May 27, 2016
Something amazing happens when you stop trying to be someone/ something else. When you give yourself permission to be who and what you are you simply...come alive. As a part of discussion with Dominique I practiced meta-cognition; I thought about the way I think. As a result I realized one of the reasons I am so anxious about speaking, why I am so so insistent the children speak to me in French when we are in public. It is much deeper than simply wanting to practice French. It is because this whole time I have been trying to pass as French, to be French. "But you are not French," the quiet voice in my head declares. I don't have to pass as French because I'm not French. I am an American in France and upon both realization and acceptance of this fact I felt a weight lifted from me. I gave myself permission to be who and what I am...and it is exhilarating because I have allowed myself to be fallible and that is a beautiful thing.
I don't write very much anymore and it makes me sad. I have seen so much and there is so much I want to share, but so many other things seem to get in the way. I want to try and remedy this.
I have been here for a little over a month. It's a weird feeling. I have discovered so much and yet there's so much left to see and do that I am overwhelmed. Huge cities are daunting to me. Especially when they are so steeped in historical significance that it becomes daunting, the idea of just how much there is. I am trying to take it in pieces. One day the Champs-Elysees, another the Eiffel Tower, another The Louvre.
In smaller bits, I love St. Germain-En-Laye. There is a market that occurs during the weekends. It's this glorious series of stalls and stands under tents where you can buy bread, belts, books, flowers, tomatoes the size of your face, and crepes with Speculoos (which is this sort of cookie butter and it is SO good). It is also how I discovered that French people apparently don't get complimented often and react strangely. It is kind of fun to make a grown man blush and stutter.
I love it here. I am so happy here and it's such a peaceful happiness that I forget sometimes and then it hits me and I feel a warm and bubbly joy. Maybe, and this is sad, but being really, truly, and deeply happy is not something I have a lot of experience with so my brain can only process it in pieces. I kind of appreciate it. I am typically delighted by the little things, but there are so many "little things" that I think my mind siphons it off to departmentalize it so that later it hits me and my happiness just bubbles until it's hard to contain and I usually end up in happy giggles...much to the confusion of my host family or people around me.
Then it makes me a bit sad because 1/3 of my time is over. While I will return in October, it's be different because I will be further from Paris, which I'm not entirely sure is a negative. Everything is exciting and everything is quiet.
-Alicia R. Farrar
July 7, 2016
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