Writing in France

            I started writing in France. I was there on a three month exchange. Everyone told me to write down everything that happened. On my 4^th day there I turned 16 years old. I wrote about missing my family, about the restaurant my exchange family took me to for dinner, about the strange translation of menu items. Although I ordered coq-au-vin, “cow brain in peaches sauce” still comes to mind when I think of that day. I also think of the beautiful chocolate pear cake the waiters brought to our table, everyone singing in the candle light.

            In France I would write when I was sitting in a class as the teacher yelled at one of my friends and told him he would never amount to anything (this friend and I lost touch, so I can’t confirm or deny the teacher’s predictions). I wrote in the guest bedroom of my extended exchange family on a trip to Paris, feeling desperately homesick for the first time in my life. I wrote while I waited for the bus, while I sat in art galleries, in the city, next to the sea, every night, and every morning.

            A few years after I got back from France, I picked up one of the France journals. It depressed me. I had catalogued almost every agonizing moment. My journal entries were in chronological order and labeled not only with the date, but also the specific time at which I was writing. I had been aware of every second in that strange land.

            I’m not sure this journal writing was a healthy preoccupation. I wonder if my amazing last three weeks in France could have been an amazing eleven weeks if only I had broken out of my shell, slammed my culture shock straight-on, and put the journal down. But maybe all the writing was necessary. I’ve always needed time to process the world around me. Writing gave me that space to figure things out, or at least it gave me the chance to chronicle the very little that did make sense and the many things that made no sense at all.

While I was recording funny names of food, crying my heart out in Paris, and trying to survive the classroom, I now see that I was cultivating a beautiful gift. I am now a writer.