Visitors, Trips, Birthing Classes, and Immigration Woes

We are rather falling behind in our writing of blog posts. Sorry, dear readers! As the end of my pregnancy draws nearer, it seems there are a plethora of tasks as well as hours of research begging to be done. But we will do our best to keep up with the updates. Here are some of the things we've been busy with recently.

First of all, last weekend we had a lovely quick visit with Micah, another dear friend from Columbus. Micah happens to be the younger brother of Soraya, who we saw in London in April. Just four more people to go and we will have been visited by their whole family! Micah, who is studying history at Ohio State University, was part of a school tour of European historical sites. He visited Ireland, England, France, Poland, and Germany, and we were lucky to get to take him out to dinner before he left Paris. We sampled the delicious, if not-so-French, cuisine of Loulou's Friendly Diner (excellent burgers and gluten free buns too!), walked around the Saint Germain des Prés area of Paris (the Middle Ages Museum is cool--it features a Roman-era bathhouse), and walked up to the Panthéon, the huge domed secular mausoleum where notable French citizens are buried. Then naturally we found a fancy chocolaterie, Maison Georges Larnicol, where we oohed and ahhed and Micah bought some treats to take back with him. It's always wonderful to see friends from our old home!

Micah came to visit!

We also spent about 16 hours that same weekend taking a childbirthing and newborn care class that was put on by and for the English-speaking members of Message, a group for anglophone parents in Paris. I will write a post soon with more information about Message, as it's been a lifesaver for us in navigating pregnancy in France. But for now, I'll say that the birthing class was excellent! It was attended by five couples from American, English, Scottish, French, and German backgrounds, and was taught by a lovely and knowledgable English lady who received training from the UK's National Childbirth Trust. It was a great opportunity to meet others in the same boat as us, trying to navigate the confusing waters of grossesse en France. We learned a lot, shared our experiences, hopes, and fears, and made some friends and supporters in the process.

Last week, Rory was finally able to make his re-scheduled trip to the Netherlands. He had been invited to give a presentation at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen back in March, but with the Brussels terrorist attacks happening the day he was meant to leave, his train was cancelled. This time he made it to the Netherlands without incident and enjoyed presenting his research to a group of linguists. Afterwards, he spent a few hours wandering around Amsterdam, being impressed by the half-moon-shaped belts of canals and the huge number of bicycles on the streets.

Canals of Amsterdam

On a less exciting note, I had my long-awaited convocation at the police prefecture for my carte de séjour (my French residence permit). I'd waited for this since my last appointment in January, and at this appointment I should have, in theory, been given the green light to actually receive the real permit in about a month or so. However, we moved to a new flat in a département (an administrative district in France; bigger than a county but smaller than a state) outside of Paris in the intervening months. Since cartes de séjour are handled by each département separately, the best they could do for us was to renew my récépissé for a month (a receipt which allows me to live in France for a couple of months at a time), and tell me to make an appointment at the prefecture in my new département. I suspect the process (ongoing for the last 7 months) will have to be started again almost from scratch at the new place, so I'm not overjoyed about this development. C'est la vie française. 

More soon to come! Have a great week, everyone!

57% fluent in french, whatever that means

My dear husband has a PhD in linguistics. He's been studying language for the past ten years. One might incorrectly assume that he would have fluency in several languages under his belt by now, especially having grown up in multilingual Europe. Rory can teach you about phonological processing and phonetic reduction, individual differences in speech production, and even the Acazulco Otomi word for “potato”. He's a very smart and knowledgeable guy when it comes to Language with a capital L. But as he is fond of saying, “Learning a language is hard.”

Autumn in Paris from the Bois de Boulogne on our Journée sans Anglais

Indeed it is. Being plonked down into a foreign country where you don't really speak the language is quite challenging at times. Even though according to Duolingo I'm 57% fluent in French after six months of individual study, more often than not, I don't understand the conversations happening around me on the subway, in stores, and most embarrassingly, when I am trying to be an active participant. For an adult who has prided herself on being reasonably articulate and skilled at communication, it's a bit of a sucker punch to the ego when a child speaks to me in French and I have to look at her with a perplexed and apologetic expression on my face like, I only caught one word you said and you're making me so nervous that I can't even think how to say in French that I didn't understand you. Please don't think I'm a weirdo or a complete idiot, or worse, an American.


Rest assured, I have been studying and learning and making a lot of progress with my French. For example, last week, I somehow “volunteered” to coordinate logistics for a two-weekend Baha'i study circle event, meaning that I had to contact about fifteen Parisians and ask if they would provide lunches or childcare for a group of 15-20 people. I was expected to call people I didn't know, on the phone, in French. I've had anxiety about calling people since I was ten years old, but to have to do it in a foreign language...*shudders*


Well, I spent about a day gathering the courage, writing out and practicing a bunch of possible scripts for the calls, looking up French phone expressions, Facebook friending the people I was about to call, and generally being terrified any time I touched my phone. That evening, I started calling people. And for the next several days, I left messages entirely in French. I had calls that began in French and switched into English when I couldn't explain myself anymore. I emailed and texted people in French (WAY easier than calling, let me tell you). And on the weekends, I brought snacks to the gatherings and interacted with people in French (“Quoi de neuf, Talia?” “Pas beaucoup,” I said smoothly). I still panic every time my phone rings, but the experience of successfully communicating in my new language really energized and emboldened me.


Not everyone gets to be shoved into the deep end of the language-learning pool like I just did, so if you're studying a new language, here are some of the other tools and activities I've found useful.

• Duolingo: An online site that turns language-learning into a game. There are 23 languages available, including Klingon! It does get a little repetitive after 20 levels or so, since the format doesn't change or get harder as you go. But it's great for learning vocabulary, conjugations, and phrases.
  
• Quizlet: A site that allows you to create flashcards (or use other people's flashcards), then study them using a variety of strategies and games.
  
• Comme Une Française: A great website with lots of videos on authentic French language usage, explanations about daily life in France, common mistakes French learners make, and tons more. It's run by Géraldine Lepère, a young woman who acts as teacher and mentor and helps people (particularly expats living in France) feel more at home with French living.
  
• Cercle International de l'ARC: If you happen to move to Paris and want to practice conversing in French without paying 12 euros for a speed-dating style Franglish event, The International Circle of the ARC is an organization where you can meet up with people from around the world and talk in French with the guidance of a native French speaker (it seems to be retired people who serve as these French animateurs). It's only 10 euros for the whole year and there are three 2-hour sessions five days a week.
  
• Children's books in French: Local libraries probably have some. I enjoyed reading Madeline, Harry Potter, and have started on Le Petit Prince. Comic books are really popular in France. Not the superhero kind like in America, but the graphic novel kind and classics like Asterix. Pictures help a lot when reading a new language!
  
• Netflix: There are quite a few movies and TV series in French (or other languages), and you can always add subtitles. We started with English subtitles when watching in the US, but now that we're in France, they only have French subtitles. I just started a popular comedy series called Fais pas ci fais pas ça. It really helps to watch the acting, hear the French, and read the French text—it's more effective than just studying a language book.
  
• Journée sans Anglais: Rory and I just started having a Day Without English. Yesterday, we managed without English for many hours and it improved our fluency and understanding. Of course, it helps to have someone to talk to in whatever language you're speaking. It's a little awkward by yourself...But lacking a language buddy, you can always just have an inner monologue in the other language.

We've lived in France for two months now, and I still feel like a complete numpty (great scottish word) when it comes to speaking in French. But I'm getting better! And everyone assures me that by the time I leave Paris, I'll be très natural at the language. For now, I'll keep perfecting my look of polite confusion.

Settling in

If you've been following our blog, you'll know that we've been to Scotland and Belgium and even Canada and Iceland briefly, but we haven't really mentioned Paris yet. We've been here for nearly two weeks now, if you can believe it, so I should probably share with you some of our progress in settling in and making Paris our home.

La fontaine Médicis, in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

One aspect of settling in somewhere is having access to the things that you are used to having (or, alternatively, being used to having the things that you have access to). This can often be difficult when moving to another country, where things are done differently, and a degree of flexibility is usually required. One such item we were particularly concerned about was the availability of gluten-free flours. Talia is gluten intolerant, and loves to bake, and gluten-free baking requires a diversity of flours, starches, and gums of various origins. In Columbus, these often sold for fairly high prices at "natural" stores.

Imagine our surprise, then, when the first store we walk into - an African corner shop no bigger than a newsagents - has a huge variety of flours, both glutenful and gluten-free, for prices far lower than we could get in the US! These flours were marketed not as "natural" alternatives to support a healthy lifestyle, but simply traditional west African fare. We have since discovered even more stores with great variety of ingredients.

On the other hand, however, we have had great difficulty in finding baked beans, of either the American or British variety. (For those who don't know the difference - baked beans in America tend to be a bit more sugary, and come with pieces of bacon(!) in them, while British baked beans are in a more modest tomato sauce.) Apparently the French just don't eat beans in this way, and we had no luck in sourcing them in the "international" section of a local supermarket. There are some "English food shops", which import food specially from Britain (everything from pickled chutney to spotted dick), although we haven't checked them out. It will be hard, but I am sure that I can resign myself to a life without baked beans.

In addition to getting to grips with the food situation, I'm finding that I keep having to remind myself that, no, we're not on holiday, we really do live here. I suppose this is a common feeling when moving to a new place, but it's especially acute in a major tourist destination like Paris. Settling in will take a while, I think.