Amara, a fellow Trojan, and I live in an itsy bitsy apartment (4 stories tall, two rooms and "une petite escalade" wide) on the top floor with Mme Crespe and ta fille Sybille. Sybille is 18 and I know she would be absolutely hilarious if I could understand a word she was saying. Today at dinner was especially strenuous in the understanding department because Sybille had a friend over for dinner, Alix (??), who talked soooooooooo fast. She had red hair and freckles and zero awareness of the fact that my French is très limité. So for dinner we had this meet thing and cantaloup and bread and there was salad which was passed to me so I started to take some and then my Mme Crespe said something about the salad and I.... just nodded and took some. Moments later I realized I was the only one with salad and then deciphered that this meat cantaloupe thing was not really the actual meal and that the salad was... for later. I then second-guessed myself and wondered if maybe I was the only one that liked salad? Maybe I should put it back? Maybe this is a major faux-pas? Maybe it doesn't even matter? I then figured that the only option would be to just stuff the salad in my mouth as discretely and quickly as possible.... the sooner it was gone the sooner everyone (mostly myself) would just forget about this salad incident. Then we had this fish thing and some pommes de terres (potatoes) with which Sybille had salad.... then other people had salad... then Mme Crespe offered me more salad. Basically I had French salad and French meals.... it's stressing me out.
I've been in France for two days now but it feels like nearly a week if not more. I've been traveling since forreevvvveerrrrrrrr. It's very nice to sleep in a bed but I wish that I was at my homestay in Paris so I could fully unpack and sit down and say "this is exactly where I am living for the next 9 months"... which is something I haven't said for a very long time. It seems like I am always moving somewhere (Anacortes, LA, Seattle, Tours, Paris..... too much). The group is very nice and I'm making a lot of new friends... though I don't know if it is possible to make 69 new ones (there are 70 of us on the trip, and 35 staying for the year by the way. Some other fun facts: there are 56 girls and 14 boys from 26 different colleges. USC and Northwestern have the most students. 20% of Americans study abroad, but only 4.5% of that go for a year. And about 90% of those go to English speaking countries. Basically I feel super isolated in this decision to do something kind of crazy.)
It's really frustrating because I feel like everyone is telling me very important information, but it's all in French so I'm only comprehending 40% of it... pretty stressful for Miss. Need-To-Be-In-Control. For example: my host mom just told me the plan as far as eating for the weekend..... and I'm like "oui, oui, parfait, merci, oui, oui, parfait, merci"..... and in my head i'm like "uhhhhh I think you said you're gonna make sandwiches for lunch tomorrow but I have a very vague idea of what time and... well this will be interesting.
Also literally all I have consumed is in the past two days is: bred, cheese, wine, fish, salad (mehhhh), water, and some cigarette smoke - but not from the French!!!! from some idiot hipster American (hipsters piss me off a lot more in France for some reason).
Well I must be going. Some girls from SC and I are going out and exploring the Tours night life. There's like a river and stuff.
~ Clara
