“And you’ll be staying in the same bedroom, if that’s alright. My son is home for the week, so he has the second bedroom. Tonight for dinner, I’m making poulet à la moutarde. Do you like chicken?” Asked Nathalie, my host mother, except, of course, it was all in French.
“Yes, one bedroom is fine, thank you,” I responded in French, without thinking. “And that sounds wonderful, I love chicken.”
Nathalie had just finished introducing herself and explaining our set-up for the next four days as I stood in fear, overly anxious about my homestay, the next leg of our Intensive Learning trip.
My automatic French response produced a shock in my conscious mind that couldn’t keep up with the ease of my subconscious speech. I continued to gab in more-than-passable French as I slipped into a different world, one conducted in what was always a foreign language rather than my native English. For the next four evenings, I would return to this world each time I entered the home of my host parents, spending the night in their company as I spent each day with our Intensive Learning group, feebly trying to masquerade as French at every opportunity.
It was then, with Nathalie, where I was hit with a startling realization, one that continued to resound as our conversation carried on: there was no need to deliberately translate her French in my head — I understood her language as my own, no English mediation necessary.
Of course, I am not yet fluent, though I’d like to be. I’ve taken the French language in school for six years; I had my first real exposure to it at age four. I try my hardest to shed every trace of my American accent when I speak. My rudimentary conversational French is as good as my English, though my vocabulary begins to fall flat and my hesitation picks up as I enter more advanced conversation. It was through learning the language that I discovered my love for French culture, and furthermore, for language as a whole, two passions that will most definitely inform my future.
I understand more than I can speak and read more than I can write, but never before has my comprehension of the French language been tested as when I met my host mother, who, though she spoke more than a little English, remained in French with me, as if she could sense my desire to cross the divide between my linguistic world and hers.
She, while remaining in French, knew how to meet me halfway, or, if needed, switch to English to suit the needs of my homestay partner, a non-French speaker. Her husband, Christophe, did not. I learned this our first night. His grasp of the English language extended to the words “pass the bread” and “good night,” and I assured him each time he offered me an apologetic smile that it was alright and that I was glad to converse in French. His French was harder to understand; he spoke quickly, using idioms that I couldn’t always understand, let alone quickly enough to respond. But conversation with Christophe, with whom I discussed my future plans and politics and favorite places, is what stimulated me most.
What I remember the most, perhaps, is the fear that plagued me as I descended their very steep and slippery spiral staircase when they called us down for dinner that first night. Not only did I grip the railing to keep from falling, but I clung to it, knowing that, when I let go, I would have to face my host parents with no barrier between us. It was just me out there, walking the line of translation between Nathalie, Christophe, and my homestay partner, caught between these two worlds. But our dinners proved to be transformative. For hours, it would be the four of us around the dinner table, where we would first talk about our day, and, ultimately, that conversation would morph into something deeper, building a connection that seemed to transform our evenings into timeless intervals, unmatched in relaxed spirit and vitality, until our mother decided that we must go up to bed.
It was during these hours, where all that separated us was the water pitcher, that I felt the power of transcendence, of connection so different from all else that I had experienced, and a connection that I want nothing more than to relive.
More concretely, this transcendence was a feeling of belonging in a place so foreign from my own.
It was also, to honor the very point of Intensive Learning, the most intensive learning I’ve experienced. I was thrown into the lives of others, under the care of strangers. I had to adapt, assimilate, even, though it was only temporary. In order to glean the most from the experience, it was necessary to forge ahead through the terrible discomfort of fear. And by doing so, I felt changed, knowing that I could sustain a connection across cultures outside of the classroom — a very meaningful application of my learning, and one that every language learner should have the opportunity to exercise.
Nathalie, Christophe, my homestay partner Elina Shah ’24, and I enjoying our final dinner.
It is hard to put into words the gratitude I have for Nathalie and Christophe, for this trip; it is even harder to verbalize the profundity of its impact. I experienced a form of transcendence, sifting through the intricacies of man’s most important creation: language. Those nights, the ones spent in a world so fundamentally different — geographically and linguistically — from my own, provided an epiphany: to study and experience this transcendence will be intrinsic to my future.
