(a chronicle of my semester in southern france.)

I’ve been meaning to end this because that last post doesn’t feel like an ending.  Now it’s 1h30 on a seemingly random wednesday morning weeks later, I’m alone and exhausted in my room; I guess now is as good a time as any.  But to say what?

I came home and adjusted back to English and America pretty quickly.  I said a ton of words for the first time, words I hadn’t needed to say in English all semester, and I drank iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts and I forgot to eat dinner and I even went to malls.  I’m still stuck in that awful habit of bringing up France and Morocco whenever possible, much to my friends’ irritation.  Yesterday I stared at a picture of le palais du pharo that I had taken and couldn’t remember what it was called.  But there are also things that stuck; the lavender, the little phrases, the collectivisme, the relative lack of snacking, the mint tea.  I think about it often, I miss the language constantly, I long for that space and that freedom and that distance and that challenge all while loving this community, the sense of home and dependency and closeness and ease.  It was just the challenge, reintegrating myself, that I thought it would be, and for that I am both frustrated and grateful. 

To be honest, I don’t know what else to say here, except: thank you for reading.  Thank you for caring.  This semester was beautiful, challenging, exhausting, and highly rewarding, and things I experienced there will stick with me for the rest of my life.  So I guess this is goodbye, blog.  Au revoir, et merci.

• that stupid taxi driver : No, we will not pay 28 euros for a trip back to the hotel from the musée d’orsay; no, we did not call your taxi service, you were under the blue “taxi” sign, I talked to you, you said okay; No, I did NOT call your taxi service, this is ridiculous.  We may speak English, but I am not stupid, and I will not pay that much.
• that guy from the hotel in Marseille : My mom left her phone there.  The guy said it would be delivered to Paris before we left.  We are leaving in the morning.  It is not here.  When will it be here?  Oh, you don’t know? Really?  It’s not your problem, it’s the problem of la poste? Really?  You don’t know when it will arrive?  It’s normal that it hasn’t arrived yet?  We are leaving tomorrow! Je l’ai précisé!  Ah! 

Paris is nice though.

edit:  We saw the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame and Musée D’orsay, I found good thrift stores & bought books at Shakespeare & Co, I saw my darling Pauline and we ate meals together (plural!), we shopped a ton, etc.  Now I am running off to my last Monoprix trip.  Paris is nice.

I have officially left Marseille.  I write this in an enormous, stupidly nice hotel room in Paris while Jules and my mom are out looking at the Arc de Triomphe.  There are more suitcases in this room than I can count.  We’re kind of a mess.

I’m kind of a mess.  I’m kind of confused.  I’m telling myself it’s the finality of leaving that’s made me so weary and grumpy these past few days.  The patience I took in from the provençal lifestyle, the absolute adoration I felt towards my mom and sister from being so far away from them,  the confidence I gained from my three months of speaking French, all of it is currently being manifested by someone I haven’t been in months: bitter, demanding, judgmental.  It’s frustrating.  I want so badly to show that I’ve learned, I’ve grown, so much in this past semester,  but it’s easy to fall into old impatience, indignation, and fear.  Which isn’t to say it’s all bad, or that I’m a horrible person, or anything.  It’s just frustrating for myself.

Despite that, I am well.  This past week was hard; my finals were hard.  I wrote some gorgeous (but not flawless) dissertations and tried so hard to memorize the forms of arabic verb conjugations and it all felt really good.  I spent some quality time with my friends, all of them, here, and walked around realizing it might be the last time I see certain places.  I spent good time with my host family,  and my real family!  Jules and my mom arrived Friday morning, bright and early, and I picked them up at the airport.  We didn’t do much sightseeing in Marseille but I think they realized a little bit why I love it.  After my last exam, we had an apéro at the AUCP where I tried really hard and unsuccessfully not to cry.  My program director pulled me aside to say I was a “model student.”  It felt really good to hear that.  It was hard to say goodbye, but in doing it, I realized that I meant more to these people and this program than I had ever thought.  The people I held in high esteem told me that they really benefited from my presence, too, in ways I hadn’t even imagined.  It was really beautiful.

Saturday during the day we went to an adorable Christmas market at Cours Julien (which I have officially decided is, despite it’s sketchiness at night, my favorite part of Marseille) and then we went back to my house and packed my suitcases.  Despite the enormity of the task, it was actually incredibly fun, and I’m smiling now just thinking about me and my mom and Jules bewildered by all my stuff and laughing until our faces hurt at that ridiculous, unique, Lorusso sense of humor.  Saturday night we ate dinner with my host family and it was so special.  That word is cheesy but it’s so true.  It was incredibly special.  We gave my host family gifts and they sent me home with tons of adorable stuff and I wanted to cry the whole time.  They were so sweet.  I got so lucky.  I really did.

And this morning we left for Paris, hauling suitcases and laughing and whining.  The man in the taxi to the hotel told me I speak French incredibly well for an American.  It was really nice.  No matter how much I mess up, my mom is always impressed which is cheesy but honestly makes me feel a million times better.  My French really is better.  Incredibly better. It feels nice to have confidence in myself, even if it’s just ordering my mom a sandwich or asking where to put my oversized suitcase to assure it gets on the plane.  Which happened.  Unfortunately. 

I paid for this time on the Internet and it’s running out so I’ll finish here. I like this blog and I think I’ll keep writing, maybe once or twice more before I leave France.  It’s funny how different this is from what I expected it to be (and probably what you did, too).  I thought it’d be a day-by-day of interesting events with cliché tourist photos, a blog that I’d want anyone and everyone to see.  It’s become a way to digest my thoughts on this whole experience, something between a personal, heartfelt journal and a collection of introspective essays, meaning that whomever it reaches knows far more about my abroad experience than they probably intended to.  Anyway, throughout this semester, whomever you are, I hope this blog didn’t disappoint you all. I’m glad it is what it is.

( I wrote this last night because I had no internet but now a lot has happened today that I could write about but I figured I’d just post this here anyway, why not.)

I am one of the most nostalgic, introspective, and symbolic people I know, so it should come as no surprise that leaving here is hard – harder for me, perhaps, than others.  Because most other people are able to say “this was nice” without being afraid of what that means, for how long they’ll hold on to it, if they took the most possible out of it, what they mean for others and for how long they will mean that, etc.  I tell myself not to worry but whom am I kidding?  I worry.  I want sentimental, emotional goodbyes.  I want a-ha moments as I get on the plane.  I want to know I’ll be missed, that my presence here meant something to someone besides me.  And I want other people to want that, too. 

My program ends in a few days.  My mom and Juliana will arrive, we’ll go to Paris, I’ll return to the US.  I’ll stop speaking French, I’ll stop eating pain et fromage with every meal, I’ll stop walking everywhere, I’ll no longer see these friends, no more macarons, no more monacos, no more “demi-baugette, s’il vous plaît,” no more “bonne journée!” each time I leave a place, no more bises every time I enter.  The person I created here: will she cease to exist?  In my head that sentence is mille fois more elegant in the language in which it should have been written.  La personne que j’ai créée ici, cesserait-elle à exister?  The thing about speaking French as a foreign language is that I become hyper-aware of a well-written phrase.  In English, I am eloquent.  I can write a paragraph ripe with metaphors and pretty little instances of assonance and balanced, elegant syntax without noticing; nothing gorgeous, obviously, but I find that I am usually proud of the words that come from me without thinking too much.  In French what I write is often basic so when I say something the slightest bit impressive, when I invert something just right or throw in a soutenu vocabulary world, it stands out.   La personne que j’ai créée ici, cesserait-elle à exister? 

Today I took an exam that measures my French language ability (kind of).  I took the same exam when I first arrived.  (My results were average; they told the program I was one of many students who showed up well-prepared for the program.  My results will probably be almost the same from this second test; I will have improved, sans doute, but I will not have really moved up in the levels or anything.  Bref.)  I thought back on the girl that took the TEF in September and I wanted to laugh.  Scared, quiet, tan, wearing a pretty sundress; panicking on the listening section; desperately trying to remember the names of the sixteen students around her.  Awkwardly short bangs.  Jet-lagged.  Exhausted.  Hopeful but discouraged.  Homesick.  And now?  À l’aise, joking around in a room full of friends, wearing mildly elegant French clothes, scratching my head at the questions I still don’t understand, not too worried about it all.  Still exhausted.  Still homesick.  How do I even sum up the changes that have happened within me in the past three months?  The difference between the girl who sat blogging on her giant bed while her mom packed her suitcase and the one who will be, this weekend, on the floor of this adorable marseillais home, laughing with her mom about how they’ll ever fit all these things in these suitcases?  

I have learned much this semester, and it is true that there is a person I have created within myself who exists here.  She is caught between these two cultures and balancing them well enough; she is awfully aware of her stilted speech and her accent; she is intelligent but incredibly quiet, determined and impatient, an absolute culture nerd, taking big concepts like “collectivism” and “polychronic” and “strong hierarchical distance” and trying to apply them to her own life and succeeding in various ways.  It is true that I am someone different in French.  And it is true that I’m afraid to leave her behind in Marseille but she doesn’t have a place in the same country as my monochronic, frustratingly eloquent, insecure, anglophone self.  Quoi faire?  Comment régler?  It’s harder when I realize that, for better or for worse, this matters to exactly no one else but me.  I can wonder and blog all I want; the world will keep turning, everyone else’s problems will keep happening, and I will be here, in my own head, wondering what makes sense for me and in what context.  Au fin fond it’s not that big of a deal; at the end of the day it is a great problem to have, to feel comfortable in more places than one, to feel that there’s both a place for me here, and that when I’m here, there’s a me for this place.

Today I became the recipient of two really great articles of clothing.

1)  an OM scarf.  

The Olympique Marseille is Marseille’s football — ah, no, excuse me, Americans, but what is soccer to you is football to everyone else — team.  They are beloved by this city.  The love for the OM by Marseille rivals that of Boston’s love for the Sox.  It’s that intense.  Anyway, I thought I’d pledge my allegiance and inaugurate myself into the fandom by buying this scarf.

2)  A Lycée Thiers shirt.  

If you didn’t know, Lycée Thiers is where I did my internship this semester: three other AUCP students and I ran an English class there, once a week, for students who just finished high school and are taking a preparatory year before they apply to France’s most prestigious colleges.  I met a lot of incredibly sweet, really interesting people that I had to say goodbye to today, and it hurt so much.  These kids are so smart and so nice, and they were really interested in getting to know us.  They really made us feel appreciated, and welcome in their city.  I can’t believe I won’t get to keep spending two hours every Wednesday laughing and learning with them.  Their English professor gave us all little gifts today, as it was our last week with the students:  a Lycée Thiers shirt, a CD from a bicentennial concert they had a few years ago, and a magazine about the school.   I was on the verge of tears; it was just so sweet. We had a few of them sign our shirts before we left today, so we can keep little notes from them.  It was my first real goodbye for the semester and it was really hard.

I’m trying so desperately to figure out how to feel as I’m leaving. Songwriting isn’t coming to me at all (I finished a song but I’m not sure I love it) which is usually my means of coping.  So I don’t know.  I don’t know how to balance looking forward to being home, being with my family and friends, the backroads, to-go coffee, Christmas, the studio, Vassar, skiing, Boston, New York City; to look forward to all of that, but not to stop profiter-ing while I’m still here.  I know I should just be in the moment but it’s always been hard for me.  I guess that’s kind of the answer, though: being in the moment.  Writing helps, I guess.  See?  It just did.

Will it be weird to be back home?  Will I still wake up with my brain midway between two languages? Will I start to hate English for not being French, or will I revel in my rediscovered eloquence?  Will I miss the Provençal sun too much?  Or the food?  Will I turn to my friends from this program to laugh about a funny francophone joke, only to realize we no longer live in the same city?  Will people have found me changed, as I have?  Will I hold on to what I’ve learned here?  I’m full of questions.  I’m full of fear.  I’m full of hope.  But I’m trying to just be present, I guess.

(as i’d like to feel productive and not just stressed)

• researched/wrote/edited a 3.5-page fake grant proposal for my Humanitarian Action course (yes, I pretended to be ECPAT … How could I do grant-writing that doesn’t center on trafficking?)
• wrote a 3-page “history of my quartier” (with very little source material, oops)
• wrote a dissertation outline for my linguistic strategies class
• read various articles for Humanitarian Action/Intercultural Communication
• wrote/edited a journalistic critique of a book I read last week
• wrote out various arabic exercises
• wrote most of a new song (!!)

Now that I look at all that, it doesn’t actually seem like too much.  The fact that it’s in my second language makes it slightly more stressful, but still … Oh well.  It felt like a lot, I promise.

I also saw Wall-E for the first time while drinking some nice wine/eating some nice cake with friends, discovered a new favorite café (i drank rosemary-apricot juice there! so delicious!), bought some cute clothes, ran several miles, ate delicious tapas while laughing at Arrested Development quotes, painted my nails while watching Mad Men with a friend, and sang loudly in the shower (I was home alone all weekend, okay?).   It’s been quite nice to be productive and to be having fun at the same time.  

Related:  I do not want to leave.

• writing a song when it just doesn’t want to be written no matter how badly i think it needs to be written.
• navigating the roller coaster of emotions that is learning a second language.
• doing my homework when there are more interesting things going on (everything).
• participating in class when all i can think about is writing a song that won’t even let me write it.
• thinking about saying goodbye.

It’s true, I’ve been stressed lately about French.  Learning this language, is, like all things in life, something that changes.  One day might be a good day; one week might be a good week; but another day I might learn that I’ve been pronouncing one tiny little phrase wrong and it’ll continue to bother me for days and days straight.  (I maintain that I picked up the phrase from reading a few pages of the French translation of “The Catcher in the Rye” so it’s okay if I anglicize it, right? [Wrong].)

Bref, I have good moments and bad moments, but in general, I love the challenge.  Sometimes when I’m in the aftermath of a horribly explained story, I long to revert back to my native tongue.  But that frightens me.  I don’t want to go back to the US feeling defeated, like I just gave up on French, but I’m never going to feel victorious.   There is not going to be a conclusion to this experience, a moment where I realize exactly how much I have accomplished and I am not afraid of how much I have left to learn.  I probably will not move up in my TEF level.  I probably won’t understand 100% of a French film.  I probably won’t be able to tell a long, complicated, personal story in French with some awkward pauses and a lack of  perfectly adequate, nuanced vocabulary.  French is a hard language, a proud language, a complicated language.  I have not mastered it after six years in the classroom; I won’t have after three and a half months in Marseille.   I will leave somewhere in the midst of all this.  I will return to the US and speak English gladly and with regret.  

Life is not clean cut.  Experiences don’t just happen and end (and most times, I’m extremely grateful for that) — they stay with you, the good and the bad.  I will fall back into “you know”s and “like”s and “I mean”s and “Mom, it’s whom there, not who!” and I will forget some nitpicky instances of the french subjunctive and how to fake a Marseillais accent and I will revert to writing my 1s and 9s and Ms normally (even though it’s prettier in French handwriting).  I will rejoice in my eloquence in English and miss this language that falls so awkwardly out of my tired mouth.  I will be confused. And, justement, I don’t even know how to end this post.  There is no clean conclusion, no matter how badly I search for it.  There isn’t.

While Matt was here I kept a running list of things I would only hear while he was here.  The list included “ligature,” “wood grain,” “type treatment” and “photo-imaging.” Ah, the joys of dating a graphic designer.  (Also : “highly-anticipated vinyl release.” Oh la.)

I don’t quite know where to start.  I could start chronologically, with waking up before 7am to get to the airport by 9am to pick him up Wednesday.  Or how that one hour of class on Wednesday was the longest hour of my life, knowing that Matt was wondering around the quartier that my school is in while I struggled to conjugate impossible Arabic verbs.  The several hours I spent in the immigration office’s doctor’s office that afternoon weren’t great, either.  Luckily, I got a free x-ray of my lungs and a sticker that says I am legally allowed to stay in France for the twenty-something days that I have left here.  Bureaucracy at its finest!

Wednesday night we ate the most delicious raclette, ever, and Matt passed out pretty early.  My host parents thought he was really sweet (go figure!) and he got along really well in my house, despite the language barriers.  Thursday was much more fun.  I went to class, but then skipped out to get lunch with Matt at a delicious crêpe place.  We saw the Vieux Port and then bought our Thanksgiving dinner supplies.  We cooked for a few hours and I won’t lie, I’m pretty impressed with how it all came out.  For our first time, it certainly wasn’t bad!

turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce.  Pre-gravy.  Pre-pumpkin bread.

I made everyone go around the table and say what they were thankful for.  Both of my host parents mentioned how c’est pas toujours évident avec les étudiants, que tout se passe bien — in other words, that it’s not always a given that things are good with the host students, and that they were thus really glad that things have gone so well between us.  They were really impressed with the meal we cooked, and the whole tradition of Thanksgiving — I have a feeling they might suggest to the host student next year to cook Thanksgiving dinner again!

Me, my host parents, and Matt!

Friday I had class early, but when I came back home Matt was still asleep.  We made homemade Joe’s Thanksgiving sandwiches (didn’t catch that reference?  It’s a sandwich made at Matt’s dad’s deli, and it’s just delicious) because honestly, so many leftovers.  So many.  After that we were cutesy little tourists:  Notre Dame de la Garde, La Corniche, Le Vieux Port (/gelato) La Canebière, St-Fé, and Cours Julien.  We visited a record store where Matt found a rare/new (still don’t understand which) Beach Boys record and the man working there told me there are no open mics in Marseille (I figure if I keep asking, they will magically start happening).  

Saturday we woke up early to meet up with some of my friends to visit Les Calanques — something I’ve been meaning to do since I got to Marseille, and something I figured Matt would appreciate since the total lack of nature in Baltimore kind of bums him out.  They were stunningly gorgeous, though none of us was surprised.  It was a seriously exhausting hike, but it was totally worth it.

Later, we ate couscous, met up with some of the French students we work with, drank coffee, napped, and then went out for dinner.  Madeleine and I are slowly accomplishing our goal of becoming friends with the woman who runs Chez Nous, my favorite restaurant in all of Marseille, I think.

The only sad part of last night was going out knowing we had to wake up at 4 to make sure Matt got on his 7h15 plane.  That was rough.  I will have it be said, however, that I did not cry at the airport, nor on the shuttle back to Marseille (even though I was the only one on the shuttle, and it was dark, and I was alone, and I was exhausted…)  This, if you don’t know, is serious progress for me. 

Having Matt here was absolutely amazing, and it’s honestly hard to explain exactly why.  It’s partially because I’m glad I get to share this experience with him; partially because I got to introduce him to the amazing people I’ve met here; partially because just being around him makes me love life more than I thought possible; partially because there is nothing like falling asleep holding someone’s hand; and that doesn’t even start to explain it.  It’s kind  of like this: when we are away from each other, it hurts, but I’m perfectly capable of being happy on my own.  I miss him, but I don’t stop living my life.  I can’t.  But honestly, as soon as we’re back in the same place at the same time, I just feel so much better than I even remembered being capable of feeling.  It’s like everything is just a little nicer, easier, happier, simpler, better.   There is someone who doesn’t have to love me but does.  Who knows me better than anyone and still wants to spend as much time with me as he possibly can.  So yeah, being in love is really incredible.  I got pretty lucky, didn’t I?

Fortunately, I don’t have too much time to feel bad about missing him (or anyone) as these next three weeks are going to be insane.  Papers to write, presentations to give, books to read, and exams to take; not to mention, loose ends to tie up and goodbyes to say.  The former half I know I can take care of; the latter, however, might be a little trickier.  On verra.  At least I’ve got something stellar to go home to, right?

Ps: I took this tilt-shift photo of Marseille from Notre Dame de la Garde and I think it came out really cool.

it looks like a little toy town!

Twenty-five days.

That’s all I have left of this program.

The thought struck me today in my urbanism class and I almost burst into tears.

I don’t want to leave.  I don’t want to leave at all.  I can’t leave this place, and leave behind all my friends, all my progress, all of the macarons, all of the adventure, the learning, the humbling.  I have learned more here in these few months than I have ever learned anywhere else: about France, about the US, about myself, and in that way, all of the clichés are coming true.

There are beautiful things awaiting me when I return to the US; namely, my tangled roots.  I know I will be happy when I am there but I know that often I will awake from a bilingual dream and feel an ache in the bottom of my stomach, the same ache I felt at sleep-away camp or the nights after Matt left Vassar or in any of my loneliest moments.  The painful, visceral longing for a place that seems awfully, impossibly far from where you are.  I will sit alone in my room, bit my lip, and try not to cry (as I’m doing now).  Marseille is dirty, messy, loud, and dangerous; but she is also beautiful, and fascinating, inspiring, and waiting with open arms (and several difficulties) for those who show up expecting something, anything.  This program has introduced me to a group of amazing, beautiful, brilliant, hilarious, wonderful students that, even if they share my nationality, are spread throughout an enormous country, making it difficult to know when or if I’ll ever see them again.  My life has taken on a new rhythm and I love it.  I don’t want to leave it.

I wish I could go back a few months in time and shake the nervous, scared, timid Marissa who understood nothing of what her host parents were talking about and say “you will love this.  you will love this so much.  you will be so happy.”