France, A Love Affair — Mallory A. Warner

The first time I visited France, I was 16-years-old on a High School field trip to study the culture and language. I spent two weeks traveling through Paris and the Western Coast, eventually spending a week with a French family (two, actually) in La Rochelle. Being from a small town, no one I knew had ever done this. When I proposed the opportunity to my five-member French Club, everyone was on board. Until it came time to commit. I was the only one to see the trip through. Well, it is a bit hard to take a school trip to France alone. Luckily, a neighboring school district was also planning on a trip that year and I was able to join up with their group. I didn’t bat an eye at the thought of going with a group of strangers. I was going to France. My favorite memories from this trip include a picnic on the islands off the coast of St. Malo, tasting Brittany cidre for the first time, and sharing a family meal of buckwheat crepes, smoked salmon, mushrooms and crème fraiche. Easter was spent having a large family meal with seafood and sausages. We spent the afternoon along the beach where an annual kite festival fills the sky. Since then, I try to celebrate Pâques (Easter) with a French style meal of seafood and quiche.

Gare Lille Flandres - Lille, France - November 2017

My teenage-self was hooked! I continued to study French throughout college. Eventually these studies took me to Lille, France, a university town on the border of France in Belgium. I had never been to the north, and before leaving I had planned on learning all of these wonderful things about French wines and the culture that I had previously visited and learned about. Lille is another type of France. The Flemish culture of Northern France was something I had not experienced before. They drank Belgian beers and ate pots of mussels and fries. Not having a mature palate or any money in my bank account, I didn’t indulge in the mussels but had plenty of beer and fries. Living in another country was another experience entirely. Granted I was in my bubble of the university system, there were so many challenges I had to learn to navigate. The art of French bureaucracy is a marvel to behold. These six months in France not only improved my French and granted me access to a different type of French culture, I was able to travel extensively throughout Europe during my time there. I also made some of the best friends I’ve ever known.

American style burgers come with fries on the burger. Eventually I became hooked and still eat burgers the same way. This is me chowing down at a LOSC football match in 2007.

It took another ten years for me to be able to return to France. I was one of those places that was just out of reach due to timing or cost. My curiosity and love of French culture never wavered. I spent my time in my Master’s degree studying the legacy of French colonialism and its contemporary consequences, research that began from taking the metro in Lille and observing different cultures we never fully learned about in our French language classes. Over the past two years, a colleague and I have worked extensively to run a university study abroad program to Paris and Marseille studying Immigration and Integration in France. This autumn and early winter, we successfully ran our program, taking twelve students to experience this place I fell in love with fifteen years ago.

Before the students arrived, I spent a week in Paris with my family. On the day after Thanksgiving, we returned to Lille. I was so nervous it was going to feel too different. It felt the same, but also different. I've changed so much since being a 20-year old on the adventure of her life across Europe. We walked to the University where I studied, my old dorm, the enclosed Wazemmes Market, and spent the afternoon eating mussels and fries on the Grande Place.

Moules at Le Coq Hardi - Lille, France - November 2017