A Flyer in France
I thought the first day of school stopped being scary after about middle school. Sure, there are always new classes with new teachers and new people, but it's really not that big of a deal, right?
I will never again lament how boring syllabus week at Dayton is after being dropped into my first day of classes in France.
It all started out well enough; I had a good breakfast and got to school early to find out my schedule. But from the time I found my name on the bulletin board, it went downhill from there.
The main problem was I was placed into the wrong class. I don't know how it happened, but instead of intermediate 300 level French like I was expecting, I was signed up for all sorts of basic French classes!
I wanted to explain there had been a mistake but there was no chance, as we went from welcome presentation to information session and on to our courses.
After the first hour of an insanely easy course, I thought deeply about how best to express to my professor that the class was the equivalent of Geber mashed pears to my at least Raman noodle ready French tongue. It's a delicate thing even in English, to tell a professor her course is a joke, but getting it out politely in French was still more difficult. But I think I managed and she agreed to give me another test that afternoon to see if I could move up.
It all came down to two skills; writing and speaking. I had to write a narrative about my past semester in my home country. And the professor inquired, could I use imparfait to express it? All my memories of high school classes cursing the tense came back to me as I shakily wrote out my stories about a semester in VWK.
After successfully expressing my memories in words I had to complete the final step and sit down and talk with the director of placement. In French of course. In his office he read over my reflections on everyday life and Dayton. Hoping to have me demonstrate my ability to speak French above a beginning level, he inquired about what I'd written. The popularity of basketball caught his eye. Oh, your school has a team, he wanted to know? And so I found myself, the Monday after the Dayton Flyers gave Xavier the loss they deserved, explaining in French to the director of pedagogy the ways of the Flyer Fans.
I count him as converted to the Flyer Faithful as I was transferred into the my current and correct level. But the experience leaves me convinced that even far from home one can never underestimate the importance of the imparfait and Flyer basketball.
Everything seems to have changed since landing in France but my journey to arrive here demonstrated the human capacity for kindness endures across cultures.
The trip from Dayton, Ohio to Angers, France is a long and somewhat difficult one in which I encountered the kindness of others in many unexpected ways. Ironically, what should have been the simplest part of the journey was actually the most convoluted. My route was Dayton to Philadelphia with a long layover in the city and then on to Paris. But just getting out Dayton proved to be difficult.
Over the course of five hours my flight was delayed three times, first by a mechanical issue and later by snow closing the Philly airport. After about hour four still sitting in the Dayton terminal, kind is the last word I'd use to describe the people I encountered. Everyone was upset about missing connections or just being unable to get home. Slowly some people left for hotels or back to their homes while others, like me, continued to wait.
As we entered into our fifth hour together, people began to share their destinations and stories with the now dwindling group. I learned the young man sitting in front of me was a UD grad, trying to get home to his son in Rwanda. When we boarded the plan for the third and final time, five and a half hours after the scheduled departure time, only nine of us were on the flight. And in the time we had waited and shared our stories we had brought out some of the best in each other.
The ice of the sharp tempered and sharply dressed business woman melted as she talked to me about her time with her daughter in France. My image of the gum-smacking, cell-phone chattering woman sitting behind me evolved into that of a dedicated fianc? who was trying to reach the man she loved in the hospital. Even the stewardess whose big blond curls had slowly unfurled during the stress of the day ended up sitting and chatting with everyone on the ride and took the time to show me on a map the best way through the airport to make my connection.
A connection which I made with no trouble and the flight to Paris went smoothly. In France I encountered more kind individuals who attempted, in French of course, to explain to me among other things that the Paris airport terminals are not actually located in numerical order and that the letters of the alphabet actually do correlate with the seat assignments on the train. Another helped lift my huge roll behind into the luggage compartment on the bullet train and yet another reassured me that yes, I was indeed about to get off at the right stop.
But what made the biggest impression on me was the napkin slipped to me by the business woman as I hurried off the plane in snowy Philadelphia. "In case you miss your flight or it gets canceled and you need a place to stay" she said as she handed me her address and phone number. "I know how I would feel if it were my daughter." Such a kindness was striking but I don't think its endemic to any one place.
That said, life here is pretty different already so stay tuned for the truth about baguettes, myths about homesickness and my experience of what it really means to be lost in translation!
A recent increase in postal shipping rates is contributing to student stress regarding upcoming study abroad experience.
If this were a normal news story, that's how I would begin.
I am Rebecca Young, a staff writer for Flyer News. But this isn't my normal kind of newspaper writing. Starting this week, I'm trading in topics like roofies and railroads for questions of culture and communication.
I'm an international studies major and I'm currently preparing to spend this semester studying abroad at the Universite Catholique de L'Ouest in Angers, France. There's one thing we need to clear up right away. I'm aware it looks like the name of my soon to be hometown is simply anger with an "s" but it's pronounced "on-zhay."
I also realize this phonetic spelling looks like the stereotypical French accent we've come to expect, but stereotypes like that are in part why I'm going to be writing this column. For the duration of this semester, I'll be writing in about the deep questions surrounding a semester in France: does everyone really have a cigarette in one hand, a baguette in the other and a beret on their heads?
No, in all seriousness, over the next four months in every couple of issues, I'll be writing in about all the different aspects of life I encounter from international airport security and the experiences of being foreign to what it's like to live in a culture where you can essentially drink at any age. And if we have stereotypes of Europeans, I can't wait to see what molds I will break (or fill) in the eyes of my new classmates.
But before I can even cross the ocean into France for a whole semester, I must have not only a passport but also a visa. It's only a shiny piece of paper the size of an index card affixed inside the back of my passport, but the process to get it has been incredibly taxing.
Starting in September, I began filling out online forms and submitting documents from UD to France and Chicago. Over Christmas break I made the trip to Chicago for a brief interview and finger printing session. I had to bring even more documents (and money!) and one self-addressed envelope in which the consulate would mail me the visa inside my precious passport.
After a successful meeting I got a call from a woman with a heavy French accent informing me that the cost of express mailing a passport and visa rose by 80 cents on Jan. 4, causing the envelopes with pre-paid stamps of $17.50 to be returned in droves to the French consulate in Chicago.
To my great frustration and indignation, the consulate refused to spring for the two tiny stamps needed to get me my passport to adventure, and I had to stamp a letter to mail Chicago two more stamps.
I would like to think that this is the perfect time for the old adage that all's well that ends well; I received my passport and visa in the mail about a week after the stamp situation. However, in truth nothing has ended; everything is about to begin. Stay tuned for the tales of The Flyer in France!
