customs and mannerisms, part 1

After finishing Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood and scrambling all over Lyon in fruitless search of her Oryx and Crake, which takes place in the same post-apocalyptic world, I finally decided to take the easy way out and ordered it online from Barnes and Noble. As I anxiously await the arrival of what I don't doubt will be a good read (it better be, at least - it ain't cheap to get books shipped to France, let alone back to the U.S. when I'm done with this year-long shindig), I have started a novel I heard about months ago entitled Netherland by Joseph O'Neill. I don't intend to bore you with a review of this book (mainly because I'm only 60 pages into it), but I did encounter an appropriate quote, which, lucky for you guys, has inspired me to end my two-week dry spell (can it even be called that after only one post?) and blog.

Here's what the protagonist Hans van den Broek has to say: "Coming to America [...] I'd eagerly taken to new customs and mannerisms at the expense of old ones. How little, in the fluidities of my continent, I missed the ancient clotted continent. But self-transformation has its limits; and my limit was reached in the peculiar matter of batting."

We all choose our study-abroad destinations for different reasons, and throughout the early stages of this process I had to ask myself whether or not I wanted to feel like a tourist in a place I would temporarily call "home." It's true that as a French major, I was drawn to the Francophone world. But with French as the official language of nearly 30 diverse nations, not to mention widely-spoken though unofficial in a number of others, this criterion hardly narrowed the spectrum of my choices. It wasn't until I met with Davidson professor Dr. Fache that I got a true sense of what I wanted to gain from an experience abroad. We were actually discussing the prospect of my being away for a full academic year instead of a semester when she advised me, "With a semester you'll become proficient in the language; with a year, you'll be able to break that language barrier and immerse yourself in the culture."

Although my passion for the French language certainly influenced my decision to come to France, it was by no means the deciding factor. With Dr. Fache's words ringing in my ears I realized that even more than immersion I wanted assimilation. I wanted to become and play an active role in my new culture. And I recognized that this wouldn't happen if I constantly felt like a tourist. From the beginning, I've wanted to blend in to this whirlwind French world, and part of that has come from a dedication to the mastery of its language. But it has also - and perhaps more importantly - come from the adoption of its "customs and mannerisms."

Which is why I find myself sitting in this crowded café, sipping coffee from a cup small enough to fit in my pocket, and nibbling away on this sugar-and-butter-coated croissant. And aside from you, my devoted readers, I can say with near certainty that I'm the only person who knows for sure that I'm not French - at least not yet.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this post, i.e. what I was actually going to say before I got distracted with the above ramblings.