Inevitably, each ride on the metro in Paris provides me with at least one larger-than-life caricature of a person. After seeing the movie Amélie I figured all the characters were just exaggerated to match the tone of the movie, but now I realize that’s not the case at all. People here are actually like that.

I made sure to write this sketch of one man watched for quite some time on the ride from the 16th arr to Place de la Concorde:

His whistle gave his presence away before he was actually seen, a breathy, shrill, constant sound like the birds who are so awful outside my window at 3 am these days. He was dressed almost entirely in black with a black felt fedora of good quality, a fox fur scarf, and a prada bag he treated with relative disregard. He carried his coat draped across his arm, an olive colored trench lined with satin paisley. His gloves were the same color as his coat, and he took them off and put them on gingerly. When he did I saw that he had beautifully delicate hands with fingers I’d suspect a pianist to have. He wriggled them gleefully when they were released from their glove-prison and when he covered them again, which he did every few seconds. The man comported himself much like his fingers, gleeful and animated, and walked, or rather bounced, to the rhythm of his whistle. He carried a wooden platform of sorts, 4 unvarnished boards nailed into two other pieces of equal size on either end. He paid very close attention to this unlikely treasure, setting it down hesitantly and glancing at it furtively every so often. He touched it every 5 seconds or so, as if to ensure it’s stability as it leaned against his Prada bag. Eventually, however, the imagined precarious state of its balance proved to be too much for him and placing his glove back on his excited fingers one last time with determination, he placed a firm hand on his prized possession.

After just a few weeks in France, I can honestly say that I’ve never been in a more diverse environment. An international exchange program called Erasmus allows Europeans to easily participate in exchange programs all over the continent. Thanks to that I’ve met people who’ve come from everywhere from Lithuania to Finland, from Slovakia to Ireland. But it’s not just Europeans studying here in Cergy, my roommate is Japanese, there’s a Nepali student in one of my classes, and just last night on the train ride home from Paris I met a boy from Morocco who attends an engineering school just next to my university.

Now, all this is just great, really. The concept of people from all over the world coming to live and study together in one place is a fascinating one. However, what I find even more fascinating, and a little frustrating as well, is how everyone communicates with each other – or at least attempts to.

My second day here the international student department took us on a day trip to Paris. I spent my time walking around the city with 3 girls, two who speak fairly fluent English and decent French, and a third girl from Spain who barely speaks French and speaks even less English. Our conversations were an almost humorous mixture of French, English, and the little bits of poorly pronounced Spanish I’d picked up from years ago.

Similar situations pop up all the time. My roommate, who is fluent in Japanese, speaks to her Spanish friend in French, and all of her Japanese friends, naturally, in Japanese, while she and I communicate using a really halting mix of French and English. However, it seems as if, overwhelmingly, students are speaking English with each other. The majority of international students are more comfortable with English and will use it over French when given the choice. I can go entire days without needing to speak a word of French to anyone. At first, I wondered how Valerie, the other American girl in my program, was going to get by without knowing any French, but since then, I’ve learned she’s not the only one. Of the 8 Americans studying in the city right now, there is only one other student who knows any French. Inevitably, this means I run into the same problem that Nick was discussing in his blog. However, it also means that I’m being asked quite a bit to interpret for those students who don’t speak French and even sometimes for those French students who don’t speak much English.

Conversations at home have been different as well. I do have access to skype and facebook, but the majority of my conversations with friends and family at home have been through email. After years of interacting with people in almost instantaneous ways through texting or phone calls or face-to-face conversations, I get the option to edit my words, to come back to the email if I want, and then, when I feel like I’ve said everything, I have to wait for a response! Honestly, it’s been good for me. I wrote letters with a very good friend of mine two summers in a row, but I don’t know if that prepared me for communicating in this way with everyone close to me.

The result of all of these language barriers, and all of this adjustment and waiting has been that I’ve had quite a bit of time to myself to think and experience and observe what’s going on around me. It definitely isn’t a bad thing, if I was interacting with people as much here as I was doing at home I think I’d be moving so fast I’d miss something. I wonder why no one tells you these things when you’re preparing to go abroad “Also, you won’t be able to communicate much with people so sharpen your observation skills now and get ready to be reacquainted with yourself!” A Valpo alum, who is currently studying in China advised me to keep a travel journal saying “it’ll make the best souvenir”. I think that’s some of the best advice I’ve received in reference to life abroad. I follow her blog, and regularly find some kind of inspiration and fellowship in her attitude towards travel and life away from home. It’s a different life, but it’s definitely, very worthwhile.