Welcome back to week 2 in Lyon, where its great to be American. Despite the occasional updates we all keep receiving from friends headed back to Penn for NSO (the 2nd best week of the year), everyone we meet here is thrilled that we are American, which is a bit surprising considering both the reputation of the French, and our passionate, albeit short lived, love of “freedom fries.” One reason is that most students have at some point been to the States, and by that of course I do mean New York City. They rave about Manhattan (pronounced man-(pause)-attahn), the lights of Times Square and “their” Statue of Liberty, and then look at us blankly when we try to move the conversation to Philadelphia. So far no one has bonded with us over Philly, but there was an incident in which a French student tried to engage us about Milwaukee, and, as one would expect, that went nowhere. However, the main reason that we are so popular is that French people genuinely love to speak English. Once the secret is out that we’re American, you can expect a gaggle of natives to quickly arrive on the scene, ready to bust out some English phrases. Usually it ends up that we speak in our broken French and they respond in their similarly broken English, and the conversation stumbles along. Yet as much of a train wreck as our interactions must seem from the outside, I personally could get used to this star treatment.
But of course, its not all fun and games here, as this week has been marked by our pre-semester intensive French classes. A pointlessly painful exam on Tuesday sorted us into one of 8 different class levels, and from there we have rolled on 6 hours a day (sometimes consecutively) of various aspects of French. Morning brings oral and writing seminar-style sessions, while the afternoon is a two hour lecture in one of four subject areas of your choice (naturally I chose political science). After many months away from formal coursework, these classes, while grueling at times, are making a solid difference in getting our French back up to speed and preparing us for actual courses, which start a week from Monday. It also puts us together with other students from all over the world, and if you want to see a true disaster as it unfolds, eavesdrop on a conversation between us Americans and, say, a German, in our common medium of French. I’m sure the French students who have just begun to return to campus (easily identified by their movement in packs of people smoking) are really enjoying listening in on us.
Lyon is very much a city defined by its extensive student population, and this week was the end of vacation for students young and old, from the elementary school in my neighborhood to a couple of universities in Lyon. This has brought a flock of people back to the city, and as such, the cafes are full at every hour of the day/night, young smokers (maybe 16 years old, the “official” age to smoke here) are huddled in shady corners giving you dirty looks, and throngs of middle schoolers hang out at the train station at the bottom of the infamous stairs that lead out of my neighborhood. Speaking of those stairs, it’s a bit humbling to come up them at the end of the day all out of breath after somehow successfully completing the monumental task of ascending them, only to be passed by a little 7 year old who just came bounding up behind you, backpack and all. Crushing, but I’m working on it. Also, apparently hazing is universal, as we were about ready to go out from the main square in town one night this week when we saw a large circle of students forming and clasping hands. Not wanting to be left out, a couple of us eagerly jumped in and braced ourselves for some true French culture. We quickly realized however that everyone else was covering their clothes in trash bags and the leaders in the middle were preparing bombs of whipped cream, at which point we headed for shelter, and came out largely unscathed. Later we would learn that this was a tradition of a university’s second year students welcoming in their freshmen, and some members of our group actually donated to the cause by paying 50 Euro centimes to have the privilege of smashing whipped cream on a couple kid’s faces. Talk about intercultural bonding.
Anyway, I think it officially hit me that I am in France for the long haul, and I am starting to settle into daily life here. French family is still cooking great food and treating me very well, although we did have another student show up the other day, a girl from Columbia who I guess has been here for a while but was away during the time I arrived. It’s good to have another English speaker upstairs, but the downside is that her and the other guy living with us frequently converse in Spanish, which adds another linguistic element to my life for which I am frankly not ready. For now, I’m sticking with the French.
