Katrina Groth

“Qu’est-ce que c’est ton problème?” Inquires an angry looking French woman cleaning the floor of the bathroom in a gas station in France. I believe she just asked a girl from New Jersey what our problem was. “Vas-y, vas-y!” She screams with a violent “go away” gesture of her hand. She directs her to leave the bathroom. I had just met the girl from New Jersey twenty-four hours ago at the Dulles airport in Washington D.C. I had just embarked on my first trip abroad without my parents to a country where I was expected to be able to speak the language. “Uh…elle ne parle pas français.” I hear these words stuttering out of my own mouth, attempting to tell the woman that the girl from New Jersey did not speak French very well. This was my first sentence in French in my first encounter with France. The French woman instantly realizes we are American, rolls her eyes and refocuses on her mopping.

Three hours later, I stepped off the bus that had carried my American study abroad group from Paris to Amboise . We had traveled in heavy traffic for three hours after an exhausting journey consisting of three connections and three layovers. Despite the fact that I felt as if I was about to collapse, when my feet embraced the warm, seventeenth century pavement, a connection to this place surged through my body. I wanted so much to fell as if I belonged here. I was conflicted between feelings of confusion, fear, and a euphoric, dream-like sensation of being in a new place. I would be spending a month of my life in this tiny, foreign town and that seemed like a long time. Though I tried not to take the situation for granted, I was scared. Utterly terrified. As I took in the off-white walls of the town’s very own château or castle, I seemed to be a prisoner, trapped in this small town for four weeks. I was staring at the noose, the very town that could strangle me if I did not reach out and attempt to conquer a new language. As I stared at the narrow streets and old, white plastered houses I began to, simply and frankly, accept my position just like a prisoner waiting for the floor to drop from beneath his feet. Fortunately for me, I would soon be eating the rich looking ice cream from the street vendor across the street.

Suddenly a very short, red-haired woman looking up at me with a puzzled look awaked me from my daydream. She repeated, for I had failed to hear her the first time, very slowly, “Are you Katrina Groth?” in French. I barely recognized my own name for it sounded so foreign. It took me a few more moments to try to comprehend what she had said without getting too distracted by a silver tooth in her mouth reflecting the large bags under my eyes.

“Uhh, oui.” I confirmed while wondering how this could be my host mother. My feelings of euphoria vanished as I dreaded staying with this woman for four weeks. She had on a black shirt that had fake crystals spelling out “FASHION.” Her Levi’s had that very teenage “whisker fade” across the front pockets. It wasn’t that she did not seem nice, but I was not expecting her to be so…so not French. Suddenly I noticed the South American looking girl standing next to her. It seemed I had gotten on to a Ferris wheel without knowing it, turning around seeing new faces, blurring them together, and for now, the ride would not stop.

I felt silence crowding in around me. My host father now appeared and all I could decipher from his French was the word “car”. I took that as the cue to get in to his Prius looking vehicle and we took off, winding through the gray streets where houses were less than an inch apart, if separated at all. Finally, we broke free of the cramped center of town and I could breath again as we were greeted by lush green gardens and tiny homes. The last thing I remember seeing before my eyelids could no longer handle the heaviness of my exhaustion was a somehow funny, somehow American looking sign. It read “GYM.” I would soon find out to just what extent my American culture had permeated the borders of this country.

The next thing I knew, I was hauling my oversized, red suitcase up a narrow and steep staircase. I cannot even remember what the outside of their house look liked, but now I am inside. I walk up the creaky steps on unsteady feet, ready to fall at any second, for once in my life having no one to catch me. The South American looking girl went straight to her room. All I wanted to do was sleep but my host father gave me a set of keys and pointed down stairs.

Come on Katrina, I thought. That was basic French, why can’t I understand? I looked at him stunned, unable to move. I was sure he thought I was an absolute idiot.

“On va manger, le dîner, oui?” he repeats telling me clearly that we are going to eat dinner. I gesture the one moment sign, index finger raised towards the heavens, and he nods understanding that I need a minute to settle in. I enter the room and I feel the presence of a motherly touch. My mood sways for what seems to be the hundredth time this day. My eyes scan the small room, neat and tidy, with a twin bed with a fluffy, pink comforter and matching pillow. It was just that touch of hominess that I was craving and I immediately felt my heart slow down. I felt not the euphoria, not the fear in the pit of my stomach but a simple calm. This is going to be a great adventure.

At the dinner table, which is on a porch screened in by glass, I see their garden, full of rows of lettuce and flowers. Pink clouds blanket the sun as it sets on what seems to me the wrong side of the horizon. There are cherry trees off to the left and a large, sandy colored field off to the right. No houses extend beyond this field, only French countryside. I am in the heart of France. I am in the heart of my dream.

I look around at the faces looking back at me around the table. They each give me an awkward smile knowing that if they ask me anything, it may very well take me the remainder of the meal to understand them and then answer.

As I head to school for the first time, a billion thoughts race through my head. Should I try to distance myself from my American friends so I get to know culturally different people? After all, I will only speak English with Americans and I am here to speak French. Will I be in the highest level of French at the school, after all, I have only taken five full years of French? Will I ever be able to understand exactly what is going on in our household or will I never know why Monsieur Hubert, my host father, has not been at the house since I arrived? I ponder and question, reflect and attempt to answer my own mind, but no matter how much harder I rack my brain, I still have no answers. It is exhausting. I constantly think in English then have to translate into French whether or not I say these things out loud. I don’t understand why, it is just the way my brain is functioning. I am so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I almost fail to pick up the amazing scent of a pine tree in a yard of a quaint house. I am still outside of the center of town so there are many gardens but this seems to be the only pine tree. It may be short and scrawny but it has just rained and the smell is amazing. I am immediately whisked back to family camping trips where we wind through roads leading us to Yosemite Valley. Drops of rain hit the windshield and I stick my head out of our V.W. camper for a whiff of those pines. Uggghh. I want to go home.

I get to school and see twenty year olds smoking in the slight rain. They look me up and down. Two boys play ping-pong, speaking in what seems to be infinitely fast Spanish. I cock my head back to the group of smokers and hear what seems to be German, Spanish, and…ahh, heavily accented English. I continue my trek through this tiny courtyard to the door of the school, the only door to this tiny school. I push on the door and it doesn’t give. I wait a moment, look around and push again. I hear a laugh slice through the silence of the morning and a tall girl with pouty lips and a cigarette in hand says,

“Thanks,” I reply without even thinking what language to use. Wait, I think. How did she know I speak English?

As if to answer my question, a gray haired woman pops out behind a door immediately to my right and says in very clear French,

“Yes, I know everyone at this school can speak English but the official language of this school is French. That is what you will speak.”

I nod back to her and quickly rush straight ahead of me to a relaxing looking common area with couches, fake plants, and all of my American friends speaking loudly about their first few days with their host families.

“OH MY GOD! I cannot understand a thing.” Michelle, the girl from New Jersey practically screams at our large group of Americans. They seem to all be fighting for a turn to recount on their own adventures. I slump down on the coach, beginning to dread my first day at this school. Beginning to dread all the mistakes I know I will make and will have to make in order to learn anything. But I came here to make mistakes and learn French language and French culture. I came here to expand my thinking and attain a cultural awareness that few people my age have. Mistakes and embarrassment, I think, bring them on.

Later on that week, our group of Americans has still not settled in with the other students and few of them seem to be trying. They seem perfectly content to go on living as if they were at some summer camp but I wanted more. I wanted to connect with the other students. Most of the group does not understand that the international students at the school whether they are from Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Columbia, Brazil, or even Canada, do not want to hang out with loud Americans eight to ten years younger than them. I separate myself from the Americans and spend time with the now outgoing Columbian girl, Adrianna, staying at my host house. On my first Thursday there, only four days after I have started school, my Columbian host sister asks if I want to go to a club that night with the rest of her friends, the ones mostly from Spanish speaking countries. I think about it long and hard. There are a few objections I have one being that it is a Thursday night. Hey, I am on summer vacation, I practically yell in my mind. The second reason was that all of her friends speak Spanish to one another. Adrianna always speaks to me in French but her friends are a different matter. In the end, I comply because you only get a few chances in life to go to a discothèque/club in a foreign country with twenty year olds that come from so many different countries. Adrianna tells me we are meeting at the tiny courtyard outside of the school at 20 o’clock that night and all I can think about is trying to make sure that 20 o’clock is actually what I think it is. Yes, they seem to all know and use the 24-hour clock everywhere except in the U.S.

My stomach growls as I wait for our dinnertime. It seems that eating past nine o’clock at night is perfectly reasonable for everyone but me. It is miserable. Tonight however, I decide that it would be better to eat out since I am meeting my friends early.

“I am going to eat with my friends tonight because we are going to a discothèque.” I explain, to my host mother, in much faster French than I used to be able to speak.

She stops pulling weeds from her garden. The perfect little rows of lettuce seem to droop as these words come out of my mouth. She slowly lifts her body up from the slumped over position as if she has magically aged ten years. Looks at me. Continues to look at me. Squint her eyes a little.

“Ok but wouldn’t you like to eat some of my quiche first. That way you don’t have to spend money?” However what she is really saying is, Why don’t you like my cooking? I feel awful because I see I have knocked the wind out of her pride. I go on explaining for what seems like an hour until her face perks up a little and she says,

“Well the left over crèpes from tonight will have to be eaten anyway so you can have that tomorrow.”

I step into my sandals and fly out of the little black iron gate and down to the school. I am late.

“Hey, there’s the lovely one.” Exclaims Rafael, winking at me with his dark Spanish eyes. There is something creepy about his body language but at the same time it is…well, oh so European.

The taxis are waiting and I get in noticing how ungraceful I seem compared to all of Adrianna’s Latina girlfriends. Sometimes I would wonder why I had to be American. Why I was born in a culture with no culture. Why I could not dance or sing. Why my mother had never taught me a famous family recipe taught from daughter to daughter from generation to generation like so many of the girls had been taught around me. Why I could not speak three different languages fluently already like everyone else that wasn’t American.

Marco, a very wealthy Panamanian, gladly paid for all of our cabs as long as the sleek and slender Tenzen from Thailand remained on his arm. I walk over to my American friends, which all pitched in for their own cab after hearing that their might be some excitement in this place after all. For a minute, we all admire the shack like warehouse where the discothèque is located.

“Wow, look at the bouncer. If he had to pick me up, I think he would collapse.” Shouts Hillary, a 120-pound track star from Maine.

The “bouncer” is about five foot five. He is a French man with brown straight hair, trousers with his shirt tucked in and sandals. He stands with his arms crossed, attempting to puff out his chest as he sees the large group approach. The Americans continue laughing as we walk past him but the other students glare back at us. Unfortunately, the rude yet humorous conduct that is so popular in the United States is just not humorous in France.

All is forgotten as soon as we step into the club. The dark atmosphere but flashing lights and catchy music sends us all into a trance. The dancing begins and I am lost from worrying whether I fit in or whether I act properly. Hands grab around my waist and I turn to see Rafael. We lock eyes, forget cultures and language and just dance. The only difference is that he can actually dance where as I can’t but that’s just a little glitch. The lights turn to blue and nothing seems to be wrong until the music dies and the D.J. takes a brake. We get our bearings back and head to the bar only to begin to notice the crowd. I look at Rafael for a moment to see if he sees the same phenomena that I do. He seems to be a little inquisitive and just then Margaret, a fellow American yells into my ear.

“Katrina, we are definitely here the wrong night. It has to be homosexual night.”

That was one of the funniest things I had ever heard. Here we are, a bunch of foreign student attempting to join the party scene of the small towns of the Loire Valley, France and find our selves here at the only night of the week that is devoted to gay men. Don’t get me wrong, it did not bug me but the irony of actually fulfilling the stereotype of being the idiot tourist was hilarious. Practically, the whole group makes eye contact and we all burst into laughter. Despite the situation, we all dance on into the night, sharing the same experience through very different eyes. Our backgrounds did not matter; we simply made the best of our situation.

I sit for my last meal with my French family. I look around at the table and feel somehow relieved that I will be leaving tomorrow. Even though I have come to better understand and feel at home in France, I am looking forward to feeling comfortable in my own home, in my own country.

My host mother puts down a large platter of barbequed chicken in front of us and it makes me smile. For some reason, she cooks a more American meal for my last meal here. I find it ironic and delicious at the same time. As we begin to eat, Adrianna and I begin to discuss some of our favorite foods in France and how much we will miss them.

“What I really love, the best is the yogurt here,” Adrianna exuberantly explains. She loves to make full gestures with her arms and expressions with her eyes to match.

“I know. I love it too. Even though Dannon is an American brand, it is different here. It has more flavor and is richer.” I say without even contemplating that maybe not everything comes from America. Over the few weeks that I have spent in France, I have seen American culture everywhere; it is in their music, clothes, movies, and food. I found it so odd when my host mother did the cleaning listening and singing along to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lincoln Park, and PINK. When my Columbian host sister wore Baby Phat and a boy from Germany who did not speak English wore a shirt saying “Fit To Be A Gangster” on it. When my host father’s favorite food was a hamburger. But, apparently I had misjudged just how American the world was in this case.

“Uhh, no.” My Columbian host sister says. “Dannon is a Columbian company.”

We all look at one another and laugh. We all have different perspectives from different cultures and this is our commonality. We all share the same point of view about our respective cultures, that they are somewhat superior to the others.

I learned numerous things while I was in France but one of the biggest things I learned is what it means to be American. It is not that we are different from other cultures because we have freedom and democracy. It is not that we are “pigs” and have no culture. It is that, like every other person breathing on this planet, we share the drive for survival. That we are essentially the same and even though we may have more freedom than other countries, we are not excluded from their grievances. That even though we may be called pigs it is only because although we may not have a mono-cultural society, we have absorbed hundreds of other cultures. In that way, we are greedy. However, I see in my face what I see in every face, a drive to be human and live.