It has been exactly a week since I have been in Tours, and I have seen 3 hours of sunshine, ate 7 whole baguettes, and more cheese than in all my life added together. They say I have experienced France in the most authentic way so far. Yet while not feeling like a tourist, I’m not feeling completely in my element either. The fully immersed experience is also a scary and difficult one. From the moment I arrived at the train station, I was a fish out of water, reading the foreign signs, tripping over my tongue trying to speak French, and looking for my host family in the grand train station. Estranged in an unfamiliar city by yourself, even just for a few minutes, leaves a bitter taste and a hollow feeling in your stomach long after finding your place. The first few days in my host family was also tough. Like a kid, I observed and imitated each daily activity; assembling the different silverware for a five-course dinner, cutting the cheese and baguette, and strangely, wearing formal attire at dinner tables, even if only family members are dining together. Navigating Tours to get to class is easy enough. There is a long pedestrian street with a distinct tram track down the middle that cuts straight down the village, and whereas the Intitut de Tourrain is on the south of the street to the west, my home was north of the street and two Rues eastward. I could easily walk for 20 minutes to get to the Institut or take the tram. Finally, the courses at the Institut is intensive indeed, with classes from 9 am to 12:30 pm, writing and oral workshops in the afternoon from 1:30 pm to 3 pm, and then extracurriculars until 5pm. I’m taking gastronomy and art history, all taught in French and aims to strengthen one’s writing and presenting skills. There are students from all around the world in my class of nine students– Japan, India, Paraguay, Korea, China, The United States, and England. Only one other student apart from myself is from the United States. Even though we fly through grammar concepts and readings, we always pause when there is a question. Thus, when come a situation when the professor needs to explain or demonstrate a concept, s/he would use simple french and gestures instead of English. At noon, classmates often head to local restaurants or the Institut’s cafeteria in groups, and small chatter in french can be heard all over the place. The restaurants in Town center are simply amazing; situated in the historic part of town, these restaurants serve all kinds of cuisine with student-affordable prices. The Chocolatiers and Patisseries boast their historic heritage and proudly display their products in their polished windows under the ebony frames. The city center is also quite lively on weekends; known for its huge population of students, the heart of Tours hosts happy hours from early afternoon to well past midnight, where under the string lights and evening stars all kinds of languages can be heard.

Week 3 at the Institut de Touraine has finally brought everyone back into a more normal schedule; I was actually surprised this past Monday when I got there and there was a giant crowd of new students waiting to be assigned classes. After one particularly weird day when classes started at two in the afternoon, I’m back to their normal four-week progression of the course until I leave. I liked my professor last week better than my professors this week, I think, but time will tell. We started class on Monday with an unusual icebreaker—we each had to pick an object that meant a lot to us and then introduce ourselves as the object. Definitely a good exercise in French and helped me get to know my classmates better than the classic “Notre Dame Introduction” (name, major, hometown) would.

Surprisingly, I think the hardest thing about speaking French here is trying to get my fellow American students to practice it with me. They’ll often switch to English when there aren’t any non-English-speakers around. Fortunately I have a friend from Notre Dame here now who’s just as eager to practice her French as I am, and one of my new friends from my classes is getting comfortable enough with the language that he’s starting to use it in everyday conversations with me. I also occasionally have to act as an interpreter for another student who’s just arrived to stay with my host mom, if he doesn’t understand a French word she’s trying to use or she doesn’t understand an English word he’s trying to use. Considering that’s the type of career I’m looking at, I admit I get a little thrill whenever that happens.

It’s been a pretty quiet week. I couldn’t keep reading Les Misérables because someone checked it out, but I’m hoping I can read at least a little more in the upcoming weeks. I’ve been wanting to read that for so long. This upcoming weekend I’m going to see the actual Notre Dame in Paris! I’m really excited. Stay posted, I’ll probably talk about it a lot next week.

And so concludes the most memorable week of my life! Each day this week I tried at least one new food, met a person from a different country and learned new French vocabulary. I found myself lost multiple times and was accidentally tear-gassed by the French police. I attended mass in a cathedral built in the 300s and a wine festival featuring more wines than I thought was possible. As a result, it feels much longer than one week ago that I landed in Paris after an 8-hour flight from Washington, D.C and boarded the train for Tours.

It seems to silly to me now how nervous I was as the train pulled up to the Tours train station, unsure of what the next six weeks would hold. While the first few days were definitely the hardest, every day has been an improvement and I already am noticing a vast improvement in my ability to understand and hold conversations in French. The second I saw my host parents, holding a home-made sign with my name, waving and smiling at me, I knew I had nothing to be worried about. They are a wonderful and kind couple that has hosted students for over twenty-five years!

That being said, my first couple days in Tours were definitely the hardest. While my host mom accompanied to school the first day on the tram, I decided for some reason to try the bus the next day. I assumed the bus and the tram would let off at the same location near my school, which I soon realized was not the case as I looked out the window and saw the Loire river below me as the bus left downtown Tours for the suburbs. As a result, I was 45 minutes late to the first official day of school. The bus mishap was only the first of many times I got lost. In addition I struggled conversing in French outside the comfort zone of my school and host family. A puzzled look coupled with the phrase “je ne vous comprends pas” was a common response I received the first couple days.

While initially I was frustrated by continually being lost and misunderstood, it was those processes that were actually the most rewarding. In being lost I stumbled across some of Tours’ best shops and in being misunderstood I gained a better understanding of French language. For example here is a word I will never forget: manifestation (protest).

During an extra long répose (break) last week I decided to return home in between classes on the tram, and on my return trip, the tram abruptly stopped in the center of town. When I asked the driver why the tram stopped, he pointed forward and said “manifestation” and then opened the tram doors and said “sortir.” Ignoring the first word because I did not know its meaning, I followed his directors to “sortir” (exit) the tram and began to walk to school, which happened to be in the same direction he pointed when he said manifestation. Suddenly I heard chanting in French as I was encircled by swarms of people holding signs and looking very angry all around me. Then I saw rows of armed guards slowly marching towards us and before I was able to get myself away from the protestors a huge cloud of white smoke engulfed us. Suddenly my eyes began to sting and everyone around me grabbed parts of their clothes to cover their faces. I soon realized the police were dispersing tear gas to break up the “manifestation.” I covered my face with my sweater and ran away from the gas as fast as I could. I was late for school but I when I explained to my teacher why, he seemed very happy I had this “first hand experience of the French revolutionary spirit!” He explained to me the definition of manifestation and how the French view the right of protest an integral part of their history. The manifestation I witnessed however was unusual in that its part of a larger movement against the new labor law implemented by the French government. Protests are occurring across the entire country of France in fact and many workers are on strike.

In addition I am learning the importance of phonetics to the French language. Often French words differ by the slightest phonetic change in a syllable. Outside of the classroom, I am not understood if I don’t pronounce the phonetics exactly. This happened when I tried to buy a watermelon (pastèque) but the seller thought I was calling his fruit plastic (plastique), and when someone asked me how my first cours (course) of school was and I began to explain the route I jog each morning because I thought they asked about running (courir) – (these were some of those puzzled looks and “je ne vous comprends pas” instances).

I lucked out though because my first week at school was a special week focused on oral skills and so by the end of the week already noticed a vast improvement in my ability to hold to a conversation!

I am also expanding my food palate. As my family and friends know well, I have never been an adventurous eater. My usual diet rarely detours from vegetables, chicken and fish. Yet in the past week, meats I have never had before in my life appeared on my plate each night. Much to my surprise, and I think more to the surprise of my family and friends, I found myself liking almost every meal. Of course it doesn’t hurt that my host mom comes from three generations of professional chefs and worked in a restaurant for twenty years herself!

One of the aspects I love most about my time in Tours so far has been my interaction with other cultures in my home and at school. At school the first week I was one of two Americans in my class. One activity in particular I enjoyed was finding advertisements from our respective countries and explaining them to the class. I chose to cover Superbowl advertisements, and people were shocked to learn that commercials could be so expensive and so many celebrates appeared in them.

While I was alone the first three nights in my house, I now have three housemates who are also students at L’Institut de Touraine. On my floor is a very sweet woman from Japan studying the French language and wine to improve her skills as a wine consultant in Japan. One the floor above me lives a boy my age from Ireland and a girl from the United States. We eat dinner together every night at 8 pm and talk only in French – the common language amongst us. Often the conversation turns into a comparison of cultures that goes well over one hour. The inevitable mix of culture, gastronomy and socializing of the meal has made dinner one of my favorite parts of Tours.

I love exploring Tours and all of its treasures, meeting new people and learning French. I cannot wait to begin my month long course on Monday and start excursions to other parts of France this week. À bientôt!

My second week at the Institut de Touraine was great. Like I mentioned, this week is technically a vacation because there’s a national standardized test going on, but there were smaller oral courses for students who wanted to keep taking classes this week. My class this week was bigger and full of people who were more willing to make an effort than everyone in my class last week, so I feel like I learned a lot more. The class was almost like a conversation—we would have a new topic every few days with worksheets and activities to do, but most of the time we got very off track and just started discussing and debating various things.

This, of course, is exactly what I need to improve my French, since if I couldn’t articulate something I was actually unable to cheat and switch to English—my teacher couldn’t speak it at all. I’d simply have to find a better way to express myself. I had to do this with all kinds of topics, from describing popular stereotypes of various nationalities to defending my opinion on a controversial issue. Having to do this day after day made me sort of gradually forget I was doing it in a foreign language and just focus on the topic itself, which greatly helped. I think my proudest moment was when two people in my class were trying to argue against a certain article but confusing the rest of us, until I pointed out that they were arguing for the same point as the writer but taking her metaphor too literally.

We also had to do these phonetic labs where we’d usually be given an absolutely Herculean task like imitating a recording’s voice inflections down to the last syllable, fail at it for obvious reasons, then listen to the playback of our own voices and realize that despite our mistakes we sounded like native French-speakers with a completely French accent. It was really frustrating but interesting in a way.

This week I also explored Tours a little more. I visited the Musée des Beaux Arts; I’m not a huge fan of art museums, but I really loved all the art there inspired by Greek mythology. There was a ton of it—paintings and statues of so many different stories. I also visited the public library a few times and started reading Les Misérables in French. And last night I went to a concert where a bunch of different choirs from around Europe sang to compete for our votes. It was really beautiful, and I got to hear some other languages too. It’s been a pretty good week, and I’m excited to see what next week has in store.

I arrived in Paris on Sunday morning and somehow managed to get to the Tours train station without missing either of the trains, considering how jet-lagged I was. I had some minor technology disasters in that my phone company neglected to tell me my cell wouldn’t work at all abroad, so I’m extremely glad that the language barrier turned out not to be too much of a problem in the first few hours. I knew there were plenty of English-speakers at the airport, but I managed to find my way around by asking for directions only in French! Personal goal fulfilled. All those exercises where we had to pretend to order food from each other in French class finally paid off. And so did those horrible, ridiculously fast listening exercises, since that was pretty much how the announcements sounded on the train.

I’m staying with a host family. My host mom’s name is France (which one could choose to view in a metaphorical way) and she takes in a lot of travelers trying to improve their French. There’s a Brazilian woman who barely even speaks a word of French, a guy I haven’t really interacted with much yet (besides some awkward clashes over using the bathroom first in the morning), and my host mom’s kids. I interact the most with my host mom, carrying on most of the conversation when she and the Brazilian woman and I have dinner together. She lent me a bike so I can get around Tours a little faster, so I feel like a real French person when I ride it to school.

I’m liking the Institut de Touraine so far, although I think they may have put me in a class that’s a little too easy. The language experience I want to gain is in articulating myself more clearly in arguments, discussions, etc., and so far I’ve barely gotten a chance to do that between reviews of grammar I already know. I’m planning on requesting to move up next week—although next week is going to be a little weird, because it’s technically a “vacation.” This week has been a little weird too, since I arrived during the last week of a class cycle and since because of various absences I’ve had a different teacher almost every day. Next week there should be some other students who are on a stranger schedule like me who will be taking some oral classes, and I’m hoping things will settle into place after that.