From a New Perspective

Bonjour!

Unlike my fellow mousquetaire I don't have as strong of a reaction to French culture. Don't get me wrong, I am not having anymore luck finding French friends than she is, but I am not surprised. It's difficult to work around cultural differences (most of which I feel completely unaware of) and I think we are just missing something. It could be that the French students themselves are as intimidated by us as we are of them or maybe we are just not being outgoing enough. It would be dishonest to say that we leap at every chance we get to speak French or say hello or start a conversation. Maybe the problem is as simple as we don't understand how daily interactions work here.

That being said, I think things are starting to look up in the friend department. We have finally made some French acquaintances (only one of which has been from our university). In fact, we have finally been invited somewhere!!!! Ok, I know that makes me sound like I'm thirteen again and its my first time being asked to a party or dance, but after long weeks--which feel like years at times--constantly feeling like I'm socially unacceptable, I am LOOKING FORWARD TO IT. My excitement, however, is coupled by the fear of making social blunders. I have never been invited to someone's apartment in France before. We learned in our culture class that if you are invited to dinner you need to show up 10 minutes late and bring a gender appropriate gift (flowers for women and wine for men). I don't have any idea what I'm doing and I hope that I don't screw things up so badly that she doesn't want to be friends.

As far as money is concerned.......................................

WE DON'T HAVE ANY!!!!!!!!!!

We have been here for four weeks now (I think) and we have still not received our stipend from the school! It is absolutely ridiculous that they can't give us an actual date; but what can we expect with the famous French bureaucracy at work?


Despite the problems we've had adjusting, and despite my love and loyalty to my home country, I love France. I love the lifestyle, the food, and even the classes (well, I think I would like them if I could understand anything that was happening). Other international students may be ready to go home, but I wish I would've come a semester earlier.


-Caitlin

Comparative Cultural Analysis (More interesting than it sounds)

"Why don't we have friends. I mean, really, WHY do we not have friends?"

The hour was midnight, the place, Stacey Weidemann's dorm room. The speakers, two disgruntled American college students attempting to unravel the mysteries of cross cultural exchange and international student life.

Fortunately, these were not just any disgruntled American college students, but rather, Mlle. Weidemann and Mlle. Moore, clear-headed, analysts with the depth, sophistication, and sensitivity to navigate the most complex cultural mazes. Unfortunately, the conversation which transpired is lost forever to posterity due to a lack of foresight and recording devices, but I will do my best to explain our discoveries here:

"I've never liked Americans, but we're growing on me."

Until you've lived with Europeans, you never truly appreciate the charm of the American. We're disarmingly pleasant, irresistibly lovable, and invaluable companions. You see, we're very... enthusiastic. We get excited about things. All things. We favor everyone with big, face-splitting grins, we laugh loudly, we leap to first name basis and intimate familiarity. We have an innocent, joyous attitude towards life, unable to imagine that the everyone isn't as delighted with us as we are with them, convinced that everything will work out in our favor, cheerfully certain of a welcome wherever we go. It simply never occurs to us that the world is not our oyster, nor that said oyster is not brimming over with enormous pearls of fantastic value. This wholesome heartiness is lost on our continental cousins, who regard it as disingenuous (as though an American could be), suspicious, and artificial. They know there must be a catch to all that smiling and high-fiving somewhere- they're just waiting, watchfully, to see where it is. Faced with the innocent and overpowering American joie de vivre, the French recoil and throw up their guard. The Americans frolic around them hopefully, pleading for attention, but usually, it is too late; the French have frozen into sphinx-like dignity as rapidly as a snail retreating into its shell. Only receiving dramatic proof of an individual American's sincerity and worthiness, or entering an advanced state of drunkenness can persuade your average European that friendly mingling is anything more than an idiotic waste of time. In spite of our childlike eagerness, noble ideals, and rugged good looks the Old World is still not quite prepared to acknowledge the New World's existence with anything but frigid condescension and disdain.

Which leads to the groundbreaking theory formulated recently:

"The French are like cats, and Americans are like Golden Retriever puppies."

Clever, no? Ponder it a moment, and you'll see that it's true. Americans are cuddly, clumsy, and cute. We waddle and stumble around, making noise at inopportune moments, eating with indiscriminate greed, snuffling nosily into places we're not wanted, leaving messes in our wake, and begging the world to be our friend and join us in a game of tag. We yap a little if you step on us, and we may growl and nip in the playfullest way possible, but we're always humbly eager to accommodate and make amends. An American is an adorable bundle of charm, which, though it might eat the sofa, break the lamp, pee on the rug, and bark at 3 o'clock in the morning, is ultimately irresistible in its desperation to regain your favor, and its utter, naive ignorance of its crimes. Only the most cynical heart could withstand the wriggling assault of a puppy, and that leads us directly to the French. Catlike and cynical.

Cats, like the French, are sleek, dignified, aloof, and impeccably groomed. They have no use for boisterous outsiders, or indeed, anyone who presumes to interrupt the ordered routine of their lives. They regard the jolly antics of the American ankle nippers with pained displeasure, and wonder audibly why we can't exercise self-control, stop all of that yelping, leaping, and wagging, or return to the backyard where animals of our sort belong. While a puppy is cavorting around the living room chasing its tail, your average cat will be perched on the bookcase or sofa, twitching its ears with disapproval, and daintily making its toilette. The puppy just cannot understand. Its every attempt at establishing friendly contact is met with rebuff. The two creatures simply cannot communicate. What the pup regards as an overture of friendship, the cat receives as a shocking, impertinent insult, and when the puppy attempts gestures of repentance and contrition, the cat feels threatened and besieged. A puppy will prance up to its feline target, dragging a dirty sock with obvious pride, wiggling its whole body with hopeful, eager delight, and drop the precious gift in a touching act of generosity. This is a clear invitation for tug-of-war, or chase-me-I've-got-the-sock. But the cat simply can't understand. It bashes the puppy across the nose with an indignant paw, and takes refuge on the kitchen counter.

A puppy, of course, can't fathom this behavior. It will lick the cabinets experimentally, gaze up at the cat in bewildered, hurt impatience, yap peremptorily for a while, demanding its playmate's return, and at last settle down on the floor to chew the sock in miserable, heartbroken silence. Meanwhile, the cat is meticulously grooming again, oblivious to the drooping brown eyes which follow its every move.

No wonder cross-cultural friendship is so difficult. If only cats liked puppies as much as puppies liked everyone, this process would be less painful. But we're resilient as our rubber squeaky-balls, and we intend to keep yelping, and wagging, and chasing until we find a feline open minded enough to see our sincerity and good intentions.

It's a challenging process. Some days I get frustrated because people here aren't open and outgoing as I want them to be, because other students are cold and unwelcoming, because strangers look right through me when I smile at them, and because making real, meaningful friendships in this new culture and language seems impossible. Some days I want to turn around and go home, because I don't see how we can ever make this work.

Before I left, my friend Caleb told me something along these lines, "When you live abroad, it's like you're putting yourself under a magnifying glass- all of your best and worst qualities are enlarged and visible. You may see things about yourself for the very first time. And no matter how much you think you love that language, you will grow discouraged, and exhausted, and want to give up. No matter how much you think you love that people and that culture, there will be moments when all you want is to escape from them. There were times in Indonesia when, in spite of myself, I hated Indonesia, and despised the Indonesians, because living cross-culturally is hard, agonizing work. There's nothing pretty about it, ideals can't survive it. Especially not in SE Asia when you're fighting dysentery, steaming in a cauldron of humidity, living at close quarters with people who are poor, and smelly and unkempt, and who are eager to take advantage of you. To keep on fighting for those relationships and for your love of the place you've come to, takes grit and perseverance. You have to will acceptance and trust when everything in your heart wants to close itself off and reject the 'bad culture' and 'bad people'. You have to be humble enough to keep loving and reaching out to those who reject you as different and inferior, even when your instinct is to react pridefully and defensively. It will hurt like a searing iron to do it. It will quite literally, kill something in you to let go of yourself to that degree and reach out with compassion and understanding to people who seem indifferent and undeserving. But that something is selfishness and pride which needs to be removed, and the sooner you put it to death, the sooner you are free to love and be a part of your new culture in the way you always dreamed you would. It doesn't happen without pain, and it doesn't happen overnight. Have courage, and have patience, because you'll be in great need of both wherever you go in this world."

The first month here has made me increasingly grateful for Caleb's wise, vulnerable advice. Feeling lost, confused and frustrated can easily make you depressed, angry, and irritable. Some days I had to bite my tongue because I wanted to snap out a sharp, unjustified retort to a friend's harmless comment. Though it hurts to confess it, some days I've been seized with an unreasonable disgust for everything French- the sight of the people in their enormous scarves and stylish boots turned my stomach, the sound of the language was an infuriating annoyance, the narrow little streets and smug little cars, and colorful buses all made me want to scream. It was childish, and irrational, and even in the same moment I was ashamed of it, but the emotion bubbled up in spite of me. Culture shock is a much more pungent reality than I expected, and I wasn't nearly as prepared for it as I cockily thought back in the U.S.A.

Of course, it's been much cushier for us here than it was for Caleb, for instance, in Indonesia. We have heaters that work three days out of five, running water, privacy, refrigeration, recognizable food. Although some French students we've come into contact with have been chilly and painfully unfriendly, many have been warm, helpful, and kind. Even minor annoyances, like doing my laundry by hand in the sink, can be adjusted to rapidly. But there are still moments when something inside of me rebels against the way things are done here, when I find myself sullenly thinking 'That's ridiculous- our way is best. They should change.', and I have to take a deep breath, and remind myself why I came. It's not easy to truly adjust yourself to another culture, any more than it is for an ungainly puppy to make friends with a cat, but neither achievement is impossible. It just takes courage, and patience... and humility. We have the next four months to test our supply of all three qualities to the limit.

La France, elle est belle; c'est les français qui sont fous

This morning, I was awakened by a mysterious ringing, somewhat like the chime of a telephone, which seemed to emanate from every corner of my room. I put the pillow over my head, and attempted to block the noise, but it was persistent. After a long ten minutes, it occurred to me that this unwanted sound might have some important meaning. Recollecting that the police sirens here are different than those at home (Ours are better, in case you wondered), I began to think that this ring might be an alarm of some sort. So I got on youtube, and looked up French fire and smoke alarms. Not the same at all. Apparently, though, the ghostly brrrring! couldn't handle the competition from my laptop, because it stopped suddenly, and I was left wide awake in blissful silence, at least an hour before any of my friends would be getting up.

This seemed like an obvious opportunity to explore.

I had heard that St. Nicolas Lake was near the campus, and that it was surrounded by many hiking trails, so I decided to make it my destination. In retrospect, it is not at all difficult to find, if you know where you're going. ;-)

Away from the tacky apartment buildings (like Florida condos with chimneys), the narrow streets, clutter of cars, and starkly utilitarian dorms I realized at last that, wholly apart from stunning architecture and carefully landscaped gardens, France is a beautiful country.

The woods today were sweetly fragrant with the fresh, maddening scent of April in Missouri. Rough walls of jagged moss covered slate, broken by flowery banks tumbled with ivy, yellow gorse, and dark green holly, rose on one side of the narrow sandy path. The other side dropped steeply through the trees to the glistening lake. The greenish brown water was dotted with little flotillas of mallards, trailing white victory signs behind them in a glimmering wake. Grey-barked deciduous trees, tall and eerie, were gnarled, knotted, and twisted in fantastic formations, stretching upward beside soft-needled pines, many of them naked saving a luxurious pouf of needles at the top, like flora escaped from the pages of Dr. Seuss. Mosses, twiners, and creepers raced everywhere, glowing in the luminescent grey air. At one moment, ivy peeped like scattered emeralds from a mat of rich red pine needles. The next, a bend was rounded, and a secluded clearing was revealed, carpeted in soft green moss and dotted with tiny flowers. Mounds of wild rose canes rose up against the craggy slate walls. In patches of mud, chips of slate shone in shades of blue. The birdsong was deafening, and intoxicating, and foreign. A thousand sweet notes and trills I've never heard before rang in my ears all morning. In short, it was a place to be lost in, and lost there I was, wandering from trail to trail, for three glorious hours. Definitely the best three hours I've spent since arriving in Angers.

What did I learn? French joggers, explorers, and strollers are almost uniformly un-gregarious, but if you grin at them all as they go by, you'll get the occasional answering smile, or a heavingly breathless 'Bonjour' as they plunge past you down the path. You'll also get some really weird looks. I've composed a sociological theory that to acknowledge the existence of other human beings on a woodland trail, where everyone is trying to escape the petty bounds of society and avoid being surrounded by people is probably considered a monstrous invasion of privacy by the French. Actually, I kind of feel the same way... but still... that rules out another strategy for meeting language partners- umm, I mean, friends. :-P

In other news, Stacey and Caitlin are off tonight to meet a new friend, Marta, downtown, and attend a French film festival. Hannah, (another American) and I are headed to a Bible study and hangout with Le Groupe Biblique Universitaire d'Angers. If we can overcome our nonblogging laziness, I'm sure the three of us will tell you all about both experiences later. And of course, we have many stories and lessons from the first week (mostly forgotten already) to tell you about as well. In future updates expect to hear about:

- Attending classes in French

-How not to make friends in France

-Sharon's creepy ideas for attempting to make friends in France which we are absolutely not going to try.

- Doing laundry in France, and various laundry related escapades

-Cooking in the communal kitchen

-Touring the 15th century castle

-Snookers: the only bar in Angers we're familiar enough with to discuss intelligently (expect a plug for the Monaco from Caitlin)

-The pervasive, mysterious 'Kebab'

-Grocery shopping

- Things we never ate in the U.S.

-Our dorms

-Taking the bus

-Culture shock

- Falling short of the French dress-code (It isn't hard. But who wants to wear a miniskirt and stilletto heels to class, especially when it's freezing out? It's not our fault that the girls here do.) This may occur as a separate blog post titled: 'The Scarf is not Enough' (refer to first post for context on The Scarf)

Au revoir, and until next time,

-Sharon

Bonjour tout le monde, et bienvenue!
This blog currently exists as a record of something that hasn't happened yet- our semester as students at the University of Angers. Currently, we have a little less than 5 weeks before the great adventure officially begins. :-) ! :-O
So, in the meantime, here's an explanation for this blog and its existence.
 I, Sharon Moore am the administrator of  'Les Trois Mousquetaires' since I registered it (the sense of power is intoxicating ;-) ), but Stacey Weidemann and Caitlin McKinney are co-authors. This is intended to be a group effort, so that our friends and family at home will be able to keep track of our escapades, and get different perspectives about our experience. It will also give us motivation to be observant and put memories in writing, as well as the opportunity to ponder and explore our time in France more deeply than we might otherwise. And fun- it will definitely be fun. When two opinionated English majors, and one opinionated ex-English major spend 4 1/2 months abroad together, 'fun', and literary efforts are sure to be simultaneous results. Also, it will ensure that none of us forget how to read and write English in our pursuit of French.
To avoid as much as possible the use of the royal 'we', we shall post separately, every man for himself. This means that there may be more than one post on the same event, and that could be a very good thing, since different people will bring away different observations and insights which they may want to highlight. [Of course, it could also be a very dull and infuriating thing, so we will attempt to be as unrepetive as possible. Promise.] 
As you can imagine, now that we've nearly finished the horrifying paperwork that comes with applying to a foreign university, applying for a student visa, etc..., and are nearly at the moment of truth which comes when we step on the plane, there is a lot of preparation to be done.

Included in this process is:

1. The Great Dilemma: Everything we don't pack we have to live without for 5 months, BUT everything we do pack has to be lugged through airports all day. This problem is dealt with as follows:

a. Extended discussion and conversation. Ex. S: "How many suitcases are you bringing? I thought I'd bring two, but then I realized how heavy they'd be, so I thought I'd bring one, but then I realized how little I could fit into one suitcase, but then again..." Sh: "I don't know! I want to bring everything, and I don't want to bring anything! This is so hard!" (Prospective students moan and clutch heads.)
b. Extended contemplation: Prospective student sits in room, gazes around at possessions with mingled love and despair, moans, and clutches head. This process is occasionally interrupted by pacing, which is interrupted by pauses in which the student flips through potentially vital books, or sifts indecisively through her clothing, leaving it tumbled in an anxious heap. Process is repeated. Room is wrecked.

2. Mission 'Go Native': This is a top secret mission, and I shouldn't really be putting it on the blog, but I'm sure you can all be trusted to be discreet. Considering the deep love and respect the French have for your average American tourist, we've decided to avoid looking like American tourists as much as possible. In fact, we've decided to veer to the opposite extreme and look completely, unobjectionably French. You might think that this would be difficult and expensive, and it could be, but being lazy and broke, we are relying utterly on one powerful and volatile secret weapon- The Scarf. With The Scarf, that ubiquitous French accessory, we count on having an automatic ticket of entry into the very best society. No one will recognize us in our true identities as sloppy American college students. The Scarf also fits neatly into a suitcase, and will be a useful tool (we hope) for disguising the fact that, crushed by the Great Dilemma, we only brought three shirts to wear over and over again. And again. And again.

3. Exaggerated Nostalgia: We are leaving you all, dear ones (loud sniffling), for nearly half a year. Never again (at least, until the fall semester) will we walk the golden halls of MWSU, forever hallowed in our hearts by memories of friendship and blossoming academic interests. These trees, these bushes, this grass, these spittle-bedewed sidewalks, jeweled with the occasional cigarette and candy-wrapper, how many days must pass before they again burst upon our hungry eyes in all their glory! But seriously, we are a little nervous. Though we expect to be living life too fully to miss you all too much during our stay abroad, we can't help but worry that you will lead equally full lives and forget to miss us at all. This hurts, deeply, like a knife to the heart, and I hope it is a fear unfounded in truth. :-P When we come back, even if everything were the same (which is impossible), everything would be different. I don't know yet what will be changed in us in the course of the next semester- what will be lost and gained in our five month pilgrimage to Europe, what soul-searchings and transformations will result, but for myself, I do have a few lofty goals. I want to become completely confident in the use of indefinite articles and relative pronouns. It will be a perilous and difficult journey.

All that to say: Stacey, Sharon, and Caitlin are going to France. This is our blog. If you care about us at all, read it. If not... I don't even know what to say to that. Go read something else. Drown out the shrieks of your stifled conscience if you can. (And if you're at a loss for more thrilling reading material, permit me to recommend the sparkling humorous works of P.G. Wodehouse. They might well make you a better, nobler human being)
Signing off,
Sharon