Faux French, Riviera Style

Have you been wondering how I’ve been faring since I bade farewell to les vaches?

I am slowly adjusting to life on the French Riviera.

Slowly.

My drive here was uneventful, except for that time my GPS became my enemy and led me in circles for two hours in downtown Nice during the height of tourist season.  Navigation systems don’t do well with pedestrian-only streets.  That’s all I’ll say about that.

And now I am perched on a hill overlooking the uppity town of Villefranche-sur-mer, with its uppity yachts, BMWs, and fake hedges. Why anyone would need a fake hedge in this lotus land is beyond me, but there it is.  Why water a real hedge when you can buy a fake one?

No, to be honest, I’m missing the friendly, down-to-earth charm of my village in the Alps.  Well, okay, the cows were not so friendly.  But there was an endearing honesty to that place, a sense that life had substance, and that everything else was somehow false.

Not so with the French Riviera.  Everything here feels half-empty, like the soul of the place just drained out into the Mediterranean when the people all arrived. I’m sure at one time it was quaint and delightful and historically significant; but right now, it feels to me like a toy neighbourhood, constructed out of blocks and toothpicks and dotted with plastic accessories.  Doll houses, all, papered in Euros…

But I, too, am a falsehood, here on the French Riviera.

I am attending the world-renowned Institut de Français for four weeks of intensive language learning.  Intensive, really, is an understatement.  And a dream-come-true.  I’ve taught myself a lot of grammar in the last three years, but one can only go so far in an empty room with a textbook.  At some point one must interact with real people; and here, at this hallowed institute, every last person exists solely to shock you into fluency.

My sojourn started with a 33-Euro taxi-ride to the school, followed by an intensive morning of testing.  I did my very best.  Honestly, I did.  I shouldn’t have.

Twenty-four hours later, I sat rigid in my chair, heart yammering, awaiting the results.  Please don’t put me in the beginner group please don’t put me in the beginner group please don’t put me in the beginner group…

“Would the following people please stand and exit with their teacher? This is our Débutant I group…”  Names were called, and none were mine.  Whew.

“And now for the Débutant II group…” Again, names were called, and none were mine.  Whew again. Good.  They will put me squarely in the intermediate group, right where I belong.

“The following people will be in the Intermediate I group…”

Not me.

“The following people will be in the Intermediate II group…”

Again, not me.  The room is starting to empty out.  My heart is yammering even louder.  I forget to breathe.

Once the Intermediate IV group had left, the Most High Judge announced to those of us that remained that we had been too modest in our self-appraisals, and that they would be splitting us into lower and upper advanced groups.

Now I really wasn’t breathing at all.

“Avancé I, please follow your teacher.”  Avancé I exited.  And I was left in a room with eight other people, the esteemed Avancé II.  The highest possible ranking in the school.

Are you kidding?!? I can’t even make a hair appointment!

You see why I shouldn’t have tried so hard on the test.

And so now, here I am, falsely grouped with the crème de la crème de la crème, and I am drowning.

The grammar is fine.  I get the grammar.  I love the grammar.  I would be quite happy to spend eight hours a day in grammar class.

The listening is fine.  I understand almost everything.  I know what’s going on.  I hardly even notice that I’m listening to another language.  I laugh at the jokes.  Light bulbs ignite all over the place as I have one linguistic epiphany after another.  Oh! That’s why three-stem verbs are conjugated the way they are! That’s why there’s no “et” in 81! That’s the condition of the conditional, and the subjective of the subjunctive! My brain is exploding with explanations and nuances that I’ll never remember, but that delight me nonetheless.  Languages are incredible things.

Comprehension: check.  Grammar: check.  Speaking:

Speaking.  This is the problem.  Speaking. Have I mentioned that I can’t even make a hair appointment in this language that I study every single day, hour after hour, year after year? I will construct a sentence in my head.  I will verify its correctness.  I will rehearse it over and over.  And then, when I pick up the phone and dial the number, I will FREEZE.

And don’t try to tell me that it’s just about the telephone, because it’s not.  It happens in stores.  It happens in tourist offices.  It happens at parties.  And it happens, time after time after time, in the Avancé II class.

I knew from the outset that this program would pose a challenge.  That’s why I chose it.  It’s an oral method.  My oral language is weak.  Therefore, this program will help me, I reasoned.

But Avancé II oral language?

You must understand.  The other people in my class do not need a class.  They could be teaching the class themselves.  Their pronunciation is resplendent with correctly formulated r‘s.  They do not pause to fetch the words they need to say the things they want to say. They just say them.  Just like that.  Poof! The words appear.  In the right order.  At the right time.  With ease and grace.  I cannot make a hair appointment.

Why am I in this class?

To complicate things, all of my usual insecurities are surfacing.  No, not surfacing.  Erupting. That is what they are doing. These are all important people.  Diplomats, lawyers, journalists, doctors, politicians, directors, bankers, scholars.  People whose governments send them here because they are about to go on diplomatic missions and do diplomatic things.  People who make things happen.  What do I make happen? I make kids sing do-re-mi-fa-sol.  I waltz like an elephant.  I give rewards to kids who don’t talk in class.  I write report cards.  I am not the crème de la crème de la crème.  I can’t even work up the nerve to talk to these people in my native tongue.  Heck, I can’t work up the nerve to talk to any people in my native tongue.  Staff meeting? Nope.  Bake sale? Nope.  Choir practice? Nope.  Soirée on the French Riviera? No, no, definitely no, a thousand times no — and not in a foreign language!

I realize (cerebrally) that I must break this mindset.  I must, both at this institute and in my life, stop comparing myself with people around me, and just be the person I am.  I must convince myself that I, in my current state, am a person worth being. I must at least pretend that I belong.

Really, they’re just normal people.  They just happen to have different jobs.  Right? Objectively speaking, no one is looking down at me, thinking, “Oh, there’s that poor incompetent teacher who somehow managed to weasel her way into our midst.”  They’re not judging me by my decidedly substandard attire or my imperfect letter r.  They don’t care about my income or my social status.  They, like me, are simply here to learn.  And no one has even blinked in a manner that might indicate otherwise.  This pressure is solely self-imposed.  I know that. Objectively.

But then the class begins, with its rapid-fire questioning and instant responses.  I’ve never liked ping-pong, you know.  I see the ball coming, but I can’t hit it back.  It flies right past me, and I have to run and get it while my pauvre opponent waits around for the game to resume. Or, if I do manage to make contact with the ball, I send it flying to the ceiling and off some distant wall before someone deftly taps it back to me — at which time, I miss again.

This is me in class.  I see the words flying.  I get them.  I know them. I can even trap them, if I have permission.  But I don’t. I have to make contact and relay them back, instantly.  The words will not wait around to let me get to know them, befriend them, integrate them. They just dart around the room, little sprites, always evading me.

It’s hard. It’s so hard.

I had a little victory last week.  I had to give a 20-25 minute “exposé” on a topic of my choice.  No props, no accessories, no crutches.  Just stand up there for 20 minutes and talk.  And do you know what? I did it.

I did not talk about anything important or philosophical.  I told a story about cows.  It was a 20-minute series of mistakes and charades.  But I did it.  I got my story across, and I could see it in the smiles of my listeners.  The ball was entirely in my court.  I could do with it as I wished.  I could do tricks.  I could spin it this way and that.  I could make it mine.

Dialogue is not like that.  Dialogue, for me, is a constant tension between avoiding errors and avoiding awkward silences.  It is the frustration of wanting to convey complex ideas with inadequate syntax.  It is the sense of time going by, while the other party waits, either sympathetically or impatiently, for the missing words to emerge.

So here I am, at the bottom of the class, trying with all my heart to appear that I belong.

Wait.  I’ve had this feeling before.  I mean, not just in every other social situation in my entire life, but in an academic setting much like this.  Grad school. Surrounded by confident scholars, half my age, who knew a lot of very big words.  People who could understand and convey complex theoretical ideas with ease and intelligence, while I stressed out about my next kindergarten lesson.

I had a professor at the time who seemed to go out of his way to intimidate people like me, but looking back, he said at least one helpful thing:

“Don’t complain that it’s hard.  It’s supposed to be hard.  That’s why you’re here.”

And do you know what? I did it.  I have an M.A. in Public Texts because I didn’t give up. I saw that it was hard, felt that it was unattainable, suspected that everyone else was entitled to a success that was beyond me — and did it anyway.  I did it.

And I’ve done it in other ways, too.  I got my A.R.C.T. in piano, feeling like an imposter the whole time.  I conducted a motor vehicle through the madness of Casablanca and the mountains of France.  I summited mountains.  I emerged from the grief and trauma of past losses.  I am here, after all of that, on the French Riviera; and I can do this, too.

These yachts and buildings and hedges might seem superficial and false to me.  This setting might seem out of my league.  That’s okay.  Vrai ou faux,it does not matter.  My teachers, who are, themselves, the crème de la crème de la crème, insist that I am Avancé II material.  They see some ability in me that I have yet to mine.  For the sake of my own comfort, I still wish I had sabotaged my own test, but that is done.  I am where I’m supposed to be.  It’s supposed to be hard.  Bring on tomorrow.