Today is a familiar scene, a rainy day in Orléans. I actually enjoyed walking home to Mariejo and Philippe's in the rain today. I was surprised to find the rain comforting.
list for transitiony-lyon-times
things that would probably make you feel better:
exercising more
walking around
eating healthy food/not eating sugary things
making more money (but still having time to live/do your schoolwork/go to class...)
assisting in a school in some way
reading more
being more efficient with studying
practicing french more
skyping with family/friends more
writing more
writing letters/postcards
joining a chorus (taking voice lessons) (need to be in the centre to do this)
joining a jazz band
finding someone to give me hugs
getting over people who are not worth your time
Friday, October 25, 2013
Thursday, October 24, 2013
petit retour to orléans
I've been back in France for nearly two months. This is usually the critical point for me with a new start. Somewhere between two and three months, I've found my groove, I'm still feeling a little homesick but it's greatly overwhelmed by my enthusiasm for my new project/city/life.
The past three months, or really the past four or five, have been charged with change, and I don't think I had the time to register these changes until these past couple months in Lyon. In the Spring, I raced around looking for a job after my dream job had ended, when that didn't work out I filled out applications for English programs in French universities (so hopefully I could work on the side and come out with a degree that would make me more competitve for a job as an English teacher) I said goodbye to my assistant friends who left Orléans, was an animatrice at a camp in the south for a month, ran back up to Orléans, flew back out to the US to be with family for a month and to renew my visa, returned to Orléans to say goodbye and pick up some things, and moved to Lyon to start a new (poorer) life as a student.
There are a few sentences that have stuck with me. One of them was when I left Geneva, Jonathan Gosnell, the director of the program said to me:
"Yeah, I've heard people say when they get back to the USA that their life here seems like a dream, they sink back into their old routine and it seems like their time abroad never even happened."
I didn't think anything of it when he said it, but when I got back to the US the summer after Geneva in 2011, I experienced exactly this. In the beginning I hung onto listening to French radio to comfort my return, but after a very short time, the memories became hazy and the life I had lived seemed like some sort of fiction I'd read once or twice and the main character wasn't even someone I related to.
This Summer, when I went back to the US for one zoom-through month, I felt a little different. I knew I was coming back to France, moreover to a different life in France than the one I had had before. I started to fall into my old routine but I knew I wouldn't be able to sink into it for long. Like before, I started to doubt whether my life in France really had ever been real, and further if going back was a good idea. But the self that was in France a week before was so incredibly passionate about saying I tried to leave my present self in the hands of my not-so-distant-past self. I didn't feel like my present self was capable of making informed decisions on it's own, or even of being involved in any decision making. So I tried to live outside of the present as best as I could and to continue on the path I had built for myself before, while still enjoying the time I had with my family. This proved to be very difficult. When I left my family in the airport I felt like I was making a horrible mistake. While I knew that on the other side of the ocean there were things that made me feel like I wanted to pursue the future unlike anything I could find in the US, being apart from my family and friends is never easy. And after living a year mostly in a language that was not my own, and feeling as though my personality would never come through in this other language and other culture in its entirety, time spent in the US felt both good and unfamiliar.
I really expected my time in the US to be a comfort—to know how to make jokes, how to express myself, how to get around, how to follow cultural rules. I think what surprised me was that perhaps my personality wasn't exactly the same anymore. After coming back from a year learning a foreign language, I was quieter, I listened more, I didn't always feel like talking or expressing myself.
I became suddenly aware of the different versions of myself. The different fictions of myself. There was the person who went to Smith, the person who wanted to be a choral conductor, the person who was from the island, the person who lived and taught in Orléans, the person who was going to enroll in a masters in Lyon—and it really hurt not to feel like all these experiences were linked. Like they were all dreamed up.
The first moment I began to feel things come together was when my friend from Geneva, Laurena, came to visit Lyon last weekend. She is one of the small number of people in this world that makes me feel "home." Talking to her makes me feel like I am one whole person, safe and loved and supported for all that I am.
Coming back to Orléans for a week has also definitely jumpstarted the process. At Mariejo and Philippe's house, I feel so among family, so comfortable and happy and feeling as though I'm sucessfully using the language to communicate my true self that is constructed from all my experiences. With Chantal and Stéphane around, I feel even more supported and loved. I feel reminded of why I wanted to stay in France. For the first time, I'm able to think about all the experiences I've had and feel that they are all coming together onto the same pathway.
Sometimes I wonder if it was a mistake to move away from Orléans—it was so much harder than I expected to move away from my family at home and then immediately move away from this family—but I try to tell myself that it's true that in a way my time here had to come to an end. Orléans is a great city, but after my friends left things would have been hard. I wouldn't have liked commuting to the university in Paris. It would have been hard to go through another rainy winter. It would have been hard to get over the little stint of romantic heartbreak that I felt here with the cause of this heartbreak still around. It would have been hard, right? I'm not sure I can really know for sure, yet, but it's good to know that this place is always here, even if I'm not able to continue on here with the job I adored so much. There's something bigger waiting, right? Sometimes you just have to put your time in, right? I hope I'm right. I hope I made the right decision.
I'm so thankful for the support of all those people who are home to me during these times of transition. I'm so thankful to the universe for crossing my path with those of Mariejo, Philippe, Chantal, Stéphane, Ashley, Margaux and her family—the list goes on and on and on—people whose generosity is whole, who make me feel whole and at home. I need to remind myself that people who make me feel far from home are not the people with whom I need to pass my life. I need to spend this life finding more ways home.
The past three months, or really the past four or five, have been charged with change, and I don't think I had the time to register these changes until these past couple months in Lyon. In the Spring, I raced around looking for a job after my dream job had ended, when that didn't work out I filled out applications for English programs in French universities (so hopefully I could work on the side and come out with a degree that would make me more competitve for a job as an English teacher) I said goodbye to my assistant friends who left Orléans, was an animatrice at a camp in the south for a month, ran back up to Orléans, flew back out to the US to be with family for a month and to renew my visa, returned to Orléans to say goodbye and pick up some things, and moved to Lyon to start a new (poorer) life as a student.
There are a few sentences that have stuck with me. One of them was when I left Geneva, Jonathan Gosnell, the director of the program said to me:
"Yeah, I've heard people say when they get back to the USA that their life here seems like a dream, they sink back into their old routine and it seems like their time abroad never even happened."
I didn't think anything of it when he said it, but when I got back to the US the summer after Geneva in 2011, I experienced exactly this. In the beginning I hung onto listening to French radio to comfort my return, but after a very short time, the memories became hazy and the life I had lived seemed like some sort of fiction I'd read once or twice and the main character wasn't even someone I related to.
This Summer, when I went back to the US for one zoom-through month, I felt a little different. I knew I was coming back to France, moreover to a different life in France than the one I had had before. I started to fall into my old routine but I knew I wouldn't be able to sink into it for long. Like before, I started to doubt whether my life in France really had ever been real, and further if going back was a good idea. But the self that was in France a week before was so incredibly passionate about saying I tried to leave my present self in the hands of my not-so-distant-past self. I didn't feel like my present self was capable of making informed decisions on it's own, or even of being involved in any decision making. So I tried to live outside of the present as best as I could and to continue on the path I had built for myself before, while still enjoying the time I had with my family. This proved to be very difficult. When I left my family in the airport I felt like I was making a horrible mistake. While I knew that on the other side of the ocean there were things that made me feel like I wanted to pursue the future unlike anything I could find in the US, being apart from my family and friends is never easy. And after living a year mostly in a language that was not my own, and feeling as though my personality would never come through in this other language and other culture in its entirety, time spent in the US felt both good and unfamiliar.
I really expected my time in the US to be a comfort—to know how to make jokes, how to express myself, how to get around, how to follow cultural rules. I think what surprised me was that perhaps my personality wasn't exactly the same anymore. After coming back from a year learning a foreign language, I was quieter, I listened more, I didn't always feel like talking or expressing myself.
I became suddenly aware of the different versions of myself. The different fictions of myself. There was the person who went to Smith, the person who wanted to be a choral conductor, the person who was from the island, the person who lived and taught in Orléans, the person who was going to enroll in a masters in Lyon—and it really hurt not to feel like all these experiences were linked. Like they were all dreamed up.
The first moment I began to feel things come together was when my friend from Geneva, Laurena, came to visit Lyon last weekend. She is one of the small number of people in this world that makes me feel "home." Talking to her makes me feel like I am one whole person, safe and loved and supported for all that I am.
Coming back to Orléans for a week has also definitely jumpstarted the process. At Mariejo and Philippe's house, I feel so among family, so comfortable and happy and feeling as though I'm sucessfully using the language to communicate my true self that is constructed from all my experiences. With Chantal and Stéphane around, I feel even more supported and loved. I feel reminded of why I wanted to stay in France. For the first time, I'm able to think about all the experiences I've had and feel that they are all coming together onto the same pathway.
Sometimes I wonder if it was a mistake to move away from Orléans—it was so much harder than I expected to move away from my family at home and then immediately move away from this family—but I try to tell myself that it's true that in a way my time here had to come to an end. Orléans is a great city, but after my friends left things would have been hard. I wouldn't have liked commuting to the university in Paris. It would have been hard to go through another rainy winter. It would have been hard to get over the little stint of romantic heartbreak that I felt here with the cause of this heartbreak still around. It would have been hard, right? I'm not sure I can really know for sure, yet, but it's good to know that this place is always here, even if I'm not able to continue on here with the job I adored so much. There's something bigger waiting, right? Sometimes you just have to put your time in, right? I hope I'm right. I hope I made the right decision.
I'm so thankful for the support of all those people who are home to me during these times of transition. I'm so thankful to the universe for crossing my path with those of Mariejo, Philippe, Chantal, Stéphane, Ashley, Margaux and her family—the list goes on and on and on—people whose generosity is whole, who make me feel whole and at home. I need to remind myself that people who make me feel far from home are not the people with whom I need to pass my life. I need to spend this life finding more ways home.
 |
| Château de Cheverny, Chantal took me and the new assistant there yesterday! |
Monday, October 7, 2013
Gone Life-ing
As usual, I abandoned this blog for life.
Now I'm at a new beginning, and needing to write to sort things out and push myself back into a new experience.
Last year, I struggled through some dense moments of deeply feeling alone, and then sprung out of them to realise that I was living a life that brought me back in touch with the person I see myself to be. My job re-inspired me to fight for the future I see for myself. And I was so lucky to meet a few incredible people reached out to me to make me feel at home and to encourage me to listen to myself.
Before college, I remember every time heard the phrases "this is going to be really hard," "most people will fail doing this," and even "no one will succeed in doing this,"—whether it had to do with courses, music, or anything, really—a brave inner voice spoke to me saying, "but you could be different, you will be different. don't let what other people say bother you. just give it a try and see how it goes." And I never worried (..at least about things falling into place—but I worried about plenty of other things). Things always turned out okay. Usually much better than I thought they would. People took care of me wherever I went. I got the good grades. I got into the good college. I got my foot in the door here, I took it out just in time there. I said my humble thanks to the little voice that helped me to float above all the pressure and the discouragement.
Then suddenly that inner voice went away and the voices of everyone else took its place, and things started to fall out of place.
At this point, it's necessary to briefly touch upon what it's like to be twenty something in the 2010 plus somethings. We went to college. We got our degrees. We did our internships. We made our contacts. But we were we're told, and we are retold, and we saw, and we resee, that the jobs we wanted do not exist. That there isn't room or money to change the world in this way or that way. There isn't time to experiment and get better at something that attracts us.
There's no time for mistakes, or someone else gets your dream.
There are two ways to react to this pressure. Either, you take up something "useful" and fit yourself into the societal puzzle wherever you can find a place, and risk not being happy with that place. Risk spending the time you have on earth just making a spot for yourself to exist. Or you think—hey, everything is out of whack right now. Not many people are getting anywhere. So why not accept that reality, and use this time to do the things I want to do, since I know no matter what I do it probably won't be good enough and I probably won't be happy in front of a computer or behind a desk just trying to make myself "useful." It kinda feels a little to me like how people in the middle ages began to step out of strongly built societal standards during the Plague. People all around you were dying, so you either took the life you had left to do some crazy, out of the line things while you had the chance to do it, or you lived the rest of your life hiding in fear from the ultimate fear, death.
So in a way, this is all a strange way to try to explain, to myself, and to you, why I'm doing what I'm doing. And it's also because that voice that helped to carry me through my childhood has come back and life makes more sense when I follow it. I know that sort of sounds crazy, but it's not like "hearing voices" in the traditional sense of the term. It's not even really a voice, that's just the only way I can explain it in language. But it's more a feeling that's saying things to me like, "yeah, you can learn French. It'll take time, but you will be able to do it," "yeah, you could learn French well enough to take a competitive teaching exam that's even hard for French native speakers," "yeah, you'll feel lonely for a while, but then you'll find friends that will make you feel at home," "yeah, you can find a way back to teaching French kids your language and feel incredibly fulfilled doing so."
So—yeah.
Kayla
PS—I just came home from class to these two beautiful demonstrations of love, a letter from Marie & a card from my Nana :] Thank yooou!
Now I'm at a new beginning, and needing to write to sort things out and push myself back into a new experience.
Last year, I struggled through some dense moments of deeply feeling alone, and then sprung out of them to realise that I was living a life that brought me back in touch with the person I see myself to be. My job re-inspired me to fight for the future I see for myself. And I was so lucky to meet a few incredible people reached out to me to make me feel at home and to encourage me to listen to myself.
Before college, I remember every time heard the phrases "this is going to be really hard," "most people will fail doing this," and even "no one will succeed in doing this,"—whether it had to do with courses, music, or anything, really—a brave inner voice spoke to me saying, "but you could be different, you will be different. don't let what other people say bother you. just give it a try and see how it goes." And I never worried (..at least about things falling into place—but I worried about plenty of other things). Things always turned out okay. Usually much better than I thought they would. People took care of me wherever I went. I got the good grades. I got into the good college. I got my foot in the door here, I took it out just in time there. I said my humble thanks to the little voice that helped me to float above all the pressure and the discouragement.
Then suddenly that inner voice went away and the voices of everyone else took its place, and things started to fall out of place.
At this point, it's necessary to briefly touch upon what it's like to be twenty something in the 2010 plus somethings. We went to college. We got our degrees. We did our internships. We made our contacts. But we were we're told, and we are retold, and we saw, and we resee, that the jobs we wanted do not exist. That there isn't room or money to change the world in this way or that way. There isn't time to experiment and get better at something that attracts us.
There's no time for mistakes, or someone else gets your dream.
There are two ways to react to this pressure. Either, you take up something "useful" and fit yourself into the societal puzzle wherever you can find a place, and risk not being happy with that place. Risk spending the time you have on earth just making a spot for yourself to exist. Or you think—hey, everything is out of whack right now. Not many people are getting anywhere. So why not accept that reality, and use this time to do the things I want to do, since I know no matter what I do it probably won't be good enough and I probably won't be happy in front of a computer or behind a desk just trying to make myself "useful." It kinda feels a little to me like how people in the middle ages began to step out of strongly built societal standards during the Plague. People all around you were dying, so you either took the life you had left to do some crazy, out of the line things while you had the chance to do it, or you lived the rest of your life hiding in fear from the ultimate fear, death.
So in a way, this is all a strange way to try to explain, to myself, and to you, why I'm doing what I'm doing. And it's also because that voice that helped to carry me through my childhood has come back and life makes more sense when I follow it. I know that sort of sounds crazy, but it's not like "hearing voices" in the traditional sense of the term. It's not even really a voice, that's just the only way I can explain it in language. But it's more a feeling that's saying things to me like, "yeah, you can learn French. It'll take time, but you will be able to do it," "yeah, you could learn French well enough to take a competitive teaching exam that's even hard for French native speakers," "yeah, you'll feel lonely for a while, but then you'll find friends that will make you feel at home," "yeah, you can find a way back to teaching French kids your language and feel incredibly fulfilled doing so."
So—yeah.
Kayla
PS—I just came home from class to these two beautiful demonstrations of love, a letter from Marie & a card from my Nana :] Thank yooou!
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