Bonjour, tout le monde! My name is Richael Best and I’m a junior English Major/French Minor at Whitman. I’m from San Francisco, CA, and I am studying with the Institute for American Universities in Aix-en-Provence, France for the semester. I’m living with a French host family and an American roommate from outside of New York City. Most of my classes are in French, but I’m also taking a drawing and painting class at the Marchutz School, which is a separate program under IAU.

I was met at the Marseille airport Saturday evening by two administrators from the institute. My host father, Monsieur Fuentes, and brother, Hugo (18), then came to pick me up with Kerrin, my roommate, along for the ride. On the way back to the Fuentes’ house, Monsieur Fuentes asked us a little bit about ourselves and we worked on figuring out the limits of our French and his English. Kerrin and I are both relatively advanced in French, Hugo is fluent in English, and Monsieur Fuentes speaks relatively well. So far, there haven’t been any major communication problems. I know I will make blunders while in France, but my family knows I want to learn as much as possible, and they do not hesitate to correct me. The first night I asked how to say “I am full,” after obligingly sampling everything at the cocktail party to which my host parents took me. They warned me that the French do not speak of being full: the literal translation describes a pregnant animal. One says “J’ai bien mangé” instead (literally: I have eaten well).

This soirée, as they called it, was a gathering of parents from a certain elementary school, whose children have all separated for the equivalent of middle school. We were thrown right in to socialize with all of the French adults. They were all very nice, but I noticed a tendency for them to respond in English after I spoke French. This happened with officials in the French airports, too. It can be irritating, but I’ve persevered with French, and usually they switch back to their native language. For the first few hours, it was so hard to speak French. After six weeks without class, the language seemed even more foreign than usual. But even now, after a few days, I am much more comfortable with everyday conversation and stringing sentences together.

To my host family’s credit, they acknowledged that I must be exhausted after my almost 20-hour trip from San Francisco to Aix-en-Provence, but there wasn’t even a question about whether we would accompany them to the soirée that evening. Kerrin and I thought they were joking at first when they told us we would be going to a party that night, but they were serious. I have no idea how we stayed up, mingling, dancing, and eating until 1am, but we did.

The food was wonderfully French: there was a provençale tarte of carmelized onions everyone forced me to try multiple times, and these little tiny clam-like shells called tellines in a garlicky sauce. I’d never seen such tiny seafood, and they were beautiful. There was chocolate mousse for dessert, and lots of champagne. The music the parents danced to was an odd mix of 70s disco, swing, contemporary hip hop, and middle eastern music. It was cute to watch them all with their one or two standard dance moves: something in me thought all French people would be dance gods, but not really.

Yesterday there was a gathering at Madame Fuentes’ cousin’s house with other family members to eat galette de roi (sort of similar to king cake on Mardi Gras) and, of course, more champagne. There were large discussions at the dinner table that were hard to follow: six emphatic French family members with southern accents talking over each other are more difficult to understand than, say, a Parisian like my host mother talking clearly to someone they know is American. Still, I could get lots of words and phrases and definitely understood the topics of conversation, and occasionally Monsieur or Madame Fuentes would turn to Kerrin and me to explain a little slower what they were talking about. It was wonderful to be included in a family event: they are experienced and giving hosts, and it shows.

Classes at the institute start tomorrow. Today was orientation, and we were overloaded with information from the faculty and staff and also got to explore Aix a little bit. I feel like I’m gaining a sense of direction, and the centre ville is much smaller than it looks on a map. The streets are narrow and twisted, pavement overlapping with cobblestones. The old buildings loom overhead with variously painted shutters and quaint lamps jutting out overhead. There’s an interesting clash between buildings constructed in between 300 and 1300 (like the cathedral) and more modern shops. The institute itself is housed in three different buildings, one of which was a chapel, and another a hospital that cared for people who survived torture during the inquisition. The history surrounding Aix is incredible, and reinforces just how young the United States are.

Over the course of the semester, I hope to keep you all updated about my blunderings in French, the various foods I eat, the behavior and style of the people I meet, and other facets of life in France I find interesting. Thanks for reading!