My first day of classes–eager to practice what I’d been studying for so long–I found myself in a conversation with a French student. Moving through all the little small talk, like “What’s your name?” and “What are you studying?” my face lights up once we get to “Where are you from?” 

In my best French, I try to say that there’s also a city called Bayonne in New Jersey, and how our Bayonne happens to be the Rizzler’s hometown. And, after about five seconds of nothing but him looking back at me with a blank expression, he switches to perfect English to give his response: “What is a Rizzler?”

It wasn’t the first conversation I had during my semester abroad–and it definitely wasn’t the first time I found myself tripping over my words–but it’s probably one of the more memorable instances of running face-first into a language barrier since the plane touched down in Bordeaux, France.

I started taking French classes in my freshman year here at Rowan, but before the plane even touched down to kick off my semester, I could tell that wasn’t going to get me very far. My French is limited, both in my ability to string together scraps of meaning from what I hear and in my ability to speak and express anything more complex than “yes,” “no,” and “hello” through my words. 

Every day, I catch myself throwing English into my speech whenever I don’t know the French, and, even when I think I know the words I’d like to use, I speak with an accent so thick that I find that I’m damn near impossible to understand.

And it’s been a heck of a lot of fun because of that.

Laughing along when they realize that (no matter how many times they demonstrate) I’m completely unable to sound my “R”s from the back of my mouth, stumbling my way through social graces in another language, getting real experience with something I’ve only ever been able to interact with in a sterile classroom before now. It’s an amazing opportunity to be able to play the foreigner, and I’m lucky to be in a position where I can make the most of this time.

Honestly, the biggest thing I’ve come to learn from this experience so far is the power of smiling. I couldn’t tell you how much I smiled in my day-to-day life before I came here, but I do know that, however much it was, it wasn’t nearly enough. 

It took living somewhere with a language barrier to realize just how powerful a big, stupid grin is to communicate something along the lines of “I am nice/please be nice to me too,” yet no matter how stilted my attempts at speaking in this language may be, I’ve yet to have an interaction that didn’t feel genuinely warm and enjoyable if it began with me wearing a big smile. 

I’m not sure yet what I’ll have to do to really learn this language, but I’m sure it’ll come with time–and, even if it never does, I think I can sleep okay knowing that there’s worse places to be lost.

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