I met Sarah in the Philadelphia airport waiting lounge before a flight back to Paris in May of 2007. We instantly struck up a conversation after she complimented my footwear. We happened to be seated just one row apart on the plane and managed to switch seats to sit next to each other. That flight led to what can only be called a close friendship. She was one of the witnesses at my wedding and introduced me to the other witness, Emma. Sarah studied abroad in college and then interned/worked in Paris for almost two years before returning to New York. But her experiences in France haven’t left her mind. The New York Press recently published one of her articles, “Flavor Of The Week: My Homo in Paris“, a brilliant and hilarious tale of sexual exploits with a French lover, if he can even be called that. Her guest post is called “French for Family Planning”. Enjoy!
Still giggling, I checked my purse for my passport, nervous it had fallen into the bidet that Katie and I were curiously leaning over moments before. Then Katie’s sweet voice rang out with confidence.
“We will be speaking fluent French in six months!” she claimed as we walked to the local Bordelais tram. I nodded with satisfaction.
Katie I and were juniors in college, both of us making our first trip out of the U.S. Our exchange was in direct defiance of the international school advisors’ warnings that the road to fluency was not a linear joyride. However, as a neophyte to foreign culture I believed, like Katie, that our nine months in Bordeaux, France would be très simple.
My troubles began three stops away at Casino, a well-known French grocery chain. Within minutes of entering we were leafing through our English-French dictionaries. We couldn’t find bagels only skinny baguettes and peanut butter was bumped out by the chocolate hazelnut spread, Nutella. When I came upon toilet paper and the only choices were pink, I was visibly puzzled.
At the register, the cashier handed back my sack of apples pointing to the market section. I had to go back, weigh my produce and printout a sticker with the price. Getting back in line I grew more frazzled as Katie and I slowed up the line, late realizing that we had to self-bag our items. Keeping my eyes on the floor I heard huff’s and “oh, la, la’s” behind me.
It was then I became acutely aware that six months to become bilingual was a lofty undertaking. Despite immersion courses and everyday life abroad my linguistic teachers informed me that reading and writing the language would come first, followed by comprehension. However, the ability to speak French would be the last to acquire and actually sounding like a French person would take years. How would I ever make friends if I literally couldn’t speak their language? Frustrated, I wished for a shortcut to either save the first three for later or at least make sure that I could progress in all fields simultaneously.
Over the next few weeks while looking for an apartment I lived in the dorms eating Nutella for dinner and sleeping on a lumpy cot using pink toilet paper as a pillow. Everyone was trying to make French friends but, like others Americans, I ran into the same problem. At first I was entertaining and quirky but once my inability to fully articulate created work for people, they fizzled away. I felt like a new toy whose novelty wore off.
One afternoon, I was sniffing a sandwich I bought for lunch. I originally pointed to the Brie but the woman gave me the sandwich next to it but naturally I was too embarrassed to speak up. It looked like chopped orange slices, mixed with cream and solidified into salami rounds. I was poking at it when Lori, an American classmate, walked up to me. Thanks to her Parisian boyfriend of two years Lori was highly advanced and already had several French pals. Standing beside Lori was a guy wearing a black leather jacket and a goofy smile.
“Bonjour,” I stammered. Three weeks in and I still hadn’t nailed a frequent salutation. Thankfully, his English was marginally better than my French. His name was Yann and he was looking for someone to converse with in a French-English exchange. Lori said she couldn’t because she already had two language partners. Yann and I agreed to start meeting on Wednesday afternoons for one hour.
We would meet out on the lawn between the university buildings. Yann was timid and respectful but after we exchanged les bisous I would catch him staring at me. Sometimes his smirk would endure for seconds. However, our relationship wasn’t growing as fast as my français since our conversations remained superficial. After several weeks my vocabulary was increasing, the intonations of words were easier to acquire, and I was getting braver with guessing cognates (words that sound similar in different languages such as parfait and perfect).
One chilly Wednesday afternoon, Yann and I retreated indoors where we found two seats at a study hall table. Discussing the differences between French and American cuisine, I thought my numerous trips to Casino qualified me to state my observations. I proclaimed, “Il y a moins de préservatifs dans la cuisine française.” (There are fewer preservatives in French cuisine).
Yann shook his head. “Non, non.” (No, no).
“Mais oui! La cuisine française a moins de préservatifs que la cuisine américaine.” (But, yes! French cuisine has fewer preservatives than American cuisine).
“Non, Sarah. Ce n’est pas ça.” (No, Sarah. That’s not it).
I was getting irritated. Yann was usually a good listener but right now he wouldn’t even let me make it past my first sentence to make my argument.
Raising my voice I pleaded, “Oui, une pizza surgelée a beaucoup de préservatifs chez moi, mais ici tu ne trouves pas aut…” (Yes, a frozen pizza has a lot more preservative at my home, but here you don’t find nearly as ….
“Sarah, that is not what it means!’
Just a notch below a whisper Yann said, “Préservatif en français is…is… condom.”
I looked around to see that I caught the attention of the surrounding tables. Noses were turned up like I had a doodoo on the bottom of my boot. Or was I the doodoo? After winter break, Yann and I didn’t call each other again. There was no particular reason, we both just let it go. Yet I will always be grateful to my Bordelais friend who taught me the differences between French family planning and fresh food.
Sarah Elder is a writer and nanny living in New York. Growing up in California, she left for France so she could miss California, then she left for New York so she could miss California and France.
