2023年12月13日

海莉·迪特布伦纳25年著

From left are Victoria “Tori” Vile, Jackson Sweetwood 和 Haley Dittbrenner.我不想去. I’ve always been a person who prefers staying at home in a well-managed routine 和 traveling to another country would certainly disrupt that. 但是Susquehanna，通过它 全球机遇 program, requires students to study away from campus in a culture different from their own. So, I waited until the last possible moment to pack, 和 headed for the airport.

I remember staring down the trolley tracks on a sunny May morning, surrounded by family. At the airport I was surrounded by friends. I would later learn that my host city — Aix-en-Provence, a quaint city in the south of France — is a sister city to my hometown of Philadelphia. It’s almost as if the two cities were connected, family 和 friend supporting me in this adventure.

我选择了 做空 程序 法国南部 because it was led by two professors in the Dep艺术ment of English 和 Creative Writing — 西拉Zobal 和 凯瑟琳削弱. 主修双学位 创意写作 和 出版 & 编辑, I wanted the opportunity to write in a new country. Plus, traveling for the first time with two professors I already knew gave me a confidence boost.

The first photograph I took in France was of a meal — corkscrew noodles, meat 和 法国 cheese. It was the first of many dinners I would share with my host mother, a woman older than my own gr和mother named Marie-Paule Fanciullo. She spoke no English, while I spoke no 法国. The language barrier between myself 和 my surroundings felt as imposing as the city’s famous Aix Cathedral. Google Translate’s text-to-speech feature was my go-to during dinners. I soon became familiar with more 和 more 法国, 和 by the final week I could carry on a conversation without the need for translation. But even before then, I found unique ways to communicate. I would use gestures 和 cognates to speak in a kind of Frankensteinian hybrid of 法国 和 English. 玛丽-波勒学得很快, 从我破碎的羊角里, the foods I liked 和 offered them for me every night. 她的善良通过食物表现出来.

通过艺术体验法国

There was a certain vividness to France’s sunny skies that you just don’t see in Pennsylvania. The compact streets were lined with yellow buildings 和 fountains, of which Aix-en-Provence gets its name: the waters of Provence. 而不是去上课, we were tasked with completing a project that the city’s Musee Granet will later display within its halls. 对我来说, this meant writing a short story with paintings to accompany it, all inspired by a p艺术icular sculpture in the museum. 我以19分的优势选择了赛帕利索斯^th century 法国 sculptor Hippolyte Ferrat.

To accomplish our goal, we immersed ourselves in the 艺术 法国风光. We visited the workshop of Paul Cezanne, an Aixois painter who has greatly influenced my own work. We also visited an old shipping dock transformed into a living 艺术 show, where famous paintings roll across the ceilings, 墙壁和地板. 艺术作品是生动活泼的.

I spent my afternoons painting at my desk or in the park. I used my paintings to accompany my writing, 和 I expressed myself through visual 艺术 when I didn’t have the 法国 这样做的词汇.

新的友谊 

My final night in France took place at a music festival — the 音乐节, or Festival of Music, a summer holiday in France when people listen to music in the streets. 我的行李已经打包好了, my room in Marie-Paule’s house stuffed into three suitcases, 但我又在法国待了一个晚上. At every street corner someone new was playing music, a semicircle of listeners crowded around them. I remember sitting at one of the fountains, 夕阳在我身后落下, listening to the music with two of my best friends — one with whom my friendship pre-dated our time abroad, 和 the other who I developed a friendship with while in France.

I look back on my experience in France with great appreciation. Where I once dreaded leaving the comforts of my predictable routines, I’m now considering future trips to Prague, 还是土耳其还是法国. 我已经从一个胆小的宅男长大了, something that negatively impacted my daily life, to an adventurous person who longs to return to the sunny city of Aix-en-Provence.