21 jours

First and foremost: my brother is getting married! Clayton proposed to his girlfriend/my love Kelsey this past week. Aaaaaand Kelsey asked me to be a bridesmaid! I have been waiting for this day for years. It's weird having momentous things like this happening back in the states while I am so far away and removed from it all.

Haven't updated in (more than) a week. As they say, no news is good news, I guess. Made it through my third week here, and, as our program director informed us, the 21-day mark is something of a turning point. According to sociologists, it's when the initial culture shock starts to wear off — we're used to our new situation, the new language, the new day-to-day events like eating dinner with our host families and buying tomatoes for lunch at the market (not too hard to get used to that one, in my opinion).

Everything revolves around food and mealtimes in France, which is a big change for me. Lunch is not a big thing for Americans in general, I think, but here it is an event that can last up to six hours on Sundays. So I hear, anyway. I've never gone through such an ordeal, but I've heard first-hand testimonies. Dinner is less epic, but still a time when everyone comes together, sits at the table, and "shares a moment" together. The French are big on sharing moments, especially gourmand ones. Last semester I would eat yogurt and granola in the library for dinner every night — with my piles of work to do, it was all I had time for. If I tried to explain that situation to any French person, I am fairly certain they just wouldn't be able to comprehend it. Not in a language-barrier way, but rather a culture barrier, which is waaaaay harder to cross.

We've been talking a lot about culture barriers in classes at AUCP lately. Our program director likes to chalk up all French weirdness to a difference in cultures — I beg to differ. Sometimes they are just assholes. I'm not saying that Americans aren't — there are plenty of idiots in every country — but French people like to ride a fine line between being direct and honest and just being straight-up rude. For example, when I introduced my friend Abby to my host mother, Nadia cut Abby off in the middle of her first sentence to turn to me and say, "She doesn't speak very good French, does she?"

It's been an interesting three weeks, overall. I think my French is improving. This time in France — my sixth or seventh time over here, I think — the language seems to have really clicked. This is the first time I would feel like I could say I am fluent in French, which is a pretty cool thing, since I've been studying the language for ten years now. However, I and my fellow AUCP members have been blatantly breaking our language contract and have been speaking English pretty frequently together, which is strictly verboten per program rules. Oops. I feel guilty every time I do it, if that means anything. I think we all want to improve our French, though, so the frog-tongue shall be reinstated as of tomorrow.

More specific posts coming your way. Just wanted to get a post of there for my legions of readers who were undoubtedly wracked with grief over the lack of news :) À bientôt!