Ansley Stone

An elderly woman and her husband sat next to me on my flight from Paris to Lyon. As I looked out the window, knitting a scarf to pass the time, I heard her soft voice trying to catch my attention. She pointed to my knitting needles and made a motion that I didn’t understand. I asked her in French what she was telling me to do, and she responded that I was holding the yarn inefficiently. With much patience and my untested, classroom French, she eventually taught me a way to hold my needles that made knitting much quicker and easier. My first conversation with a French person was not about anything I had studied before in class, rather it was about a hobby that I happened to be doing on a plane next to the correct person. Not only was I surprised that a French person reached out to me, but I was taken aback that someone would be willing to offer up a helpful tip to a young student without prompting. While this was my first unexpectedly positive interaction with a French person, it certainly wasn’t the last.

 

My time in Lyon was not only a time during which I learned the French language. I also learned, experienced, and lived in a culture different from my own. Before I went to Lyon, I thought that I simply wanted to strengthen my grammatical skills in French, to make a couple of friends and have a good time. I did not anticipate falling in love with the diligent yet easy pace of life in Lyon, the addictive power of a tarte au praline, or how easily I would slip into routines in the grand city. I assumed that my time in France would be a time when I attended class, ate good food, and experienced some much needed independence. I never expected to learn and live so much more.

 

I studied abroad through a third-party program, the University Studies Abroad Consortium (USAC), and took classes at Université Catholique de Lyon, in the middle of the city. I was in France from mid-January to mid-May in 2022. I lived alone in a studio apartment, as homestays were very limited, but I ended up fully loving and embracing my living situation. I had to learn how to grocery shop and fend for myself completely in a new city, new country, new continent. The extent of my experience overseas has been in Medellin, Colombia (where I spent two summers volunteering), and suffice it to say that it was very different from France. Although, it is where I decided to study language. I decided that I never wanted anyone to accommodate me by having to speak my language in their country. My life in South Carolina is also very different from how I lived in France, from the people I interacted with, to the food I ate, classes I attended, and even the language I spoke.

 

One cultural aspect that I was not expecting to make such a large impact on my semester was the ease of transportation in Lyon. There were four ways of getting around the city using public transportation: metro, tram, bus, and funicular. Utilizing a metro card (that cost just €25 a month, I was able to take all of these an unlimited amount of times. I lived close to the Liberté station, about six tram stops away from my school in Place des Archives. It was exceptionally easy to travel around the city, and most trams and metros had just a 2-10 minute wait between them. The funiculars were only used to go up the hill on the west side of the city to the Roman amphitheater and the Basilica of Fourvière. 

 

In South Carolina, you need to drive almost everywhere you go, unless it is on campus (like at Clemson). But in Lyon, I never had a need for a car. If I wanted to leave the city, trains were cheap and there were two stations within walking distance (and just off of tram and metro lines). Buses could be a little tricky, as you had to let the driver know when your stop was coming up, but it didn’t take too long for me to figure it out. Before the weather warmed up, taking the tram to school was a lifesaver, and made my mornings much more enjoyable. Plus the tram line I took went right along the Rhône river, so I had amazing views every day.

 

One of my more memorable experiences was going to Marseille for a weekend trip in early April. I took a train on a Friday afternoon to the coastal city and met up with a family from my home church that lived there. On my first night, the family that hosted me had over some of their friends from all over the world (India, England, Russia, even Madagascar). We drank wine, ate a traditional Ukrainian cake, and played a game called crokinole (which was basically a table-sized game of circular shuffleboard). I got to explore the city, buy traditional soaps from a savonnerie, go to cafés, and even take a ferry to an island called Île de Friol. That particular moment was very special to me, as the ferry took us right past Chateau d’If, a key location in my favorite book Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo in English). 

 

The French people, in general, were not what I expected. I suppose it helps that I spoke French the whole time–and I have always worked very hard on my accent and trying to sound like a native speaker–but I was not expecting the people in France to be so friendly and curious about Americans. In early February, I met a French man named Léon, who was a few years older than me. We met one random week night as I was at a bar with friends. We stood outside for hours, me speaking in French and him in English. We discussed movies, hobbies, and our lives in general. It is one of my most memorable moments in France, when I gained confidence because I was truly being  understood by a native French speaker. Another day, later in the semester, I went to a thrift store in the tourist district of the city. The shopkeeper asked me if I needed help, to which I responded that I was just looking, and she asked me where I was from. I said the U.S. and she asked if I wanted to speak in English. I replied (in French) that no I didn’t, and that I was actually in Lyon to learn more about French culture and improve my French language skills. She asked if I wanted to practice and I naturally agreed. This led us into a conversation about my family, degree, and university, and my motivations for learning French. I think about this experience very often, and how it is honorable to learn enough about someone else’s culture and language to where you can learn from each other in such a symbiotic way. 

 

In general, being surrounded by French speakers and being challenged to use the language in a regular and practical way, all while living alone and trying to pass university courses was a tough but extraordinary adventure that I wouldn’t change for the world. Attending university classes with other international students from all over the world, and learning about their cultures alongside French cultures, and bonding over shared knowledge of the language brought a dynamic appreciation of how powerful language-learning is. It broadened my knowledge about other cultures, French, Korean, Iranian, Algerian, and more, and opened a door of understanding and appreciation of people who I might have nothing in common with. The beauty of traveling and language is rooted in the beauty of humanity. If we are always seeking, we will always be learning, and I was always learning in Lyon.