I have been asked so often about how I grew up,
what I learned, how I feel about it; and to my surprise almost everybody seemed
stunned by my answers. So I decided to write it down. To tell you about my
experiences and what I learned from it. And maybe you can gain something from
it.
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| Me as a child in Germany |
I was born in Germany and lived there until I
was 13. In 2001, though, when I had just finished sixth grade, my father
received a job offer from a French company to come and work for them in France.
I was thrilled. I had always wanted to go to France on vacation but, even after
relentless begging, my parents had constantly refused. The reason for this was
simple: none of us spoke a single word of French. My parents, having been
raised in Germany’s former East, had learned Russian in school and only a
little bit of English. And I, I was only 13 and already struggling with my
first foreign language: English. Nevertheless, that summer we packed everything
up, took the leap, and moved out of our comfort zone. Just before leaving, in
an attempt to overcome the somewhat significant language barrier, my mother
enrolled in a “French crash course”. I, on the other hand, new exactly five
words of French: bonjour, au revoir,
merci, pardon, and bonsoir…
hello, goodbye, thank you, excuse me, and good evening. Enough to carry on a
conversation, right? Anyway, I was determined to use them. I am not going to
lie, saying goodbye to my friend and everything that I had previously known was
not easy. And although it was probably the hardest thing I ever had to do, I
could not wait for this new adventure to start. I had always been very close to
my parents and it was probably this relationship that made the transition so
much easier. So, in late summer we moved into our new house. Neighbors quickly
came to visit, wanting to introduce themselves, telling us things and asking us
questions that we did not understand.
By September I started attending an
international school and was introduced into a program that was aimed at
teaching me the language as quickly as possible. Even today, I am still amazed
at the effectiveness of this program: eighteen months later, I spoke the
language fluently with almost no accent. I wrote short stories and essays, read
books and newspapers, and loved it. I don’t consider myself particularly
talented with language. I attribute my fast pace mostly to the French
themselves and there utter refusal to speak anything but French regardless of
whether you understand them or not. I remember my first French class, for example,
a French class for foreign kids, all from different parts of the world, Russia,
Columbia, Australia, England, Germany… none of whom were able to say one single
French sentence. Boom, door opened,
our teacher came into the room and blabla
bla blabla. (Blank stares from us kids.) French. Everything in French. She
refused to speak anything but French with us.
Getting my lunch in school was another massive
challenge. Although I went to an international school, where every student
spoke at least another foreign language and most of them spoke very good
English, the ladies serving lunch at the cafeteria followed the strict
“French-or-nothing policy”. After having a friend tell me what to say, I
quickly had to memorize the words, practicing them over and over in my head
while standing in line, until it was my time to ask for the food and then pray
that I would actually get what I wanted to eat.
Another thing I was not really prepared for
were heavily the flirtatious guys. In Germany guys never just came up to me on
the streets. Why would they? I was just thirteen and didn’t really think there
was anything interesting about me. But in France, it was a completely different
ballgame. I remember one incidence in particular: I was just walking through
the city on my way home from school and there was a group of guys sitting on
the other side of the streets. One of the guys got up and half-way yelled
something across the street to me. I, in my oblivion actually and thinking he
actually wanted to tell me something serious. Stopped and politely asked him to
repeat what he had said. He grinned and repeated it while the others started
giggling in the background. Still I did not understand anything and with the
same proper politeness, I, naïve as I was, told him that I was very sorry but
did not understand him. It took me some weeks and many more of those
encounters, which as time went on I learned to ignore, to grasp what they had
probably said: some variation of the never inventive, never creative and
oh-so-repulsive pick-up line that I would hear all the time. Even walking down
the streets with my mom, we were hid on, “Mother and daughter! Looking good
today. Watcha doing later?”. As I learned later overly aggressive and
hormonally driven guys was a common theme in southern countries. It must have
something to do with the heat… ;)
Back to my story. After a year and a half my
father received an assignment in the USA, in South Carolina more specifically
and was asked to move there. And although I really enjoyed living in Lyon, had
great friends, did well at school, my parents gladly took the opportunity
because they had a much harder time. My
mother, who had always been working and also wanted to work in France, did not
find a job. My father made little progress learning French and preferred
speaking English at work. His colleagues however did not really want to abandon
their native tongue just for my dad’s sake. Socially, we were never able to
really connect with the French and mostly socialized with other foreign families.
So in April 2005, we packed everything again and moved to the US. This time,
though, we left many of our things in storage in France partly because European
electronics don’t work in the US and partly because we would only stay for two
to three years or so we thought. Again saying good-by was hard, so hard. There
were lots of tears but this time I was prepared for the sadness, the loss, and
it was not so hard. And just like last time I felt the lure of the adventure,
the excitement, the anticipation of the new. So bags were packed and off we
went. Just a skip, a hop and an ocean away and “welcome y’all” there we were.
Just like last time, my dad had gone ahead and
found an apartment that we temporarily lived while waiting for all of our
furniture to make the much more tedious journey across the ocean by boat. As it
turned out we had to wait a long time because our container was stuck in the
French harbor, in which the workers had decided to go on an extended strike.
That’s another thing you have to learn to live with in France: strikes. The
first time we arrived, the trash companies had decided to go on strike,
refusing to pick up any garbage…in the summer…lovely. Public transportation
would regularly interrupt their services, rendering the city vast and impossible
to navigate without a car. My favorite form of strike though was when the
teachers decided to lay down their work. This usually happened right before the
summer holidays and often gave us an additional week of time off. Heaven!
Just shortly after arriving in South Carolina,
I distinctly remember my first conversation with a true South Carolinian, which
actually wasn’t a conversation at all, more like utter confusion. I considered
my English to be pretty good. I had made many English speaking friends in Lyon
with whom I was happy to speak anything other than French. So there I was in
South Carolina in the line at the supermarket and the cashier asked something. Huh? What?
Well, nobody had told me about the southern accent. It was like a
completely different language. I also quickly learned, sometimes in combination
with a considerable amount of humiliation, that there was a occasionally a
significant difference between British English, which I had learned, and
American English. Embarrassing moments in this learning phase included asking
my English teacher (in front of the whole class!) for a “rubber”. My teacher,
wide eyed and slightly flushed, replied after a pause, “You want an elastic,
right?” Well, at least I never made that mistake again.
In SC, I was enrolled in a French school
because I didn’t want to lose the language but after one year I decided that
French high school was not for me and I switched to an American school, where I
earned the International Baccalaureate, an international high school diploma
that is also recognized in Europe. I loved it there. I made great friends, went
to football games, prom, chanted along with cheerleaders...
South Carolina and the States have become home.
My parents are here, our house, our lives, friends…
After finishing high school, in 2009, I took a
year off and went to Peru to volunteer there. For college, my parents wanted me
to go back to Germany and I was not ready to so. So I escaped to South America.
I was definitely pushed outside my comfort zone. But in the end, the
experiences I had there were invaluable. I was on my own in a South American
country and had to adapt to a culture that was so very different from
everything that I had ever known. I met amazing and inspiring people along the
way and made lasting friendships.
After my “year of adventure” I was finally
ready to continue with my education. So I packed my bags again, this time on my
own, and moved to Germany to go to college. It was definitely hard. Again, I
had to move away from my friends. But this time I also left my parents and,
even harder, my boyfriend behind. My boyfriend and I had been together for 4
years. So breaking up was not an option for us. This meant that we would both
face the excruciation of a long distance relationship. It definitely was not
easy but we made it through my entire undergrad and now we are, again, facing
another long distance relationship, as I am preparing to start my graduate
degree this fall.
All this moving around has definitely changed
me. I have learned invaluable lessons. Not only did I learn new languages, but
I also learned some things that can never be taught by teachers or textbooks. I
learned that people in different countries sometimes see things differently and
that although their perspective might not be your perspective, it definitely is
not wrong. Learning to accept these differences allowed me to grow as a person,
which has let me to better understand others and ultimately understand myself.
Along the way I developed a love for cooking. I
like to cook and experiment with healthy food but I also love recreating great
dishes that I had at restaurants. I love to travel, to see different places, to
meet new people. And I love fashion. I mean I LOVE fashion. I hope you can gain
something from my blog, that you maybe find it inspiring.
xoxo Norma
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