My sister and I disagree drastically on TV show preferences, but in an attempt to reconcile our tastes, we tried watching Emily in Paris together over the Christmas holidays. I hadn't yet been accepted to ISAE-Supaero, the aerospace engineering university I'm attending in France, but I was hoping that it was where I'd end up. Emily in Paris seemed like a great compromise for me and my sister - she liked comedies, and I liked the idea of learning about French culture before hopefully moving here.
Caroline and I binge-watched the whole first season. It was funny, watching Emily blunder about in France, and I felt that it portrayed the wonder and magic that living in Paris seems like it would be. (I don't live in Paris and haven't been there yet, so I'll have to get back to you on this.) But eventually, I told my sister we'd have to stop watching - seeing everyone react to Emily's faux pas as an American was making me anxious. Emily moves to Paris without speaking French, and I think it's this, more than anything else about her, that the people in her life at first take issue with.
Here's the thing: I also moved to France without speaking French. I tried to learn a little online, of course, but I didn't end up having as much time or success with self-study as I'd hoped. I didn't eat dinner my first night in Toulouse because I was too nervous to go to a restaurant and attempt to order takeout with my incredibly limited vocabulary. It's part of the adventure, of course, learning the language, the fear just part of the story. But still- you try speaking a language you don't know while jetlagged, culture-shocked, and running on four hours of sleep.
Here are a few of my interactions in French lately:
On Sunday some friends and I got ramen, and I wanted a takeout container for my leftovers. None of us really spoke much French, but between the four of us we cobbled together a sentence that I could say to the cashier. I went inside the restaurant and said, "bonjour, je voudrais emporter-" and then I froze, not remembering the other words, gesturing outside towards my half-finished bowl of food.
"You'd like a potato?" the girl at the cash register asked me in English, her brow furrowing. I flushed with embarrassment.
"Sorry, can I get a takeout box?" I asked.
She told me to bring my bowl inside and she could box it up for me. "You're trying really well," she told me, and, feeling entirely humiliated, I went back outside to collect my noodles. But of course I told the story - it was too funny not to. A potato?
Earlier this week I went to the post office to pick up a package. I'd ordered some secondhand yarn online on Vinted so I could start a knitting project. Setting out, I took the metro, feeling like I was off on an adventure - I wonder if there will ever be a day in my life where I don't feel a slight sense of amazement at the existence of public transit. There were two sides to the post office, so I tried the door closest to me. "Bonjour," I greeted the woman at the desk. I had googled the phrase in French and had practiced it in my head the entire way over, but now I bungled it, the new words butting up against a memory of the one time I used Dutch to retrieve a package in the Netherlands. "Je suis ici pour recuperer een packje." I had switched from the few French words I knew to the few Dutch words I knew without meaning it. "Un colis," I corrected myself ashamedly.
The woman said something I didn't quite understand and gestured to the other half of the building, so I surmised that I was in the wrong place. "Thank you," I said in English, hurrying out the door. Somehow in the span of two minutes I had unintentionally spoken three languages terribly.
I tried again in the other half of the post office, and this time, I was successful in picking up my package. Thank God all I had to do was ask for the package and show them my QR code and my ID. With my box of yarn in hand, I said "merci!" and headed back to the metro. The parcel bouncing against my side in my tote bag, I found myself grinning. It was something so mundane, this little interaction, and it wasn't without its faults or failures, but I was proud of myself. I had learned the words, I had done it alone, and I hadn't had to resort to Google Translate or to asking anyone to switch to English. That's not to say that I understood even most of what had been said to me - interacting in French feels a bit like being underwater and trying to make out a conversation - but I had done what I meant to do.
I have French class on Friday afternoons, a three-hour session for beginners where my teacher mostly speaks French and I try my very best to remember all the new words and sounds and grammar rules. I actually do love learning languages in an academic sense - I'm fascinated by the way words are borrowed and shared, the way meaning evolves. It's only when I try to speak that I get tongue-tied and terrified. My class is good for this, though, and so is living here. I like at-home yoga YouTube videos; at a friend's suggestion, I found some in French, and I've now learned the words for downward dog, inhale, exhale, twist. I'm experimenting with making my grocery lists in French. I went to volleyball practice with my friends on Wednesday and was one of the few non-French-speakers there, sweating and focusing hard as our coach spoke about the importance of communicating on the court. I learned some new words there, too.
As embarrassed as I am to have come, like Emily, speaking no French, like Emily, I really do want to learn. I'll have my own ridiculous moments, my own failures and faux pas, but if I can laugh at it on Netflix, surely I can find the humor of it in my own life. It really does feel bizarre, when I think about it, that I'm now living the life I used to watch on TV. The reality is perhaps less dramatic, and my outfits are certainly less extravagant, but even so - I think I like being Emily in Paris.
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