Paris preparations

This post by La Belette Rouge about her own "baby step" preparations getting ready for a move to France, got me thinking about how I prepared myself.

I had about 6 months advance notice to get myself ready for the big move. Some things that I did:

- Took a french conversation & grammar class at L'alliance Francaise in Washington, DC.
- Joined French Meetup
- Subscribed to every francophile blog I could find. A few of which are listed in the links on the side of this blog.
- Filled my iPod with podcasts in french to work on my comprehension. Some of my favorites are "BFM Gouts de Luxe" and "RFI Journal Francais Facile", both of which you can find for free on the iTunes music store.
- Listened to all of the back episodes of the Katia & KylieMac podcast to get a bit of a feel for being an expat in France. (Listening to all of the episodes is a bit more of a challenge now that they've hit episode 100, congrats girls!)
- Read a big stack of books on France, the French, and being a young expat. Some were more helpful than others.
- Started reading French news sites daily like Le Monde and 20 Minutes.
- I looked weekly on online classified and apartment hunting sites to get familiar with what was available: Craigslist, FUSAC, Particular a Particular
- Answered a lot of my questions on banking, taxes, living in France etc by reading Expatica.com

In my own preparations I was most concerned about improving my level of French (since that is so key to being able to function in daily life here) and then some navel-gazing to make sure I was mentally ready for all of the changes ahead. (Really trying to get through my head the fact that I will feel foreign, frustrated, overwhelmed, and sometimes lonely, and that it is normal and okay!)

Oh, and speaking of working on your french, I recently came across MangoLanguages.com, and really enjoyed using their free online language course. This site is better for beginners, so I was using it for Spanish & Portuguese, but I did some of their French lessons just for kicks and they were good too.

Merde!

Speaking with actual French people in French is much different than speaking with your fellow Anglophone classmates in a French class. The real, spoken French language is not the stuff you learn in textbooks. And is infinitely more interesting and colorful than the phrases your classmates put together. And the gestures - Oh! The gestures! It's not as much as in Italy, but watching people speak is completely entertaining. When you combine it all, it makes the French that many of us learn very very far from anything that could be perceived as normal, conversational French.

In my excited preparations for moving to Paris, I bought a couple of books that I thought might help me pickup some phrases. In reality, I looked at the books once, but never learned much from them. Learing slang, I'm realizing, is best done over drinks in a bar, listening to people tell their stories.

I had one of the slang books "Merde! The Real French You Were Never Taught at School." on my desk (yeah, real professional, I know. Thought it might be a good conversation starter though.) One of my French colleagues picked it up and was immediately fascinated by all of the catchy English phrases like "I have a frog in my throat" (the French say "I have a cat in my throat"), and "to kick the bucket". So she's borrowing the book for awhile, and we're going to get lunch and teach each other some choice slang. Should be very educational!

Space Cadet!

Learning to speak French on a day to day basis is a challenge. Actually, as I've written about before, I actually cheat quite a bit. There is a big difference between the French you learn in school, and what's actually spoken on the street. Also, there's a big difference between being able to function in a language (ask directions, read menus etc.) and actually express yourself and communicate with someone on a personal level. I'm totally, completely functional in French. But trying to express my personality or have any sort of a sense of humor are impossible. Forget witty comebacks: it takes too long to work out the correct verb conjugation, and then the moment is gone.

I'm still amazed sometimes that I can understand what's going on around me. I'll be going along, functioning fine, and then I have this out-of-body experience where I see myself doing whatever I'm doing, and I just think - "Wow." So, today I was in a meeting with my French colleagues. The meeting started perfectly fine, everyone jabbering in French, and I was following along, even contributing a little bit (a little bit, and very badly, but they got the gist). And then the out of body experience started "Wow, here I am having a meeting all in French! And I know what's going on! Well, sort of. I'm following most of it. Except when they talk over each other. But this is cool. Except I think I screwed up that last sentence I said, but whatever. I bet in a couple of months I'll really know what's going on and..." and then suddenly I hear (in French) "...isn't that right, Amanda?". And deafening silence. Everyone looking at me. Nervous laugh. And, lost in my lala land, I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about, although it apparently involved me.

Fortunately, I figure I have at least a six-month window where people will attribute any apparently spaceyness to my language skills. So I just said "Pardon? J'ai pas bien compris" ("Sorry? I didn't understand.") and life moved on. Gotta work on my attention span though.

Cheating

I think it's going to be a lot easier to cheat in Paris than I thought.

Cheating? I mean, it will be really easy to speak English. A lot. As a casual tourist to Paris, you'll find that you really do need to speak some French. If nothing else than to start off on the right foot with the Parisians. But once you spend some time exploring, especially if you speak a little French, you'll find a world of English just beneath the surface.

This weekend I went to this cute restaurant for a big lunch (I love the fact that you can have a 3 course meal for lunch in France and it's Totally Normal. I stumbled across Au Pied du Fouet by accident, and had a full meal with wine and coffee for 20 euros!). Anyway, I was speaking only French with the waitstaff, but of course I still have my Cute American Accent, and pretty soon the waitress was translating everything into English for me, even though I said "Oh no, je parle francais."

Saturday night I went out with some French friends, and I quickly realized that I could speak full-on Franglais and they would still know what I'm talking about. My French teachers would cringe. But it definitely makes it easier to sprinkle in some English when you forget some key vocabulary. We ended the night at a Canadian bar, Moosehead where speaking English was the thing to do (truth be told, perhaps there were more Anglos than usual because it was the night of the Rugby World Cup final). (Let it be noted that I do not, at all, enjoy sports bars. But for some reason I had a great time at this one. Maybe it reminded me of home!) I think I'll have to make a real effort if I want my French to improve. I can already tell my comprehension is getting better, but if I want to feel less like a 5 year old when I speak, I'm going to have to make Personal Rule #284 and Only Speak French for awhile.

Which way is the Eiffel Tower?

We've all read numerous articles on how rude the French are (supposed to be). This article in the Sydney Morning Herald (which I found via The French Journal) reminded me of a recent experience. This weekend I went to a housewarming party in Paris. Almost all of the attendees were French. I'm guessing that the French don't always talk about Americans at parties, but when I'm present, the conversation almost always turns to something American-related. At this party, the discussion was about how many American tourists assume that everyone in France speaks English. In fact, one Parisian (with whom I was conversing in my preferred melange of French and English, aka, Franglais), told me that when he is approached by an American in English for directions, he first acts like he doesn't understand, and then gives them the wrong directions!!! But if they try to speak a little French first, he is quite helpful.

From my overly-friendly American perspective, I found this kind of shocking actually. And who knows if it's true (I think there is a similar ad on TV right now?? Anyone know?).

This same Parisian later told me that he felt like an American traveler when he went to Switzerland and automatically assumed they would accept Euros...