Reconcile

I apologize for the delay - after my internet died when I originally worked on this, I just kept forgetting to come back and attempt again to post it! Now that I'm getting ready to put up the next one, of course I remember now. Je m'excuse.

reconcile • \REK-un-syle\ • verb

1 a : to restore to friendship or harmony
b : settle, resolve

*2 : to cause to submit to or accept something unpleasant

3 a : to check (a financial account) against another for accuracy
b : to account for

reconcile (Merriam-Webster.com)

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Part of learning a foreign language is learning the culture, as we all know. We usually start in a classroom, and the lucky ones among us get the chance to go abroad, whether for a couple of weeks or a summer or a year. As we learn about a new culture, we are given a new mental task, whether we are conscious of it or not: to reconcile the two cultures in our minds. This speaks to the first definition for most people in that they try to establish a sense of harmony between the two cultures, but of course there are also those who see learning a new culture as unpleasant and uncomfortable (which might call on the second definition). I think that the reconciliation that happens between two cultures is born of discomfort or another form of dissonance but resolved in harmony.

Thought: A little discomfort can be good for you.

Discomfort shakes everything up. It's about being outside our comfort zones, thinking beyond what we already know. And yes, it is also about reconciling things. It's sometimes positive and sometimes negative - it all depends on how you react to it. You can take your discomfort as negative and cling to what you know to the point that you see nothing else. You can also take your discomfort as a positive development; it can be an opportunity, and it can in a way enhance your experience.

So I went to Europe 3 days after finals ended in May 2005. I had just graduated with my MAT and this trip was my graduation present. I went with my good friend Liz, who had been to Europe before. I had never gone. We had not made any plans except a loose idea of where we wanted to go and when (and of course our plane tickets). I don't know how many of you know this about me, but I do like to have a plan. I can't do the whole "fly by the seat of one's pants" thing. Anyway, we got on our plane with our backpacks. I should probably mention at this point that we were doing the "backpacking" thing. After the longest plane ride I've ever been on (the Houston to Paris flight was 10 hours), Liz and I arrived in Paris at 11:30 am their time. We totally missed baggage claim the first three times we passed it, but managed to recover our bags and get out. Our next step was to find a hostel. Because we left a mere three days after graduation and had had finals and other things on our minds, we hadn't planned ahead, but Liz hadn't ever had a problem just walking into hostels before, so we figured we'd be fine. The first place we went turned us down, and the lady was kinda mean and snippy about it. We went to another one, and were unable to find beds there, either. Luckily, the man working the desk was very nice and he even called ahead to another hostel for us to reserve beds. By the time we got to the hostel where we were going to stay, we had been trekking around Paris for three hours with heavy backpacks. We dumped our stuff, changed out of our super-sweaty clothes, and went out to start enjoying the city. At this point I was extremely uncomfortable, and there was a part of me that felt a little bit like I shouldn't be there, like I wasn't ready for it. My first few hours in France were full of sweat, confusion, and a lot of walking around. I think you could agree I was pretty uncomfortable at this point. It may be a stereotype, but I think that Americans don't really enjoy things that make them uncomfortable like that.

Then we went out. We hit Notre Dame and walked all along the Seine looking at the bouquinistes and marveling at how pretty it all was. We went to this neighborhood with a lot of really nice shops where Liz had spent a lot of time when she studied in Paris. We stopped into this tea shop called Ladurée where it smelled absolutely heavenly. I had this wonderful pastry that tasted like roses and was all pink with all this rich yet light cream on it, with some raspberry jam on the inside. I took a picture of it; it was so pretty. I'm pretty sure this was it:



Last stop on this day was the Eiffel Tower. I didn't go all the way to the top, but I did go up to the first level. Even from there you could see so much of Paris. It was absolutely beautiful. The main thing about that first day was that nothing really felt real to me yet. It was all very dreamlike, perhaps because it had been such a long day. It wasn't until I went up in the tower that I finally felt like I was really there. I was in PARIS. I had put aside all that discomfort and my lazy American impulses and I was here, just taking it all in. I was reconciling my fatigue and my fear of the new with all the things that I had always dreamed of seeing and the fact that I was actually there.

The rest of the trip featured several more episodes of discomfort along the way, as well as stops in Marseilles and Cannes in France and Florence and Rome in Italy. That initial experience of having to make peace with my day was still what I returned to each time something awkward happened to us (and believe me, awkward things happened).

Next up: girandole.