The weekend

I just passed a very enjoyable weekend with some friends in Chateau-Thierry, a little town near Paris.  We didn’t do much, but just getting to be around them and talk with them was very nice.  They are also language assistants in the same département that I am in – we met at the training sessions in Amiens in September.  Two – Jana and Joanna – are German language assistants, while the third – Adam – is an English assistant. 

What was most remarkable to me is the diversity that these friends represent.  For example, last night we sat down to dinner with one of the professors who lives in the same hall as them at the school (they have a similar arrangement to the one that I have here).  The professor is French, Jana is German, Adam is Northern Irish and Joanna is Bulgarian.  It was incredible to me to realize that I was sitting at a table where no one is from the same background, and yet we all got along fine, conversing alternately in French and English and all able to contribute to the conversation and enjoy one another’s company.  I know that it sounds clichéd, but it is sad to me that we all could get along so well and yet there are so many people in the word who cannot.  I know that the five of us there in Chateau-Thierry all share similar backgrounds, at least in terms of religion (which seems to be the cause of much of the world’s arguments), but at the same time we are all so different.  I can know, intellectually, the problems of growing up in a country cut by civil disagreements, as one finds in Northern Ireland, but I can’t really understand it, since I haven’t lived it.  The others can speak of the greed and arrogance of America, as well as its melting-pot mentality, but they can’t really know all the nuances that make American life what it is.  And so on. 

I don’t know that I really had a point with all of that, other than that it is wonderful for me to be able to call such a diverse group of people my friends.  We’ve made plans to visit each other, not just while we are here in France, but once we’ve all returned to our home countries.  This is what I was hoping for out of my year in France – the chance to meet people from other countries and to explore our differences, but also to realize our similarities.

I have been homesick since I arrived here, and I am still homesick.  I have never experienced such a degree of homesickness and alienation before, so it was easy for me to sink into a mire of self-pity, which fed the homesickness, since I tended to think, “if only I were home, everything would be better.”  My stubbornness also had a say – I have set myself to do this, and no matter how unhappy I may have felt, I knew that I would be mad at myself later if I were to give up.  I’ve never been one for giving up.  And the stubbornness actually increased my unhappiness, since I felt trapped and was mad at myself for having chosen so poorly and stupidly, as it seemed.  Why decide to leave everything comfortable and comforting for seven months?

Then, in the middle of last week, I forcibly realized that my homesickness and depression are to a large extent determined by the amount that I dwell on them.  If I choose to revel in my self-pity, then of course it’s going to flourish, as will the things that it nourishes, like my homesickness.  On the other hand, if I choose to remember that I chose to be here for the exact reasons that I have been unhappy – the challenge and the difficulty and the language barrier – then I can remember the joy of the challenge and the rewards possible.  So I did. 

I have resolved that I will do something unusual – probably travel – every weekend for as long as my funds hold out.  Even if it’s something as simple as traveling to a town only 5 euros away by train for a day each weekend, it will still give me something to look forward to through the more prosaic weekdays.  And I will try to discover enjoyment in my teaching.  I have never wanted to be a teacher, and I didn’t apply for this job for the teaching experience.  But neither should I regard the teaching as a chore to be slogged through each week.  That isn’t fair to the people with whom I work; nor is it fair to the students, for whom I am the excitement, the novelty. 

In short, I have decided to stop dwelling on the things that have been getting me down – the language, in particular, as well as the loneliness.  I have to put effort into friendships and even just socialization, not just sort-of expect that it will fall into my lap.  Additionally, my French improves when I don’t obsess about it.  I will make mistakes – there is no doubt about that.  But one of the first things that my friends in Chateau-Thierry said to me was that my French has greatly improved; this is one of those things that it’s extremely difficult to gauge for yourself, since you are constantly around your own mistakes and stumblings.  I need to trust myself – trust that I am intelligent enough to improve even when I can’t necessarily observe myself doing so.