Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, France

I would like to dedicate this entry to the topic of language, as it is a very large part of my experience here in France. Without language you can't communicate, shop, attend lectures, and most importantly, you can't build relationships. Language is the key to find friends and in my opinion this is true not only here in Paris, but everywhere. Since I had a baccalaureate in French and took an elective in the first semester in French in my first semester, I was not at zero level in terms of language skills when I arrived. Nevertheless, it was challenging to suddenly have all the conversations in French and not infrequently I was inclined to switch to English.

Learning the French language better was one of the main reasons why I chose the I chose Paris as the location for my Erasmus semester. So it was all the better that I was the only non-native speaker in my class and I was forced to speak French with my classmates.

The first weeks were hard, I won't deny that. During the breaks I stood next to the others, but the conversation went back and forth so quickly that in the end I didn't understand a word. Hence, I couldn't contribute to the conversation, unless someone addressed me directly and had the patience to repeat each sentence three times and wait until I had worked out an answer in my head. I was the person standing next to the group not contributing, neither asking questions nor telling anything about myself. Such a person seems rather disinterested and not as if he would make an effort to integrate herself, right?

I remembered situations when it was sometimes too exhausting for me to the extra effort to talk to people whose native language is not German, to have a conversation. Having made the experience of being the person who is left out of a group yourself and not being able to follow a conversation easily has been very eye-opening for me in this context. How thankful I was to meet people who took the time to listen to me and made an effort to speak slowly enough for me to understand them. I would like to be such a person in the future and respond more sensitively, when I notice that there are people in a group who do not understand the spoken language.

During the vacation week I had in March, I spontaneously took a short trip to Le Havre and Étretat (some of you may know this place from the series "Lupin"). As a solo traveler I spontaneously attended a church service and met a nice woman afterwards who invited me to dinner at the neighboring village, since their weekly meeting of young adults was taking place that evening.

Of course I accepted the invitation and so, about an hour later, I found myself in front of a plate of rice (why there was "only" plain rice to eat, I unfortunately could not find out, but apparently this is their thing), surrounded by nice French women and Frenchmen, with whom I I quickly got into conversation and could get tips for my next days.

Still, sometimes it was difficult for me from time to time to follow the conversation of the group who was already familiar. Next to me sat Walid, who, as it turned out later, came to France from Egypt three years ago. I talked a lot with him. For example about how one often tries to follow a conversation and when one has the feeling to finally know what it's all about, the topic is already a completely different one. I felt very understood. He gave me advice that made it very easy for me to made it easier for me to integrate into groups in which I had language difficulties: "If you notice that you are dropping out of the conversation because topics change too quickly or people are talking too fast, just start a new topic. That's the only way to participate."