Most people have a moment when they’re travelling where they realize, “Wow, I’m actually here, in a foreign country.” In Paris, people usually have that moment when they see the Eiffel tower. For me, I realized I was really in France when I saw male strippers on the metro.
I had just spent three weeks in Switzerland, and from what I’d seen, busking doesn’t even happen there, let alone buskers stripping on public transportation. So never in my wildest dreams did I expect that within five minutes of setting foot on French soil I would be desperately trying to get my suitcase out of the way of a stripper who had just ripped off his pants and flung himself upside down on a pole. The strippers, by the way, were wearing briefs with maps of the metro on them.
That was how my sojourn in France began — a month studying, living with a host family, and eating way too much ice cream. Every June, the U of A holds the La Rochelle Study program on the Atlantic coast of France. You take FREN 333 and 499 with a U of A prof, so the credit is guaranteed, and get to live with a French family. The application process begins in the fall, and all the info is on the uAlberta website. Standard tuition and fees apply, and the estimated total cost of the program, including meals, accommodations, and transportation, is $3,000.
France was always interesting, at times bizarre (re: metro strippers), and a lot of fun. I lived in a little house on a narrow street filled with pink hollyhocks with a family of five. My host mom was an artist, so instead of a garage there was a ceramics studio at the front of the house. Connected to that was a vividly aquamarine kitchen, which opened on to a narrow backyard and a cherry tree brimming with cherries. My bedroom floor was carpeted with painted fish. At first I was very shy with the family, but the kids, especially the youngest, who was eight and played the organ, helped with that. The first night at dinner, wide-eyed, he asked, “Do you have tigers in Edmonton?” Sadly, I had to answer no, which deflated him until he asked me if we had numbers in Edmonton. He seemed to think he wouldn’t have to learn math if he lived in Canada. My favorite of his questions though, was when he politely asked me if Edmonton had a regional cheese.
Actually living in France was very different than what I thought it would be. Initially, I had visions of tramping through the French countryside, easel strapped to my back, painting en plein air just like Monet, except without the beard. In my daydreams, I didn’t think to imagine the flies, gnats, wasps, and spiders that saw my palette as a landing pad and my paper as a beacon. It’s hard to be picturesque while trying not to fall off a rock, clutching a floppy orange hat, and smearing bug guts into my watercolors with my paintbrush. Much of the trip was like that, watching the sunset at the beach turning into watching a fire across the way burn merrily for half an hour until fire trucks finally showed up (we called them, and they put us on hold). Or going to interview an artist for a class project and meeting her friend, a surf instructor who lived in his car and also happened to be a spiritual medium. To cap it all off, on a trip to Dordogne a killer wasp (or something like it, all I could understand were the words for wasp and death) got into our car for a very exciting five minutes as we drove through the forest.
Other than the brush with killer insects, it was a really great experience, and I’d definitely recommend the program. My French got so much better, and even though there was a lot of schoolwork, having the choice of three or four beaches to head to after class was wonderful. I wish all homework could be done on a beach. La Rochelle offers a unique opportunity to experience a place like a local, to eat delicious pastries, dance in funky outdoor bars, and live in a different language. And who knows, you could even be lucky enough to see the metro strippers on the way there.
