I have started my second year's master's classes. I switched schools, changed programs even, and have been greeted with the stark and very real reminder that I am NOT in an English-speaking country. I say this because, in all honesty, I sometimes forget. The majority of my friends are anglophone...and those who aren't, can speak English quite well...and prefer to! In Paris, if you ask nearly any ex-pat if they are friends with more French people or more foreigners, they will laugh aloud as if you asked the most assinine question possible. Foreigners. Bien sûr! We find each other in this home away from home...we form bonds easily in our displacement. And we form friendships on a common language that doesn't leave us without great expressions, in which we can be completely ourselves, in which we can actually be funny! So I find myself speaking more often in English than in French. Which is too bad, of course, and yet when a French prof says that we must cut ourselves off from people who speak our language, I think there's no way that I would choose to continue living in this country if I didn't have my core group of friends!
All of this is to say that this year I'm no longer operating to any extent--academically--in English. I will also write this year's 100-page thesis in French. Argh. I worry about eloquence, I wonder if I can be nuanced, I fear that I can't be poetic or visual. Not to mention the extra time it will take to look up words I don't know, to find (or not find) equivalent expressions, and to ensure that my structure is "French" enough. I will have to find several readers/editors...I can't just sit down and let me ideas flow...and I will rarely be entirely certain that what I put on the screen won't, in some way, be modified, cut, or re-written by somebody whose French is maternal. But I guess the time had to come. I have to remain positive...and perhaps write myself a note on the bathroom mirror: "You are still smart in French."
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