The End

We'd like to end the blog with a few reflections on our nine and a half months spent living in France.

One of the many delicious tarts we tried from our local bakery.

Cheese.

Lisa: Our year in France was an excellent one.  I was able to improve my French and see lots of the country, which has proved a great help for teaching this year already.  In addition, I found a job teaching French literature and Latin at a university in Minnesota, and was able to finish my dissertation and graduate this summer!  It was quite the whirlwind of a year--marriage, moving to France, traveling to twelve countries in under twelve months, moving back to the US, finishing a dissertation, graduating, and moving to a new state for a new job!  All in all, I'd call that successful!  

Where we worked.

It wasn't all cheese and pastry, though I'm still running those off!  The hours were long, and many of the students didn't want us there and didn't want to be there themselves.  Going from teaching students who chose our classes in the US to students who had to take these classes in France was quite a difference.  I taught two classes at a time at OSU, then six plus individual instruction, and now back to just three in Minnesota.  The best part about teaching all those classes at once was the fact that we were able to finish the hours of our twelve-month contract in about six.  

We really appreciated learning about a new culture, especially how civilized the people were and how people were much healthier in the time they spent at work and how they ate.  The fact that consumerism was also less ubiquitous was a nice change.  The travel was superb--I really miss discovering someplace new and amazing every other weekend.  We hope to get back to Europe soon!  We made great friends, especially in Estelle, Andrew, Margaret, Perrine, Thomas, Constance, and those who were friends with Aaron he met in classes.  We miss them a lot!

Typical Breton weather, though it did provide for
gorgeous greenery.

Aaron: There were certainly some depressing things about our time. The job could be pretty awful at times, especially the long hours in the fall semester. Plus, I'd much rather be teaching Greek and Latin, not English, so that, too, made it difficult to get used to. The Breton weather was pretty terrible: lots of rain and overcast almost every day. And in winter, when we only had about nine hours of daylight, it felt even more oppressive.

Friends.

But we got to meet some great people through our job and make some new friends, especially our colleagues Andrew and Margaret and my former student Sylvain and his friends. The other thing that made the whole experience bearable was the amount of traveling we did. I love traveling and seeing new places and monuments (or, really, old monuments that are new to me!) and we certainly did a lot of that. Before this year, I never expected to see 2/3 of the regions of France and seven new countries and make two more visits to Italy, let alone doing all of that in nine and a half months! I think the last two and a half months where we were traveling almost constantly helped erase a lot of bad memories related to the job and so I'm inclined to think much more positively about the whole experience. So I think the travel was my favorite part of life in France and I'm certainly going to miss that.

The other positive aspect I would like to share is that I think this year has strengthened Lisa's and my relationship. By starting our marriage abroad, without a lot of demands on our time beyond our job, we were able to spend a lot of time together, more than many newlyweds I imagine. And by both moving somewhere new, with few possessions, far from both our families, working essentially the same job, everything was very equal. It wasn't as if one of us was making significantly more money than the other or as if one of us had moved in to the other person's apartment, meaning it was still sort of one person's space. Instead, we were really able to start our marriage from scratch. Along the way, we learned how to solve problems together and how to spend time together. I think by laying this kind of foundation now, our marriage will be stronger in the long run.

Finally, now we're back in the States, it's hard to believe this year even happened. It all seems like a dream because it's all so distant from our everyday lives in the US. On the other hand, they're great memories and I'm so glad I was able to live in Europe for a second time, to see how people in another country live and to see so many of the historical sites I've read about and I teach about it. It was a good experience in many ways.

We'd like to close this final entry with two lists we made on the flight back to the US last month. First are things we won't miss about our life in France, followed by a list of things we will miss.

Even boats in a lock don't know how to wait in line!

Won't miss:
smelly students
unmotivated students
annoying French teenagers
enormous glasses/eye-wear/teenagers' ugly Rayban glasses
Breton weather
line-pushing/cutting
inability to buy Cheerios
pay toilets
no drinking fountains
bureaucratic paperwork
businesses closing for lunch
unfriendly store clerks
giving the bise and shaking everyone's hand every time you greet a friend (this is more about the fact that our students did this every time they came into class late)
taking up multiple seats on the train with a microscopic purse when you only need one
small bags of chips and crackers
the scarcity of American chain restaurants

But they will wait patiently in line for good bread.

Will miss:
Saturday market
la famille Fleury-Soubeyrand
cheese
bread and pastries
efficient, extensive public transportation system
ease of travel
friends
people talking quietly in public
having your own private bubble of communication
not seeing fat people
Andrew
Perrine
being able to see the Fleurys more than once a year
good chocolate
cidre
rondin de brebis cheese
not having people think we're weird for living the way we do


Thank you, everyone, for reading this blog. We hope you've enjoyed keeping up with our year of European adventures. Till the next time we move to Europe and blog about it - au revoir!

The Saturday market.

Andrew with an Easter pastry from our bakery.  (Note that
at Easter, we still had out Christmas "tree" up).