My Story

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.

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