parents were talking, I always knew that “home” was our house in Pennsylvania and “back home” meant our home in Trinidad. When I was in France, home for me may have been my dorm Roche d’Argent, but when I thought of “back home,” it was America. Weird.
I realize now that the city that you choose to live during study abroad in is just as important the school that you select. If I had chosen a less academically rigorous school in France, I would have had more time to experience the culture and get to know actual inhabitants in my town. I regret not being able to see more of France itself. Whenever I had school holidays, my first impulse was to take advantage of my time in Europe and the cheap RyanAir/Easyjet flights and see as much of the continent as I could. Not a single vacation was spent in France, and days off which could have been spent taking daytrips around my host country were spent trying to get ahead in schoolwork.
As for my academic experience, it wasn’t of the traditional French genre since Sciences Po Poitiers focuses on Latin American studies. The student body, though replete with many franco-espagnol, franco-bolivien, franco-brésilien, and franco-portugais students has only about a handful of franco-français–people actually born and raised in France. However, thinking back, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Sure, it would have been ideal for language-learning to have only French friends, but I loved the way how when a conversation started in school, it could begin in French, end in Spanish, and be sprinkled with Portuguese or English words. I was gifted with the opportunity to meet a more diverse array of people than I would have ever met at a normal French school as well as given the exceptional opportunity to take classes in Spanish. And I’m going to be honest—sometimes it was such a relief to hang out with my Latin American friends and take a break from the French. For all of you that are going to study abroad in France later this year, you’ll know what I mean soon enough.
I appreciate what France, Scotland, Morocco, and all the other countries I visited had to offer, but I’m a greedy girl. And I’ve decided I want more. I want to see more of France, and more of Europe. But I want even more than Europe—I want the whole world. And if given the chance, I’d love to explore the highs and lows of living in another country, this time in Brazil, Ecuador, or maybe China.
I’m going to miss blogging about my adventures abroad. There were so many times that I had half-written an entry and then an unforeseen assignment came up, or a deadline was approaching, and I would put it aside to edit and look over later. I truly wish I had published all those snippets, warts and all; but while I was living there I never realized that every day spent abroad was valuable; that one day I’d be here, in the U.S., writing my final blog, and that France would be over.
It’s okay, because I’m going back again; and when I do, I’ll be blogging once more! (Though, sadly, not with OIP). Thank you to everyone who has read (and is still reading) the OIP blog, and take care!
And I don’t think I’ve said this yet but–a warm welcome to all the new bloggers! Profitez-bien de vos séjours à l’étranger! 🙂
