Here's to Being Black, Bold, and Broke

It’s easy to be French if you can shorten every word down to a single syllable, bear the smell of the stinkiest cheeses, drink more wine and coffee than water and carry as many baguettes as possible in your hands (max I’ve seen is 6).

Starting a new life in a new city is hard I know but I decided to one up that fact by moving to an entirely different country at 22 and that is certainly not for the faint of heart. France bureaucratically is a country where you can’t complete one task without starting another but you can’t finish that task unless you have completed something else. It’s like this neverending carousel and as a little American at the beginning I just wanted off. 

France makes things harder by acting as though they just discovered the internet within the last five years and are still trying to figure out how everything works. It’s like when your mom or dad asks you how to attach an image to an email, something that is rather simple for us is like rocket science to them.

One aspect of US life I took for granted was the late night hours of operations, the ability to go to Wal-Mart at 10 p.m. to pick up cheese, tampons and those amazing sugar cookies, here c’est pas possible. Here the latest a grocery store will stay open is 8 p.m. And you can kiss trying to do grocery shopping on a Sunday goodbye unless you can rise before noon, which I cannot. And the French strongly enjoy a long lunch that lasts about two hours from noon to 2 p.m. usually which means they are closed.

Now some very French things I have adopted into my lifestyle include walking everywhere – 20, 25, hell even 30 minutes walking I can now do that no problem. Saying “ouais” instead of “oui” as well as “putain” which is the French equivalent to fuck, shit or damn (it’s a rather versatile word). Eating a baguette religiously and enjoying a nice verre du vin preferably red wine but truly I am not picky at all. A huge perk of living in wine country is that a bottle of decent sweet wine can be as low as 2 euros and my friends and I add our little American flare to French wine drinking by doing it out of plastic cups which bridges both our lives here and our red, white and blue 50 stars DNA. Classy and semi-trashy.

My life here during the week is very relaxed which is something I enjoy highly. Now I recognize that it is so relaxed because I work two days a week and have plenty of free time the remaining days of my week. I believe Europeans have cracked the code on work-life balance that us in the US may never figure out (largely due to capitalism). 

But some of my best days are Tuesdays and Thursdays when I work – now I don’t realize it early in the morning when I wake up before the sun can even think to come up. But when I arrive at my school and am met with smiling faces and “Coucou Ra-ven” the early rising doesn’t seem so bad. Being around little kids and their positive energy and spirits is so infectious you can’t help but smile especially when the small hugs are never ending.

I can’t wait to look back in 10 years at all the little drawings I received of flowers, little faces, an ice cream with a smiling face and adoring eyes, candy and even things I’m not entirely sure what they are unless I tilt my head and squint my eyes. I’ll wonder where those sweet faces are then.

I’ve made great friends here who I spend most of my free time with whether it be getting together and having a glass or two (or three) to swipe around on dating apps judging mens’ profiles, having sleepovers and singing 2000s classics at the top of our lungs, or planning our next all nighter Paris rendez-vous because fortunately for us we live just an hour train ride from the big city.

In my free time that I’m not with my friends and I remain alone in my little studio apartment, I clean A LOT because you’d be amazed that even as a virgo I struggle with keeping my physical space clean. If not cleaning, I am jamming out to my music and making my American presence in my apartment complex known as Usher, Rihanna, Pitbull, and Lil Jon blare on my speaker like I’m in a popping club in the 2000s. I read, currently, Everything I know about love by Dolly Alderton or I write. I also plan for my life when I come back to the US, in that case of getting a big girl job (womp womp). 

But overall, I say it often – I love my little French life and the thought of leaving come May truly saddens me as this chapter of my life has brought me so much independence and growth. I’m incredibly proud of myself for making this move even when times felt tough or I was down to 5 euros in my bank account (like I am now). Having this experience has changed me for the better and shown me I can truly do anything I put my mind to and for this next chapter of my life – I needed this.