The Rampage

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.-Anaïs Nin

 I love writing. I think it does a lot for me. I've had a lot to write about this year, and I've done a lot of it. Not only on my blog, but also for my American high school's newspaper. Throughout my year, I've written and sent in five articles. Each one covering a different subject. I thought I'd share them here as well, as it's two different audiences. There's a lot a reading a head so I inserted a page break after October's piece. Enjoy :) 

October issue: My First Month culture shocks

For my junior year of high school, I am 4,000 miles away, living with a family in Tournon-sur-Rhone, a small town in eastern France, and going to the local high school as an AFS exchange student.

All exchange students are bound to face some level of culture shock throughout their time abroad. I experienced it the moment I met my host family and had to “fait la bise.” La bise is the informal way to greet someone in France: three quick kisses, alternating cheeks, starting on the right. It is a very tedious way to greet a large group of friends but an important part of French culture. 

However, as an American in France, I face significantly fewer cultural differences than, for example, the Japanese exchange student at my school. Multiple times a day, people ask me “Do you have this in America?” and be it food, an activity, a store, or really any inanimate object, my answer is always “Yes.”  Of course, the chocolate croissants in Rockville do not compare to the ones here, still warm from the bakery across the street, but still, Rockville is rich with multi-cultural opportunities, robbing me from the chance to discover new ones abroad! 

On the other hand, school here works very differently. Instead of seven classes a day, every day, with different people in each one, in French high schools some days you have just two classes, and some days you have five, and you take all of them with the same group of kids. There are no cliques, because your friends are your whole class. People at school were shocked when I explained that at Rockville, students are in class with up to 100 different kids a day. They drew the conclusion that the cliques, that they know about from movies like High School Musical, are formed because classes with that many people would be overwhelming and you need a base group of friends. 

Speaking of movies, people constantly ask me whether they are an accurate portrayal of my high school in America. “Do you really have individual desks?” “Do you ride a yellow bus?  “Does your neighborhood look like the one on Desperate Housewives?” “Do you wear pink on Wednesdays?” Are all questions that people have wanted to know, okay, maybe not that last one, but still, it is apparent that people learn a lot from movies! That includes myself as well, as I know about teachers going on strike from a movie my French class watched last year. I am now experiencing it first hand as next Tuesday I many of my teachers will not be coming to school to protest the amount of teachers the school has had to lay off because of budget cuts. Sound familiar? I will let you know how their strategy works.

      Last year at RHS there was a lot of debate about having open lunch. The administration opposed it in part because of the danger of traffic around the school. Here, we have an open campus but traffic is not a factor because the school is in the middle of a town with cobblestone walking streets! Kids are free to come and go throughout the day, whenever their schedule does not call for them to be sitting at a desk. Two-hour classes have a recess that is long enough for me to pop into the shop next door to school and get an ice cream cone!  Another debate that arose last year while I was at Rockville was the length of the lunch period. Here it is one hour long on Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday is a half day so many people go home for lunch, and two hours long on Thursday and Friday. However, this is validated by the fact that the line for food takes a long time because everybody eats the schools food. 

 Which brings me back to those croissants I was talking about earlier; they are to blame for the weight I put on this year, not my lack of self-control!

December issue: smoking and alcohool

Part of what attracted me to spending a year in France was the image that defines the country. The history, language and food or course but what I think we all really picture when we think of France is something a long the lines elegant people lounging at side walk cafes.
Unfortunately in this picture, they also have a cigarette dangling from their fingertips and are sipping red wine in such a way that makes it look glamorous, and well, French.
What I have learned in the past three months of living in France is that this is not just an image we have of the country, French attitudes towards smoking and drinking do differ radically from in the US.
I can tell you from personal experience that no matter where you are in this beautiful country, you are impacted by smoking.
Be it the stink of smoke from the person sitting on the bench next to you (sometimes a kid as young as ten!) or the plethora of cigarette butts smashed into the pavement below your feet.
It is common for boys at school to wear lighter holders and rare to not be asked for a light at least five times a day.
When the bell rings, kids come flowing out of class with cigarettes already brought to their mouths, eager for their smoking break.
Administration, teachers and students all join together and together make a heavy cloud of smoke that looms outside of the school gates, as it is prohibited to smoke on school grounds.
Intrigued, I did my research and learned that the French government has made several attempts to cut back on smoking, including raising the price of cigarettes and printing “Smoking kills” in huge, bold letters all over the packs. But despite the effort, those threatening words are still sticking out of kids’ pockets all over France.
There is also a major difference in regards to alcohol. The age to buy alcohol in France was recently raised from 16 to 18 years old, but it is seldom enforced. Just like in the US, younger teens still manage to get their hands on alcohol. The difference is that here in France; it often comes, with permission, out of the parents’ liquor cabinet.
Also, “it” refers to wine and whiskey much more often than it does beer. Among adolescents, alcohol is served at the dinner table in glasses rather than at parties in red, plastic cups.
Wine is often mixed with orange juice and considered a beverage that goes with a meal, not a way to get drunk and party.
I think it’s fair to say that French teenagers are much smarter about drinking, but not so much about smoking.

January issue: school

Does there even exist a word in French for “multiple choice”? After completing my first trimester in the French school system I am left seriously doubting it. But the absence of any kind of test that is not an essay and the division of the year into trimesters instead of into quarters, are far from the only differences between the nature of academic life at Rockville and in France. Most importantly, French students study….

For the year equivalent to 11^th grade in the U.S, students decide between a course load that focuses on either literature, economy, or science. In doing so, they close the doors to certain career paths, depending on what track they choose. For example, a student who chooses to study literature has illuminated any chance of going to medical school later on.

The requirement to decide what to study at such a young age may come as a surprise to Americans who do not choose until college, and even then are often undeclared. This difference may also lead to the one I have observed in work habits. French high schools do not have sport teams or clubs, they have classes; consequently kids show up with one interest in mind, to go to class. They come with paper and fountain pens to take detailed, cursive notes as the teacher recites the day’s lesson. They may not have Promethean boards but they do have erasers that can erase pen!

Within a class there is a rank, and not only does everyone know who is first and who is last in the class, but also everyone in between. The availability to this information, that I always considered private, at least enough to have a password to access my edline account, is due to the fact that grades are returned orally.  Teachers recite each person’s name and grade and then they offer criticism on the students work. This does not seem to bother anyone else, they simply pick up their fountain pens and jot down the comments. When the paper copy of a student’s work is returned, everyone within arms reach of the student immediately asks to read his or her work.  

Because of this rank, the classroom holds an incredibly competitive energy. Although work and class notes are passed from person to person in order to help each other out, everyone's main concern is to be first in the class. There is no denying the serious attitude French teenagers have towards their academic performance. School spirit does not exist, instead a competitive and hard working nature.

March issue: America 

Never before would I have considered myself a patriotic person. There is no flag hanging on my porch but while living in France I found myself buying underwear with the American flag on them and feeling proud to be American. Surely this is the consequence of being called, “l’americaine” for six months. But it has left me thinking, what does it even mean to be American? 

Somewhere in the midst of introducing myself to people here in France, the fact that I’m American comes up. People have one of three reactions: positive, neutral or negative. I’ve seen all three and notice that they reveal something about the person. All three represent what being an American means, at least in the eyes of the French.

In general, those who jump up and down with excitement at the sight of an American are younger and watch a lot of TV. Since I go to high school, I’ve had the pleasure of making a lot of people jump up and down. I answer a lot of questions, show a lot of pictures and hear about a lot of “American dreams”. In the beginning, the idea that my nationality attracted so much attention seemed ridiculous. How could one, of millions of Americans, be so fascinating?

But now I understand that kids of other nationalities only see all these things that seem normal to me, on TV. Even something as simple as the golden seal on front of my U.S passport; which I only ever notice lying at the bottom of my purse, will leave my friends gawking. French kids have the same favorite TV shows as we do, except they watch them with a voice over and it appears that much more exotic.

All the attention makes me humble; after all, you do not choose where you are born.
I have a Venezuelan friend who told me that on her first day at school here in France everyone asked her if she was American. When she replied that no she was from Venezuela, people wanted to know if she had ever been to the United States. One girl even asked her if Venezuela was a fruit.
It seems like they are obsessed with our country! But it is understandable because these kids grew up encouraged to learn English and with an American influence all around them.

Now for those other reactions, since not everyone is amazed at meeting me, as surprising as that might seem.
Those who do not have much of a reaction tend to be well traveled. They know that between being American and French there is not a huge difference.

The negative reactions are far less frequent but typically come from an older generation who are very proud of being French. French culture is largely based on food, family and history. In geography class in French high school, we learn that the American culture is Coca Cola, Disney and McDonalds. As a result, the French are critical of the U.S because they tend to believe that Americans live on fast food, never eat as a family and also that we all own guns.

Someone once said to me that he wouldn’t want to visit the U.S because we have no history. We do not have the wealth of castles and cathedrals that France does but “old” simply has another meaning for us. It is not fair to say that we do not have our own history; after all we have played a major role in France’s past!

All three types of people are familiar and informed about the U.S, but differ in what they think it means to be American. To the French it can mean anything from being a cliché high school cheerleader, an imperialist or obese. I for one, am an exchange student who values this person to person contact with people of another nationality, if only to prove that I am neither of the three, but instead my own American self.

April issue: Why study a foreign language?

The United States is in headlines everywhere. Here in France, people often ask me if my family was impacted by storms reported on the news. Their television broadcasts CNN and their stores stock American brands. American fast food chains threaten the wonderful French cafes. My French friends play familiar American music at parties, and they wear shirts with English text that they don’t even understand! 

In addition to its native speakers, English is the most popular second language in the world, dominating the Internet and other media. In French high school you have to take not one, but at least two foreign languages, but English is one everyone chooses.  

Exchange students from non English-speaking countries don’t have the luxury of always being able to find someone who understands their native language. In this case, people use English to communicate. For example, my friend from Iceland has learned much more English here than French. And a French friend who went to China told me she spoke English the majority of her time there, as it was the only way to make herself understood. 



In class today, my teacher asked me to translate a letter she had written to a hotel. The class watched as I rewrote each sentence from French in English. I am bilingual. I’ve studied French since Kindergarten and lived here for eight months.  Becoming fluent in a foreign language takes enormous effort.  But what purpose does it serve as the world revolves more and more around English?  Why bother? If American culture is omnipresent around the world, why even take interest in other cultures?


Of course, it’s been shown that studying a foreign language raises SAT scores and improves verbal, language and even math skills. There are gains in everyday proficiencies such as memory and problem solving skills too. 

But what I value most in knowing a second language is the doors that it opens, doors to other worlds of people, and doors in your own head as well.  Life has a different color and texture when you’re living in another language. Words combine differently and so do ideas.

Fluency in a foreign language means that in the eyes of others you are not merely an American, who must be spoken to in English.   It makes you a regular person in their eyes, a real person, someone they can gossip with, joke around with and confide in. Someone they can be friends with. Having a second language allows you to eavesdrop on a culture and hear how that culture talks to itself, hear things not meant for your American ears.  That’s how you learn to understand another culture.  And then you understand your own culture from a whole new perspective. 


Learning a foreign language takes hard work. But the effort pays off in ways you couldn't even have imagined when you first started.