August 2017 – Page 3 – SLA Profiles (2017)

A french perspective of the rest of the world, (honestly, just America)!

As I write my last blog post, I have a befitting topic to explore, thanks to my host mom’s fiery debates at the dinner table. I have learned significantly a lot about the French perspective for the rest of the world (honestly, it is mostly America). The president of the United States, Donal Trump did not help by suddenly withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement. I had to wake up one day and be greeted with this story in the headlines. I am not American, but being a student in America, I empathized with the citizens of America on how they felt about the president’s decision. My host mother, in her usual critiquing voice, said: “Americans do not like progress.” I know this was not true, but I wondered why the comment would not have shocked her at all. I could not come up with an answer. However, I paid a closer attention to the French’s portray of the world, and in my opinion, this is how it works…

The french society celebrates their heroes, meaning that they celebrate their french identity more systematically and consistently than other countries. A case in point is the french astronaut who returned back to earth after a 196-day long mission in outer space. His name is Thomas Pesquet and he was on every news channel, radio station, a game show for about a week. The french’s local election session also showed me that the country believes in the strength of a face-to-face interaction, seen by how politicians were zooming the streets and talking to everyone they could. The election process was fairly covered in the media, with no name shaming and the likes you would see on the American political scene. I will leave this there.

France has been a beautiful home for me, and now as I am about to leave, I am not leaving the French exposure, lessons, relations I have been able to forge. I am certain that I will be back to this country sometime soon.

Do I want to leave?

I am now one-leg in two the final chapter of my French visit. A physical and mental exhaustion is kicking in now. There are times I feel that I need a break from the confinements of being French tongue-tied. The weather has been dominantly warm over the last couple of weeks since my arrival. Yet, there was this one night when I slept on top of my white sheets, window fully flung open and the fan buzzing the propellors at the max, a cold front seized upon us and I caught a cold by the next morning. My host mom did not have any cold medicine, she advised me to look for a pharmacy in town on my way to school. Unlike back home where pharmacies sell groceries and Grocers sell basic medication, in my city, there was no such fluidity. The pharmacies were not only hard to locate, they were also closed when I got there. This is when the lesson I had had on “French business affairs” kicked in; the business hours in France, particularly in my city, differ from those in the US. I was growing to be impatient because my cold seemed to be having the better part of me with time. I need some medicine, I needed some familiarity. I think I paved way for all the nostalgia I had been keeping away to come into my heart. I desperately missed my family and friends. I knew this moment would come, sooner or later. When it did, that prior expectation of its coming did not make the feelings less direct.

I was becoming overwhelmed with the cultural shock of Tours.

Me (left), My mère d’accueil (a.k.a host mom) and other hosted student

Luckily, I think my host mom sensed that I needed to be saved from sinking in the boat of nostalgia and she kicked n with her sweet gestures to remind me of why I need to keep my head up and enjoy France. She told about the other students she had hosted for the longest time had gone through similar phases. She continues to wave for me when I left the morning for school, she would routinely ask me about my day at school. She told me about her vacations to Japan and how she yearns to travel more but her age makes it hard for her to go through a lengthy plane right. I feel much better now because I found a pharmacy that had the right medicine, eventually. I explained to the pharmacist in French about my condition and was impressed my with my fluency, although it was clear I was not a French native.

At this stage of my trip, I have mixed feeling about departing France in just over a week’s time. I will miss my host mom, her dog Chippie, the dinners watching popular local game shows on TF1 and my calming jogs at nights around the community park. But I will not enjoy missing the train from school and having to walk home for 2 hours!

Post- China Reflections

After spending approximately 2 months in China, my global perspective transformed dramatically. Being able to navigate different cultural landscapes and understand a drastically different culture is my biggest takeaway from this program.

My biggest difficulty in China was understanding the notorious “er er” intonation from Beijing locals. Most people who don’t take Chinese don’t know that there are many different accents and dialects, not unlike English. For example, “where” in Mandarin can be pronounced ” na li” or “na er.” Based on the intonation and context, you are supposed to understand the other person. In Beijing, people use the “er” sound for many words. In a classroom setting, unless your teacher is from the Beijing area, they won’t use this pronunciation, so it can be very hard for foreigners to get used to it. After 2 months in China, I have finally overcome this difficulty, and can casually speak to Beijing locals. I have definitely met my goals during this program.

As a result of this experience, I have gained insight as to how Chinese people spend their daily lives, what they eat, but most importantly, how they think. In the future, I want to work closely with Chinese companies, so I need to know important cultural nuances. For example, gifting a Chinese person a clock is a huge cultural taboo. Knowing little things like that will definitely give me an advantage in a competitive business atmosphere. My advice for someone who was considering applying for an SLA Grant or preparing to start their own summer language study is to try as hard as possible to learn things that could help for your future job, not just fun trivia knowledge; it could prove invaluable in the future.

I guess the ultimate question is, where do I go from here? Well, I believe that as long as I keep studying Mandarin, using WeChat to communicate with my new Chinese friends, and continue practicing with my classmates, I will maintain my oral fluency. In the future, I plan on going to law school, and then eventually, pursuing a career in corporate law. Where does Chinese fit in this, you might ask? I would like to help build bridges between American companies and Chinese companies through law and business. This is why I am double majoring in Finance and Chinese right now. My experience this summer allowed me to learn cultural nuances that will undoubtedly help me in my future endeavors.

The end :(

I can’t believe it – it is already the last week of my stay in Alicante! In so many ways, I feel as if I just arrived. When I told my host family that my flight leaves Saturday morning, in just six days, they were visibly shocked—my mamá thought I had another week! With this realization, we have come up with a list of things we have not gotten around to doing: on Wednesday, I am teaching them how to make chocolate chip cookies; on Thursday, we are playing our last tennis match; on Friday, we are going to their favorite restaurant. My host mother also lamented that she hasn’t made me her special brownies, or taken me to hike up a nearby mountain they love, so we decided that I have to return and then we can complete these tasks too.

The end is approaching quickly, and I have so many mixed feelings about my departure. In many ways, I miss my life in the United States; I, of course, miss my family and friends, and could not be more thrilled to see them, but I miss some little things too, things I hadn’t appreciated at home before living in Spain, like free water, air conditioning, and big cups of coffee! On the other hand, there are so many people and places here that have made my experience so great, and that I cannot imagine saying ¡adios! to already. Obviously, at the top of this list is my host family. They have been so generous, kind, and simply fun. I will miss my mamá’s sweet smile every time she checked on me, my papá’s endless dad jokes, the little sister I never had asking me for advice, and playing tennis with my brother. I hope this will not be goodbye forever, because I have truly grown to appreciate and love this wonderful family as my own.

I will miss the city itself, too—its sandy beaches, its history, its energy. Not a day has gone by that I haven’t admired my surroundings on my morning walk to the tram with a deep sense of awe and gratitude.

Finally, I will miss the language. Though I knew I had a passion for Spanish before arriving, I was embarrassed by my lack of skills; I was struggling to keep up, and hesitant to talk. Now, after so much practice and rapid advancement throughout the past several weeks, I absolutely love listening and speaking this beautiful, challenging, exciting language. I am no longer scared to contribute or make a mistake. On the contrary, I will gladly make mistakes if it means I will be corrected and improve further. While, of course, I will continue taking demanding Spanish classes at Notre Dame, that setting can never compare to being completely immersed in the language. I am already exploring my options for more Spanish language development next summer. 🙂

Chateaux and more chateaux……Paradise?

I am almost hitting the halfway mark of my study abroad season. At home, I look forward to coming back to my host mom, hearty and mouth-watering three-course meal. At school, I have exhausted the “new guy” jacket, now I am growing a comfort of certainty of how my days are going. Little did I know that things were about to change, to get a fresh injection of foreignness when I visited two of the Chateaux closest to my city, “Château de Villandry et Château de Langeais”. The picturesque scenery stimulated my sense of appreciation in a way I’m sure will only come one or two more times in my lifetime. I was impressed by the well cultivated green fields in rectangular and square-like maze structures. When I shared with a few of my family back home, their responses totally agree with mine; the pictures look like pictures from the movies we watch on tv back home, knowing very well that they are from a far away land that we are more likely never to see with our own two eyes. I had a to squeeze in a “selfie” with a castle in the background because I anticipated without hard evidence that I took the photo, so many people were not going to buy the idea that I indeed visit these places, that I did not download them off the internet.

I loved to learn that these used to be residences of rich families in the past, and that tradition is in a way being preserved with these castles being bought by high-profile people. Previously, I was under the impression that something from the medieval era would lose value as time went on. It turns out, at least for architecture, the opposite is quite true. The worth of these chateaux will exponentially increase as we move into the future. I was impressed by the unique vineyards, green tennis courts and yards, the gray and red brick of the walls, the colorful flowers in the gardens. The sunny weather of the day appeared to want us to have the best view possible of these great castles.

Merci France!

A taste of the French Schooling Experience

I would like to take a moment to write about the marrow of my trip – studying in France.

My school has antique buildings that were built in the 1840s. Some are even older, and what truly fascinates me the most are the window styles; I do not have a special interest in architecture at all, but there is something gorgeous about these windows that inspires me. They are beautiful and well curved out. When I am having my brief breaks between my classes, I make sure I glance at the windows to remind me of the beauty of my school. But what happens when I am not looking at the windows when I am actually in class?

There is newness that greets me each time I sit in my french classes. There are a few features that are obviously contributing to this feeling. For instance, I have never had back-to-back French classes running from 9 am till about 4.30 pm daily and I did not know the other 15 students who were assigned to this particular class. These are new experiences, but they are not necessarily “French” in any way. What hit me as authentically an ingrained feature of the French education system is the general difficulty of the content, so much so that it is considered an impressive score to miss anything above half of the total points. I could tell from the reactions of the other American students in the class that I was not the only one who felt the foreignness of this new adjustment to the grading standards. From this experience, lelearnedthat there is a lot of diversity in the world, even when it comes to certain shared experiences like education.

I have two instructors, both of them are female and they compliment each other on a lot of traits. One of them is the older, I guess in her late forties; she is always smiling and very patient. She tells us a lot about France and the French culture through the lenses of her experiences and those of her family. When the class was taken aback by the low scores after our first oral exam, about 4 out of 8 on average she talked about how her son would be very happy with that performance if it was in his French Baccalaureate syllabus.The other teacher – the younger one in her early thirties, has a youthful vibe she demonstrates when giving edgy examples and illustrations in class. She loves to travel, she has told us, and one ting that has struck me the most about her is that she will ask about our own stories, listen with a golden ear. My french improves when I get the chance to talk about myself; however, there is also a something transformational about this personal exercise. It makes me own my identity and reflect on them a little more.

School in France is different from school in the United States. Here students study on the train ride to school, there is a lot of celebrated renowned figures included in the chapters of our coursework. For the first time, I learnt about Yannick Noah and how he was maximized his “most favorite person” status in France to achieve success that transcends the tennis court. He began singing reggae and set up a flourishing foundation. I have asked myself why I handout heard of Yannick or his work before. Part of the answer, I think, is that the Anglophone and Francophone worlds are divided, and without curiosity to look into the other, tremendous learning opportunities are lost.

Oh, I must mention, I was chosen to be my class captain, responsible for representing the students’s needs/complaints to the school’ administration.

Integrating into the French day-to-day

At my school, Institut de Touraine, I am one of the few students who reside far away from campus, so much so that I have to get a month’s Student Pass with FilBleu for commuting every day on the city’s tram network. The curvy-edged, metallic-silver machine that slid smoothly across the city’s green lawns is one of the reasons I am having no problems with staying far from school! I am impressed with the technology that has been invested in this vehicle; the automated door system, the precise time of arrival of each scheduled train and the barricaded yet transparent driver area with cockpit-like equipment. If anything, this is a sign of how advanced the French public system is. As an ambitious young pan-African scholar, experiencing such exemplary standards for the greater good of the public is truly an eye-opener and an inspiring testimony I hope to contribute in bringing to my own continent. I could not resist the edge to pull out my phone and record a ride’s length of video footage for my own archives. For those who will wonder why I was impressed with the train system in my host city beyond expected levels, my response is that the train is a microcosm reflection of the sustained, broad-based development that European powerhouses like France have enjoyed for long, the Middle-east and Asian Tigers have started to start and the African and South Americans can only dream for at present. I am reminded of my duty to learn of this trip as much as my brain can take to begin gathering the pieces for the surmountable task I have ahead to contribute to the betterment of Africa. However, my image of France has not been all glittering gold….

In my first blog, I mentioned my experience with the London security officer in light of the wave of terrorist threats that is spreading in Europe. While I am equally condemning the behavior of the culprits and praising of the nations’ security protocol, it is quite saddening to know that the terror situation in Europe stirs a lot of media and global attention when worse cases of a similar nature plaguing Africa and other parts of the developing world do not generate anything close. A good befitting example is the recent suicide bombings in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a l that killed 49 people and injured 78 more; I do not see a lot of people around me talking about that. The detrimental effect, I fear, is that it will let some evil go unnoticed, resulting in a global imbalance of accountability and the fading of windows to address the root causes of these shared challenges. What makes this realization forceful on this trip is that it is helping me to see the rich diversity of the French community. I have seen how the diversity of this country is one of its most beautiful traits about it, and my confidence is boosted seeing the love that the people from all walks of life have for the human quest for happiness. I am impressed by the young Tunisian and Lebanese gentlemen at the WazWox restaurant and local kabab respectively who have exchanged with me their life stories. I am surprised with how they are well educated in technical fields yet work in the fast-food industry; a faint indication of the few job opportunities in the country and a vivid shared human experience that, like many other people, their life is not `always predictable. Personally, the striking conversations I have had so far with strangers like these men is how I can judge how my French is improving. There has been an incident when a local commented how good my french is, even my accent! The feeling of bliss on my face was clearly obvious at this unsolicited compliment.

So here I sign off this blog from the land of millions of cigarets stubs on the pavements, of late evening nights that are more pulsating than their preceding ones, of reggae-inspired happiness and the stylish norm of men who carry stringed purses across their shoulders.

The tale of two Mysteries: France and the French Impact

When I pushed my green-cover passport across the glass counter of the immigration officer at London St. Pancras International Station, I was panting heavily with sweat soaking the back of my shirt and trickling down my legs. I had two balloon suitcases flanking me and a gigantic black acoustic guitar dragging along behind me. A week prior when I left Notre Dame, no one would have guessed that the security protocols at London St. Pancras International Station would double, if not tripled, due to the raised level of terrorist threats from “severe” to “critical” by the British Prime Minister. Now here I was departing for Paris’ Montparnasse station from London; it was only four days since the security protocol had been instigated. When the immigration officer took an unusual interest in the details of my trip, asking me to provide some proof of my accommodation and return ticket, in addition to the study visa, it hit me hard that I was not the usual visitor France receives on an average basis. I hold a passport from a small southern African country with a struggling economy and no historical or linguistic ties to France. I could see in the eyes of the immigration officer as he serves me that, he desperately wanted to ask me this question if he could: “What on earth was my business in France?”

This was a familiar question I had asked myself at the initial stages of applying for the SLA grant. However, there is something about the awe of that moment I was about to enter France via train that made me tremble at this question. My train ride was too short to allow me to reach a satisfying conclusion to the question. It is a question that still bothers me today, and I am not any closer to an adequate answer. It is looking like so far on my trip I am coming up with more questions than answers… Who is a French citizen, in reality? How has the society been shaped? How different is it from the ones I have been exposed to? When I go back to the initial goals I set before my departure, I realize that I was gettingabundant opportunities to learn the lessons I sought out to get.

As a first-time visitor in a beautiful country rich with life that is more foreign than similar to my own, I was more observant than usually as soon as my feet touched the French soil. One of the first impressions I registered was the racial (and when possible, national) representation in the spaces I was entering. It was interesting to pick that I had seen most people of African origin at the train stations in Paris and Tours, my ultimate destination. There were more descendants of Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Niger in Paris at Gare de Montparnasse, and the numbers began to dwindle as I moved away into my host community. Additionally, I noticed that there were a significant number of people of Arabic origin, and when I had the chance to spark a conversation with some of them, I learned that they came from countries like Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria. As minor of a detail this may be to someone else, it was essential to me because I was witnessing firsthand the continuing effects of the colonial residue of the French’s occupation of most of West and North Africa. There is something irreplaceable about the mesh of race and class I am experiencing on this trip, and as one of my goals is to understand better the French culture and the world it extends to beyond the country’ s borders, I feel I am on the right track!

For now, I will safely say my business in France is proving more fruitful than I had anticipated.

6-Alla prossima, Roma

Il Patria, Vittorio Emanuele in Piazza Venezia

The last week! I’ve had a wonderful time here in Italy. I can definitely say that I learned a plethora of grammatical rules and tenses in Rome with ItaliaIdea. I am so very grateful to the donors who were generous enough to give me this opportunity, and I will undoubtedly be back in Italy, if not Rome.

This past week, there was the national holiday Ferragosto on Tuesday. Ferragosto was originally a pagan holiday, but because Catholicism is the national religion of Italy, it has been transformed to celebrate the Assumption of Mary. That day, the whole of Rome seemed void of Italians. This is because most Italians leave the city to flock to the beaches and have lunch or dinner and party with their friends and family. Since I didn’t have class, however, Huda and I had an American breakfast at a bar called Meccanismo in Trastevere and then right after, we went to the Borghese Gardens. We got refreshments and sat in the park and talked, watching Italians and tourists alike pass the holiday out in nature.

View to Piazza del Popolo from the Pincio

Later that evening, we met one of Huda’s friends, Jurgita, at the Spanish steps. Coming from Lithuania, she had just finished an internship in Florence and was living in Rome. She had just returned to Rome from a vacation at home and it was her birthday, so we celebrated by getting gelato and then sitting on the spanish steps to talk.

Friday, my last day, I ended up having lunch with Huda before class and we went to this Sicilian bakery we knew near Via Arenula. Later that night, we had our last dinner tonight at a well-known restaurant, Nonna Betta, in the Jewish Quarter.

Last view into the building courtyard from my apartment

The English Language

The most surprising thing about Italy was the pervasiveness of the English language. In most restaurants, shops, and the streets of even small cities, the locals speak to tourists in English – some with excitement at the opportunity to practice, and others with grudging distain.

I discovered that as a result, perhaps, Italians are generally excited, impressed, and grateful when an American replies to them in Italian – no matter how poor the pronunciation or syntax.

Perhaps the pervasiveness of English is an aggregate good for commerce, the sharing of ideas, and the creation of a global culture – in which people across the world consume and appreciate the same literature, film, and other media – but sometimes it makes me feel like a downright imposition. The Italians and other Europeans I interacted and conversed with on a daily basis were forced to meet me more than half way when comprehension was lacking on either side.

Most obvious were the embarrassing encounters at stores where the busy clerk, upon seeing that I hadn’t comprehend his blur of Italian slang, laboriously and disdainfully spat: “vould you like a baaag?”

More poignant an example is what transpired when my Italian friend introduced me to his French friend from Erasmus, the European equivalent of study abroad. Eddy (Edoardo) speaks his regional dialect, Italian, passable French, and very good English. Yana speaks her native French, less Italian than I (and that is a meaningful distinction), and English. As a result, most of our conversations – excepting the moments in which Eddy tried to impress and flatter Yana with declarations in French – were in English.

As the native speaker in this scenario, I found myself explaining the idioms, pointing them in the right direction as they searched for the English words to express themselves, and occasionally giving a small grammar lesson. I felt their micro-frustrations when they struggled to get a point across in my vulgar tongue.

I learned that Americans are exceptionally privileged – even compared to the more international British – because their language is spoken globally, yet also sheltered and disconnected. I hope that next time I go to Italy the natives I converse with will only have to meet me a little more than half way linguistically.