December 11

As the elderly man at my favorite coffee shop pours the dark steamy liquid into a cup, we chat about the University and I tell him I am writing a paper for French class. Peering into my face, he takes a closer look at me and asks me if I have any “French blood” in me. I smile, thinking he probably doesn't know how much I feel complimented by this. I take the coffee he hands me, wishing with all my heart I could say: Yes! Yes, the French spirit is within me, so potent and profound that it is coursing through my veins, an inherent and irrevocable part of my DNA. Instead, I have to admit that although I don’t have any French ancestry, I am currently in the process of planning a semester of study in Montpellier.

After I leave, his words pound in my head, and I begin to wonder just what exactly it is that makes me want to be in France so badly. Why do I feel compelled, most days, to pretend my city is a little slice of Europe, internationally transported to the United States? I wait for the city bus surrounded by torrents of rain, wind, and snow, and somehow convince myself I am instead waiting for the Paris métro. I sit in tiny coffee shops that serve tepid coffee in Styrofoam cups and dense pastries wrapped in plastic, and I wonder, what does the coffee taste like in France? Will it warm me from the inside out, infusing me with French soul? Most of all, I wonder, what is it like to have a French heart? To live, breathe, and pulse with “French blood”? To know and to think, to be and to feel, to experience a part of France–is it something born within a person, or can it be cultivated, and if so, how?

I walk around these Minneapolis city streets and find myself homesick for a place I’ve never been to. My mind is lost in France while my body remains stubbornly fixed in the United States.

Mostly I know going to France is something that, for whatever reason, I need to do. As the days move closer to my departure, I'm remembering my first day of French class in 9th grade. At age 14 the only thing that convinced me to study French was my intuition that one day I would live there. I've studied and saved money for this trip ever since that day. My motivation for taking all sorts of awful summer jobs has always been the idea of France.

Feels so surreal that in five weeks I'll finally be in a place which has up to now only existed in my head.