Life in Another Language

It doesn't come up a lot in my blog, but living life in French is sometimes absolutely exhausting. I take a lot of naps during the week even though I get a perfectly adequate amount of sleep (especially compared to semesters at Holy Cross) and on weekends where I'm not traveling, I get even more sleep.

Yet, I'm still drained all the time. You don't fully understand how much living life in another language can just exhaust a person until you actually do it. Language is almost automatic in our mother tongues, and we really don't have to think too hard about grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation, but in a foreign language, every word used poses a new struggle. Every phrase leaves you questioning the grammatical correctness. Every verb challenges in its conjugation even though I've been conjugating them for seven years now. (Is it imparfait? or passe compose? or how about we throw the subjunctif into the mix just for fun?) And for goodness' sake, I will never remember which words are feminine and which are masculine! As if "table" and "window" and "war" have such strong feminine qualities as to give them a decisive gender! And I'll have you know that "lipstick" is, indeed, masculine... at least according the the French. 

All of this is, without a doubt, so draining. Of course, I spend a decent amount of time living in English as well--for example, I Skype my parents and friends in English, I write this blog in English, I google a lot of things in English... but every social interaction outside of my computer involves French; every time I buy food at the super market, eat in a restaurant, sit on the tram, not to mention all my university classes and dinners with my host family!  

I'm especially tired today, after my TCF (Test de Connaissance du Francais). It was a monstrous 4-hour exam with a 15-minute interview, six essays, and seemingly a million reading and oral comprehension questions. In about two months I'll receive the results of the test announcing my language level... I'm really hoping I attained a C1 level, with is the first stage of advanced language fluency, but I'm pretty sure I'm just at a B2, which is intermediate fluency. Honestly, I'm just thrilled that the TCF is over. It's been hanging over my head since I arrived in Strasbourg back in September (goodness, that was a while ago!). 

This weekend won't be a relaxing one, either. Tomorrow morning I'm heading to the South of France with Kat and Malou for one crazy three-day weekend! We're squeezing in visits to four towns: Avignon, Arles, Marseilles and Aix en Provence. It promises to be both overwhelmingly awesome and exhausting. 

Even though I probably won't get much sleep this weekend (or next week, in general) I'm still really excited. I've been waiting to go to the famous South of France for months now! Fingers crossed that we'll have some more beautiful weather! I'll try to write again soon.