My First Month in France: une nouvelle expérience

I’ve hit the one month mark! One month since I have left my life in the United States to study abroad in southern France. With a quick thought, I would say this month has been fairly uneventful, but I think that is just considering how wrong my thoughts before coming here were. But thinking more deeply about it, this month has been full of new experiences, emotions, and difficulties.

In my first month, I’ve mostly focused on getting settled down here, waiting for real classes to start which happened this past week. I got a tattoo, tried lots of food (thanks to my host mom), and spoke a good amount of French. My expectation upon getting here was that within the first week or two I would have a breakdown; Which luckily, that did not happen, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it has all been smooth sailing. Speaking a foreign language in a foreign country is exceptionally stressful. It was easy to overlook how much I would actually be speaking French. I have not gone to many shops here because something as simple as buying some candy requires French, and sometimes I just don’t feel like bothering to put in the effort into forming sentences to buy something unnecessary. I’ve made several friends here, and two of them I’ve been hanging out with a lot are Ariana and Andrew. I’ve also talked with some other students, who were in my classes from California! The friends I’ve made so far all speak English which gives me a good break from French when I need it. At first I felt guilty about the breaks but because I live with a host mom, Madame Roubaud, I speak French with her all the time.

Living with Madame Roubaud has been great. She is caring, patient, generous, and she cooks me delicious food. I planned to buy a keyboard or a guitar to use my free time here in a productive way, and Madame Roubaud paid for my bus ticket to take me to a resale shop to look for a keyboard while she sold some stuff she didn’t need anymore. After selling her stuff, she gave me the money she made to use towards my keyboard, which eventually turned into a guitar because it was much cheaper and easier to move around.

I think the weirdest thing for me is how much free time I have. In the states I went to school, worked two jobs, then most of my free time went to my boyfriend, dog, and friends. Here, I just have school and dinners with Madame Roubaud. I’ve been trying to use all this free time productively; Writing, editing, working out, studying, reading, and watching movies… Having all this free time is amazing, but because I’m used to working a lot, all this free time is overwhelmingly making me feel restless yet exhausted. I just want to lay down usually, but I also feel like there’s so much I should, and could be doing.

Classes have been good, but also difficult. As someone who has issues concentrating, four hour courses are not the easiest thing, especially in a foreign language. Although, I do feel like I’ve improved with listening comprehension immensely since I have been here. I’ve noticed it’s gotten easier to understand most of what my professors are saying. Holding a conversation with my host mom has become easier as well.

Overall, thus far, though it has been difficult and very exhausting, I’m really glad I made this difficult decision to come spend a year in France. I look forward to having more new experiences and writing about them to share with you!