The Entire Last Year of My Life in France

Hello friends !

I haven't blogged at all this year, except to catch up on my blog posts from last year, which is just plain embarrassing. So I thought, why not give you a brief overview from this past year in Paris? I think it often helps me to write about my experiences so, in a way, this is as much for me as it is for you. For those of you who haven't heard, I will be living in Paris again starting in September, which is very exciting! I just can't get enough of France.

This past year I have had the pleasure of working with a Christian student organization called Agapé in Paris. It is an extension of Cru in the U.S. and we attempt to launch student movements on different universities, We are dedicated to sharing who we believe Jesus to be with students, helping students grow in their faith, and opening up dialogue around spirituality and religion in general in Paris. Never have I ever grown so much in my own faith, grown so much as an adult or met so many people that are different from me in political, religious, and ethnic backgrounds. It was a very rich experience that I never imagined would change me in so many way, and one for which I am immensely grateful.

I had the pleasure of working with a team of 8 other Americans and another long-term team of 3 Americans who became my family and who were very difficult to leave. As I have experienced before, friends you make abroad become very important friends—friends that stay with you for a long time and yet simultaneously you never really see them in real life. However, you've lived something life-changing with them and so you hold them dear to your heart.

The experience of being a foreigner is particular. People often think it's easy to live in a country like France. It's beautiful, it's romantic, and it's Paris, for goodness sake! These things are all true and of all the foreign countries France is a pretty amazing place to live. However, I've found that living abroad comes with specific hurdles.

Some thoughts on living abroad:

1. You will always feel like a foreigner. No matter how long you live there. You begin to fall into a rhythm and you feel more comfortable with the language and the people but you never really will feel French. I feel more American abroad then I ever have at home. I never even thought about being American (what that means about who I am, the way I was raised, my worldview, etc) until I left the country the first time in 2014. I am very proud to be from California and to have grown up surrounded by the ideas and people that I have been surrounded by—a thought which never crossed my mind before moving out of California and particularly this year on a team of people from all over the country.

2. You may never feel like a native but you will have an increased ability to appreciate the foreign culture as well as your own. As a foreigner, you sit on the outside in a special way, where you can see your own culture, but you're removed from it, and you can see the new culture, but you aren't completely inside of it. In this way, you can get a better hold on the positives and negatives of your own culture and the new culture. You begin to see that there isn't one right way to do things but many right ways. This shapes your vision of your future life.

3. When you are in one country, the other country always feels more like a dream than reality. I think this is a normal human thing to do. When you leave a place, you don't have as much time to physically spend in it and so your mind occupies it less. I think often about my time at Cal but I don't have the same mental hold I had on it as when I lived there. However, the feeling is intensified with living abroad because the two places seem like different worlds. There are different foods, cultures, languages, ideas, etc. They really are two distinct places. And your experience was (normally) so vivid you think you should be able to hang on to it more tightly. That you should be able to see it clearly because it was so instrumental to your life. But, life gets in the way. You have responsibilities and joys in the place you've moved back to and the foreign country or home country begins to feel blurry around the edges. I'll call it the flou effect. Because flou means blurry in French and that seems apt to describe a halfway between France and the States kind of place.

I'm sure I've written about all this before but I never fail to relearn lessons I've learned before. Anyways, I intend to post some pictures of this year too for those of you less wordy folks.

Photos to come of Paris (duh!), Belfast, Salzburg, Olhão, Malaga, Vogüé, Granada, Toulon (yes, again!), Monaco, Carqueiranne, Latte, and all the other cities I got to see this year!

Cheers to cross-cultural understanding!

Académie de Nice

When I got accepted into TAPIF, I was hoping for Lyon (the region where I had previously studied abroad). Instead, I was placed in Rouen (a very northern city full of museums but very cold). Then about three months before I was set to leave, I was asked if I would be willing to change to the Académie de Nice. At the time, I had to think about it (silly me!) but I swiftly accepted and I am really happy I did.

I wasn't originally attracted to Nice at all. Nice is known for the fancy cars, the beaches, and the omnipresence of the sun: "toujours au soleil". In the end, I accepted because it would be nice weather, it was closer to Lyon, and Rouen really did not entice me. That being said, I was pleasantly surprised to find a place full of nature so stunning I felt like I was in paradise, sun nearly every day, and wonderful people.

I didn't end up anywhere near Nice. I was placed in a small city called la Seyne-sur-Mer, in fact, which is about a 20 minute bus ride outside of Toulon. I worked in two middle schools there Monday through Thursday. I decided to live in Toulon because it was a bigger city. Toulon is about 2 hours west of Nice along the southern coast of France and 45 minutes east of Marseille. It is the second biggest naval base in France. The city itself is a little run-down. All the locals would tell you it has nothing to do and "ça craint" (it's a little dangerous). They would also tell you that it was heavily bombed in WWII and they never quite rebuilt it the same, which is why it seems more run-down. Despite the buildings that are a little rough around the edges and the sometimes seedy situations, Toulon is a beautiful city in its own right. The buildings are brightly colored and the squares are hidden but lively. If you know where to look, you can find hidden gems of restaurants and boutiques. My favorite part is that it is surrounded by little towns with gorgeous beaches, either a quick bus ride, boat ride, or train ride away.

The Mediterranean coastline is breathtaking and it is not lacking around Toulon. If you click on my previous post about Travels in the Académie, you can see what I mean. It is mostly rocky beaches with bright blue, clear water. There is a lot of hiking, striking cliffs of rock near Toulon, calanques (special rocky inlets) found closer to Marseille. The area is special because you are sandwiched between the mountains and the sea. The people in the South also remind me more of Californians. People are wont to talk to you in the bus or on the train, for a few minutes or your entire ride. People are louder and a little more free. People may tell you that people from the South are more superficial (that's what they say about Californians too) but I haven't found that to be true. The friends I have met there are kind and they sacrificed their time, effort and belongings for me more than once. My landlord's mom who lived below me drove me to the hospital and waited with me for two hours when I was hit by a car. My landlord from last year invited me to stay with her the last time I was there to visit and pulled out all the stops to entertain me. One of my colleagues often invited me over to her house for dinner to spend time with her family and she lent me all my Christmas decorations. My friend, Laura, and I exchange cards often and I always have a place with her when I go to Toulon.

Some of my suggestions if you're going in the area:

Toulon Sights:
Cap Brun (secluded beach)
Mourillon-Rue des Lamargues (boutiques and cute terrasses to have a drink)
Plages de Mourillon (beaches)
Télépherique de Mont Faron (ride it to the top and enjoy a drink up there)
Take a Bateau-Bus to Les Sablettes (beach in La Seyne-sur-mer)
Place de la Liberté
The open-air market on Cours Lafayette (everyday but Mondays I believe)

Restaurants/Bars in Toulon:
Le Bistrot des artistes
La Tortue (on the port!)
Le Petit Marché (BEST café gourmand: 3 desserts and a coffee)
L'aparté (delicious and HUGE lunches)
L'aromate provençale (I never ate there but heard good things)
Havana Café: bar with comfy outdoor seating
Bar à Thym: neighborhood bar (salsa nights on Sunday)
L'arbre à bulles: hipster cocktail bar (no sign so it can be hard to find)
Café Polyglot: cafe with language exchange

Cities around Toulon:
La Seyne-Sur-Mer: beaches are the main attraction (Les Sablettes, Tamaris)
Six-Fours-les-Plages: smaller town, more families, beautiful peninsula called Gaou, biking trails
Sanary-sur-Mer: smaller town, beaches, big outdoor market Wednesdays
Saint-Mandrier-sur-mer: take a boat bus from Toulon, little island town with nice walking paths
Carqueiranne: small beach town, port has a great bakery and creperie, one of the beaches is a rock pile beach!
La Ciotat: strange rock formation that you can hike!, old factories for shipbuilding, famed city where pétanque was created
Cassis: absolute favorite city around here, hiking the calanques, boat tours, swimming in the turquoise waters, la Défonce is my fav restaurant!
Hyères: calmer town, beaches, and connection to Ile des Porquerolles where you can snorkel in the summers
Bandol: another good option!
You can also take ferries to Corsica from Toulon!

Travels within the Académie of Nice

This post is going to be a bit of a flashback to my beloved time in Toulon. Right before I left for home in May of 2016 I took a ton of trips around Toulon to Cassis, Nice, and the Île des Porquerolles. But I thought I would put all of my wonderful South of France pictures from last year, make you all a little jealous :). I lived in a beautiful place for a year. I miss it lots!

Starting with Toulon:

View from my beloved home! 

Telepherique du Mont Faron

Mont Faron looking over Toulon

Walk home

Île des Embiez

Île des Embiez

Home on Saint-Mandier-sur-Mer

Port of Saint Mandrier-sur-mer

Marseille: Notre Dame de la Garde

Charlotte in Hyères

Plage des Almanarres-Hyères

Sanary-sur-Mer

Next to Les Sablettes: la Seyne-sur-mer

Toulon train station again

Presqu'île de Gaou

Gaou

Gaou: Australia Day

Gaou: Six-fours-les-plages

Cap Brun: Toulon

Toulon/Le Pradet

Emma: La Ciotat

La Seyne-sur-mer

Most of the assistants: Ara is hiding!

Some colleagues from Paul Éluard

Church friends at SpeedKart!

May Travels: Barcelona, Spain

Hello friends. I am nearly a year late with posting my travels so at this point I cannot be bothered to write everything that I actually did in all my travel locations but I am going to post the pictures anyways. At this point, I think this blog has become more for me than anyone else....but I hope for that to change someday soon. These photos are photos from my second leg of my May travels with Ara. We went to Barcelona ! And it rained a lot of the time ! But we saw the Mediterranean and the beaches, we walked around the city tons, saw pretty cathedrals, had tapas and sangria, and then took a 10 hour overnight bus back to Marseille (I WILL NEVER DO THAT AGAIN). Oh, other exciting things include: La Sagrada Familia (probably my favorite part), speaking Spanish to our Airbnb host (I had been practicing last year), and ordering churros and chocolate in Spanish!!

Tapas!

Parc Guëll

Sagrada Familia

Nespresso joke hehehe

Travel buddies finally enjoying sun!

Barcelona also has some of the coolest architecture! I would love to return when the weather is nicer so that I could get a better feel for the city.