**My ten-months-journey in France!** 江昱輝2018~2019
**The beginnings**
Learning is a life-long process, only we can truly decide how or what we learn. Learning with only passing tests in mind didn’t interest me much and for that reason I tried this exchange student program, to reignite my passion not only towards study but also life.
**Culture differences**
I thought I was someone who has the so-called “world-view”, but I came to realize how insignificant and self-centered through out the journey. “Seeing Taiwan from a perspective of France” is something I never expected to experience, I was able to know my home-land better. Interestingly, comparing my last couple days in Taiwan with the ten-months experience in France I see that I’ve gradually became the bridge connecting two cultures, the two worlds I lived in. I explained my life in Taiwan to French people, and vice versa.
**Communication**
I couldn’t speak French before leaving.
I love languages.
Still feel that uneasy when thinking about all the uncertainty before leaving, language was a tough barrier that I had rarely faced, since English is the first and only language taught all the way from elementary to middle school. But this was something different. I got to practice the coping mechanism when communicating fails. I’m good at language, I love languages, yet I was never good at communicating. I didn’t just learn how to *Speak* French but also tried to understand French jokes. I’d say I lived in French instead of just learned it, part of my memories are built upon it, and that’s why now I call it my *second mother language*, even though I’m not yet good enough, it’s connected to me thought memories and events in life.
**Art, expressing my unfolding life**
I’m surely not (yet) good at talking, but I’m good at music. I’m probably not bad at writing either. So I started singing and playing piano with the company of my artistic host family, little by little I’m more and more confident.
I realized playing music is really just “playing”, like a game. It’s just for its pure pleasure, or to get to know some stranger from time to time. Music can be good, sometimes bad, but not wrong. Nothing can be wrong in art, it’s a shade of who you are.
**Friends**
Making friends was the “biggest” challenge I’d met during last year, my way of making friends is passive enough that I’m alone for the most of the time. Despite it wasn’t not easy to make friends with French people in my school, I did met a lot of people from the same organization that I was from. The organization held a culture camp for one week in Paris, I met lots people from all over the world and I’d made friends with them because they’re all out of their country to find some new experience, they came up to me without hesitation.
**Family**
To be honest, before my departure I wasn’t in peace with my own family, we argue about everything for nothing almost everyday. Separating for one year makes me see how can I do better for myself, and for my family.
My host family help me so much during the journey, it’s because of them I’m able to speak French now. I was lucky to have an optimistic family and they’d lighten up the hope inside my heart, I felt I was finally understood for such a long time, away from the prejudices from the family I was born in.
My host dad told me interesting joke, it goes like this: A man was on a train, he accidentally stepped on the foot of a woman next to him, the woman made it a big deal out but stopped suddenly. “I thought you were my husband”, she said.
It’s just a joke, but from that we can see we tend to treat the closest to us the worst, intimacy brings up the most disgusting flaws because “there’s no need to hide, they know me”; also shows our worst prejudices and stigmas because we think we know them so well that we somehow are part of them, we can predict or change their next move. After realizing this I am and will try to be a better me towards my family, not the best yet, but I won’t be “the woman on the train”.
**Getting better and better**
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. I’m more than who I was last year, in fact, I’m better than myself every second, and every split second of them. The most important break through is I learned how to face myself, facing my past mistakes and personality defects is the bravest thing I ever did… the bravest thing I think any human being can do. I love this journey.