The Life of leg.louisa

Dear beloved readers,

I hope you are all having a great day—not just a good day! I am currently writing to you from the 15th arrondissement of Paris, France. 

The past 21 days, I have been navigating life away from home for the first time in my 20 years, and you better believe there have been both ups and downs. The biggest difficulty has probably been my lack of French-speaking ability. Almost every time I leave my apartment I end up feeling somewhere between a silly goose and bumbling idiot because I pretty much have to stumble through each interaction I have. Even when I can say something in French well enough for somebody to understand me, when they respond back in French I’m at a loss for words. 

That being said, I feel lucky that something I had heard a lot before coming here-that Parisians hate speaking English and hate Americans even more-turned out to be a huge misconception. Many Parisians speak English, and are more than willing to converse with you in English as long as you show an effort to meet them halfway. Having a few words/phrases locked down, like “Bonjour!” (Hello!), “Je voudrais un/une … s’il vous plait” (I’d like a … please), and “Merci beaucoup” (Thanks so much) go a long way when navigating conversations with service workers. Also, asking if they speak English in French: “Vous parlez Anglais?” will achieve the same thing without coming across as entitled. 

As for learning a foreign language in an immersive environment, you get about as much out of it as you put in. Yes, you could get by with those phrases and google translate, but when you put in the effort to try (and maybe make a fool of yourself), that’s how you learn. Up until now I’ve had two weeks of formal French instruction, and I’ve also been trying to pick up other things through talking to my host family and social media. Today I went to the movies and I didn’t want to buy a 3€ bottle of water, so I had to approach the woman at the counter to ask for a cup of water. I thought about what I had learned in my French class, and what I had seen my friends do in restaurants, and I started thinking about how to ask. “Est-ce que je peux avoir un verre d’eau, s’il vous plait?” She handed me a cup and said something about the toilette (bathroom) so I was able to piece together that I should get some from the tap. I felt like an idiot asking because I knew I was butchering the pronunciation, and I could only really get the gist by picking up every other word she was saying and her gestures. But now I know for the future, and next time I’ll be able to walk away from the interaction feeling a little less silly than I did this time. 

If I had to describe my first 3 weeks in France in a few words they would be beautiful, exhausting, and rewarding. Paris and Nice are beautiful cities, and I’m so happy to have had this opportunity. I love my classes, I love the food, I love my host family, I love the fashion, I love competent public transport, I love my friends and all of the new people I’ve been meeting. Every day presents a new challenge, but even moments of adversity are ones that I have to cherish before my time abroad runs out. 

Now’s my time to sign off, but I’ll leave you with a poem by content creator and author David Larbi that I’ve been embracing in my time here so far.

I’ve been finding things tough recently,
but overall, I still love life!
Right now, the rain is pouring down, 
but the sun is still shining bright!
It reminds me of the fact that life
can hold multiple truths at once.
So its good to know how to weather the storm
but enjoy when the sunshine comes!

Bisous,

leg.louisa