Mon amour, la france, 2

So in high school, I was homeschooled. Since my parents do not speak any foreign languages, my hopes of learning a language at home wasn’t very realistic. Well, a local pastor’s wife, who wanted to learn about homeschooling in the hopes of homeschooling her future children, decided to teach French (her college major). I literally jumped at the chance! All of my friends were taking Spanish, which I had no interest in.

The French course was published by the BBC and came with cassette tapes/CD’s for listening to vocabulary and “interacting” with the characters in verbal exercises. My first year was kind of easy. My second year of French? She pushed us very hard. I rarely had to study in high school – for her class, at least 1 hr a week. (It was my year of “verb drills” – just lists and lists of verbs and tenses to memorize). Our final was 12 pages… all translation and verb/tense exercises.

Well, that covers my high school years of French – just my freshman and sophomore years. I skipped my junior and senior years of French because we moved and I couldn’t find another program. I listened to my one tape of French music — Celine Dion’s “On ne change pas” album over and over again, but that was it.

During my freshman year of college, I met a girl named Karin. She was Swedish, born in Hong Kong, lived most of her life in England. However, she had just finished studying abroad in France in a town called Collonges-sous-Saleve. When she told me about all of the adventures and the wonderful places she had been, I grew so excited. Then she showed me pictures – and I was HOOKED.

Rewind: All through high school, I told my parents I would be going to college in England – I wanted to study in Europe. However, my parents support pretty much squashed that idea. They didn’t want to investigate it, and they didn’t want me to go to college yet, actually. I graduated high school at 16, so it was way to early to leave home and be on my own. Long story short, my pastor intervened and talked my parents into letting me go to this 1 college (Southern Adventist University in Chattanooga, TN) because it was conservative and they wouldn’t have to worry about me. C’mon, its not like I was a wild child or anything.

Back to freshman year of college. After seeing Karin’s pictures, I was determined to go to France for my sophomore year. I told my parents at Christmas, they were iffy. By spring break, I told them that I was going and that they weren’t going to stop me. I would be 18 the August of my sophomore year and I would go – even if I had to pay for it myself. Well, they didn’t like that.

Then I got a boyfriend. And he decided to go to France, too. (His decision was independent of my decision). When I told my parents, they were very unhappy and very uncomfortable with the idea. I told them it would be ok. After a while, they did a 180 and said that if my boyfriend went, then I could go. If he didn’t go, they didn’t want me to go.

So, on my 18th birthday, we left for France. Actually, we left for Geneva. Collonges is about 5 miles from Geneva, Switzerland. We live about a 1-mile walk from the town center, all uphill. The Saleve is a mountain and our college is at the base – and I mean just at the base. It towers over you. I’m in love with that mountain.

My time in Collonges was spent studying French and travelling – more on that later… After 10 months of 5 hours of class 5 days a week, we returned to the US. I changed my college majors to BA French and BA Psychology. (After all my French classes, I only had 3 upper level courses needed for my BA in French, so I figured, why not?).

I miss France and hearing French so much. I’ve moved so much in my life, and when I was in France, it was the first time that I actually felt that I was home, which is a very complex emotion for me. I haven’t been there in 3 years —- and I can’t wait to go back.

Matt and I were engaged about a month and a half after our return from France. Two months after that, I was so, so close to dropping out of college and going back to France. The only thing that stopped me was money. It was at that moment that I decided that, in order for Matt and I to last, I needed one promise.

If we were to be married, we had to live in Europe, if not in France, for at least some period of time. We also had to go visit there as often as we could afford (at least 1 every 5 years). If we couldn’t agree to that, then I couldn’t agree to marry.

Sometimes I wonder if this was selfish of me… but I now know it wasn’t. It was just honest. I need to go to France – it’d be like living away from home all your life and never going back to where you belong. You can’t always be a stranger, always feel like an outsider. You have to go to where you belong, where you feel like you fit in.

I don’t fit in in the US. I don’t belong here.