Lessons and Things

"She just said, 'How will you live?'"

I'd been out of the United States boundaries for a little over one hour when I began to speak with the person sitting beside me. She was about 5'6, pretty, olive skin, dark hair, topped off with a straw cowboy hat, university-aged to be sure. She looked like an all-American girl. Her name was Antoinette, I learned, and she was returning home to her native France after three months in Montana working as the American version of an au pair.

The child across the aisle on the United Airlines flight was starring at us strangely as I butchered French and Antoinette attempted to translate my Franglais into something with substance.

The five-year-old asked me again, "How will you live?" but it sounded more like "Comment tu vivras?" Antoinette waited for me to ask for help while the flight attendants fluttered about handing out safety packets in French and English and the pilot announced our ascension in two languages. Hovering above "The Land of the Free" for a few more hours before sailing over the ocean only to traverse across France, my first savory flavors of French conversation were underway.

Continuing on toward my new home, I attempted to translate the conversation the 5-year-old, called Marie, was having with Antoinette. She had realized my less than proficient skills, and therefore abandoned me. Yet, every few minutes she took pity, tapped me on the shoulder to ask questions regarding my final French destination.

I responded like her 3-year-old French little sister would have.

"I come from Chicago. I'm going to France. I am going to Pau. It is in the South."

She looked on with silent laughter, and then leaned over me to speak with Antoinette. I could understand her, just barely.

"Qu'est ce qui se passe?" or rather, "What just happened?"

The two giggled in what I deemed to be the way only French girls giggle, turned to me and continued feeble chitchat.

"Does your mom live in Pau?" Marie asked. I shook my head. Mortified she responded like any child would. Apparently worried about my future livelihood, she asked again, "How will you live?"

I had no answers. Five hours later and probably five French vocabulary words stronger, the plane landed in Paris.

Just like in all cities, neighborhoods are scattered throughout this couture glittered paradise, and similar to London, big name museums and monuments lie near the rushing river. I came to St. Michel, an area for straggling tourists searching for Notre-Dame, students on their way to the Latin Quarter, and Parisians. I was attempting to look like one of them, one of the French, but my small orange backpack pointed out student and when I opened my mouth, the words pointed out tourist.

Peaking over the small four story apartments directly next to the river stood the Victor Hugo-famed cathedral. I'd heard of it as a child in my catholic Sunday school lessons, as well as seen Disney's Quasimodo-induced "Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Just down a ways was Le Louvre followed by the Champs Elysées, le Musee d'Orsay and barely visible on a clear day was Paris' international namesake, The Eiffel Tower.

After nearly a week of site seeing in the city of romance, speaking almost entirely in Franglais, I had survived. I was completely full with the essentials, food and water.

But international cities aren't like small town anywhere. In New York, Rome, London, Tokyo, Madrid and Los Angeles, one can get away with not speaking the native tongue. It's too easy to pass through the large city gates of the international arena. In order to know any country more than a flighty tourist, it's essential to live outside of the box, even if you feel further away from the action.

This is what Marie meant by, "How will you live?" The moment I arrived in the quaint city of Pau in France, I noticed even the French people are different than those I found in Paris.

Sure, the streets were just as confusing, each called Rue Something French or Something Else in French, winding in circles, squares, triangles and sometimes, just straight lines out to nowhere, but the attitude simply feels wrong to a stranger.

"Depuis combien de tu es ici?"

"D'où est-ce que tu viens?"

"Comment s'appelle?"

These questions all seem unfamiliar, but they're nothing more than conversation starters: How long are you here? Where are you from? What's your name? And when that's all you've got to go on people take notice.

"Bonjour, je m'appelle Brigid. Je suis etudiante etranger. Je viens de Chicago."

I was running out of steam and fast! These were the only things I knew how to say with any clarity. When I said these things I knew what I was saying, all other times it was a guess, a shot into thing air. I knew my name, that I was a foreign student and that I had a home in the states.

"Bonjour Brigid. Je m'apppelle Florence, et je voudrais prendre votre baggage dans ma voiture."

I think she is my host mom, and she might have wanted my luggage.

Standing in the parking lot of the University of Pau's dormitory, I was meeting my host mother for the first time. It was sweltering outside; the palm trees were beginning to droop with the early September heat, while the sun perpetually beat down onto the tops of our heads.

I turned to wave goodbye to my companions, but no one waved back as they too were meeting their families for the first time.

Two weeks in, my conversation starters began to completely wear. I could just hear my host mother repeating to herself. ''Yes, I know you're name and that you come from Chicago.'' But I had no time to learn practical questions. I needed to finish my homework. We'd been learning the passive tense along with the conditional tense in class; so I my speech became limited to indefinite shoulds, woulds and coulds or things that I had done. Rarely did I venture into the future without my trusty 'going to go' phrase.

Sitting in my sunlit bedroom for most of the afternoon, Florence came in to pose a question.

"You would like to take our meal with us tonight? If it pleases you, of course."

Her short brown haired head popped through the cracked open door. I was granted eight meals with the family per month as part of my rent. But I had learned to conserve each meal and limited myself to around two each week.

"Oui. I would like. Yes. But, tomorrow, no for me. I would not like to eat tomorrow."

Florence's lean frame gained firmer entry into my room as she listened to my response.

"You will not eat tomorrow?"

"No, I will eat, but not here tomorrow."

"I don't understand why you will not eat."

We went on like this for another minute until I had to stop her. Consulting my dictionary, I said I'd talk to her in a few minutes. Or at least, that's what I'd meant to say.

Scaling down the spiral staircase into the kitchen I nearly bumped into her as she placed the warming plate onto the table next to the pâte and couscous. Sweat beads formed across my brow as I attempted what felt like the impossible.

"Je ne voudrais pas manger avec ta famille demain parce que je vais aller chez mon amie. Ça va?"

"Oui. Ca marche. Bon."

So this is what success felt like, I thought. No, I would not like to eat with your family tomorrow, because I am going to go to a friend's house.

She turned to stir the soup some more. I walked out of the kitchen glanced at the pealing lavender wallpaper and continued to walk up. In my head I repeated the words to make sure I said exactly what I meant. It was right according to my grammar book, dictionary, countless handouts and Rick Steves. But there was no applause at the end of my simple declaration. It was a victory only I could see.

"C'est normal," Florence said to me at dinner a few weeks later. "C'est normale que…ben…that you more learn now."

We had just finished a minor conversation about life goals and third world countries. We, meaning my host mother, host grandparents, host sister and my biological parents. They were visiting France for the premier time, and neither spoke a lick of the language.

''Bon, it's very normal that you like France,'' said my host grandfather to my dad. Jean-Claude, apparently Claudy to his friends, announced this in French. Larry Marshall did not comprehend.

Instead, he starred off in the direction of the cast iron stove and asked in crisp English if it was wood-burning.

''Désolée, Florence. Il ne parle pas Français,'' I explained to my host mother his lacking French oral skills. She winked at me, went over to the stove and began to place pieces of wood into the burner.

''Yes, Dad, it's wood-burning. They don't call it a Franklin Stove here either.''

My mother was on the other end of the table speaking Spanish to my host grandmother, Victoria. I vaguely heard something about my host little sister Lukia and the education age.

She turned to look down the table at my father and Claudy breaking down the differences between the United States social security system and France's Securité Sociale.

''Brigid, can you, well, how do you? I'm just, how do I say that the US system of government is actually well-thought out and George Bush gets a bad rap?''

The only thing that came to mind was, is my 55-year-old father really asking me to translate and defend the US government? I had no qualms with what he wanted to explain, but I had never been the one to drive a conversation involving two cultures, languages and generations forward.

''Sure, yeah, with pleasure,'' I said. Leaning closer to the two men I began my thorough and incomplete explanation, pausing to give each party a moment to understand.

Nearly forty-five minutes later, the appetizers had disappeared along with four bottles of the Southwest of France's finest Jurançon Sec white wine and some sort of Irish Whisky.

''Brigid used to be a little shhh,'' Florence said holding her pointer finger to her lips. ''But, I think she knows better now French.''

''Oui, oui, Florence, c'est vrais, yes it's true,'' I said. ''But, you said, tu as dit, 'c'etait normal.' It was normal.''

I translated for my parents Florence's next words. ''Oui, it is quite hard to be living with new people and not know what to say. You don't know them, and it can make you nervous, but it is good to practice with them.''

On the way back to Pau's Hotel Bristol my mother hummed along to the French music playing on the cab's radio, as my father attempted to re-explain France's social security system. I simply looked out the window and understood what the lyrics were to the music.