Somehow (actually, I know how. It was that whole time marches on thing) I have reached the end of my semester in Paris. Final papers have been written, final exams [...]

Over the past several weeks, I have slowly become aware of the fact that I am not awful at French anymore.  This is not to say, of course, that I [...]

I have always been one of those people who believes strongly in the sanctity of Thanksgiving. It isn’t a just a buffer holiday so people have a reason for a [...]

It is a sad truth of language acquisition – or at least language acquisition as I have been experiencing it for the past three months – that instead of mastering [...]

Social awkwardness is part of the human condition. Some of us are more prone to it than others, to be sure, but no one escapes the menace entirely. I like [...]

When I first moved to Paris, I had fantasies that my French would magically become flawless, that I would never get lost, that I would somehow be able to afford [...]

It has occurred to me that despite having written six blogs about Paris, I have not expressed any of the things I actually like about being here.  So despite the [...]

I have been in Paris for six weeks now, and overall it has been a truly lovely experience. This city never ceases to surprise me, and about ninety percent of [...]

This week, I had a few strange experiences that led me to conclude that I have finally achieved the goal many Americans have while studying abroad; people have stopped immediately [...]

I still remember the day I learned about homophones. I was in third grade and it was spelling test day. I was in the yellow spelling group, somewhere in the [...]

In my limited experience, Americans’ opinions of France and the French tend to fall into two categories. Either France and French culture are regarded as golden beacons of civilization, to [...]

I wasn’t overly concerned about the language barrier when I first arrived in Paris. I was fluent in French at the age of three (a fluency which I later deliberately [...]