8 months ago we arrived in France exhausted yet praising God that we successfully arrived in country with all our luggage and all our children. Lord willing, 8 months from now, we will arrive in Cameroon with all of our luggage and all our children. As we are at the half-way mark, we thought we would reflect on our last 8 months here in France:
Turns out Language Learning is Hard
On our flight to France, I was explaining to a girl I was sitting next to that French would be easy to learn since it has a lot of similarities to English. She looked at me and laughed and said nice and slow for me that French was a different language and that learning another language is not easy. I thought to myself, “Oh sure, I guess it might be a little challenging.” Further, everyone says that English is everywhere, right? So I was sure there would be enough English around for us to make it by until we learned French. Boy was I wrong. English is NOT in Albertville, France and it turns out that learning another language is incredibly difficult and incredibly humbling. When we landed, we could not read one sign. We wandered around lost for months. I guessed what spices to buy at the store because I did not know how to read the labels (good thing all the spices look the same). We could not understand the announcements at church or at school. We could not read the signs on the door of our kids school telling us that there would be a strike and to not bring our kids to school the next day and so we showed up the next day wondering why the doors were locked.
We have inadvertently said and done painfully awkward things. I have walked into a men’s locker room to men taking off their pants while trying to practice their English with me. An anonymous person in our family commented to a woman that she had a dog on her shirt…but accidently said she had a dog IN her shirt to which she pointed inside her shirt and explained that what was in her shirt was her, not a dog. I have accidently kissed people on the lips instead of kissing the air while touching cheeks. Me and my English speaking children were the topic of conversation for an extended period of time at a meeting at my kids’ school. And then we keep talking about heaters instead of unemployment, condoms instead of preservatives, we keep using future tense instead of past tense and so on. And as if these mistakes were not painful enough the first time, we keep repeating them!
The Progress has been Painful, but it is Progress Nonetheless
God Really is Everywhere
What a great post. I am curious if the kids picked up French faster than you and Dave?
This is sweet, and we relate in so many ways. Our kids came home from school singing South Asian Jingle Bells (including lots of La-la-la's and interesting modulations) – in July. Our family was the subject of the address at the end of school last year. We have said so many things that were embarrassing to ourselves, and others. And yet we cherish those moments of connecting with people in the language, and sometimes we lie in bed and night and remember that the progress is real. Love your perspective and thoughts on Psalm 139. Blessings and Merry Christmas to you guys!