A priori, handing over my thoughts to "internet-space" is against my principles. Indeed, turning the page over to the "technological-age" is something that I have vehemently resisted for some time now....
After all, I value the personalized touch of chicken-scratch typography! Assuredly, there's something poetic about mis-placed museum-tickets, water-damaged print-outs, million-times re-folded maps and notes, adjoining lost photographs and scattered post-it-notes...all folded-in on journal-page entries. This is all lost as soon as we turn on our computers, and sign-in to blogger-space!!!
So, as a dedicated (and perhaps snooty) adherent to snail-mail, post-cards and traditional nostalgia, I must admit that creating this "blog space" is a huge step in a different direction...
The "direction" I'd like to take here (without being too restrictive about style or form) is to share something more valuable than mere nostalgia, and for the sake of a greater cause. That is, in this blog, I will proceed to share my thoughts and experiences (along with adjoining photographs) detailing my time abroad in France, so that others (if anyone so chooses to read this blog) may benefit from my unusual perspective.
As a single twenty-something-year-old Franco-American (dual-citizenship status) living and working (as a middle-school/high-school teacher of "religious culture" in a well-to-do private school) in Strasbourg France, I have a myriad of funny, frustrating, alarming, romantic, sad, and often insightful stories built up! Between my time teaching at school, working on my French-language skills inside and outside of work, babysitting and tutoring on the side, exploring and travelling during "vacation time", getting lost in paper-work/administrative bureacracy, along with penniless days of nothing but loneliness and despair, my stories will range in theme; from "professional," to "practical reflections" to "day-to-day hum-drum" to "personal and cultural introspection" i.e., about love/romance, friendship, family, and values.
Having said this, I will detail as honestly as humanly possible what this experience is/has been like (thus far.) Although I will not commit myself to tell these stories in any restrictive or chronological order (since I expect to unfold new stories each and every day up until the end of my time here, this June) I will nevertheless try to entitle each story with a telling phrase.
I will not provide exact NAMES in any of my tellings, and I will try to avoid provocative or insulting judgments and evaluations with regard to France, its culture, and its people. Indeed; I need to stress here that I DO NOT intend to make sweeping generalizations for others to analyze/criticize for "universal/objective truth" or accuracy. Furthermore, I would like nothing LESS than to cause offense to anyone. This project after all is personal (and is part of a larger written project of mine) and thus, I must utilize my own voice to share/communicate my own perspectives, while I actively appropriate my own thoughts. In the end, I hope this will help to reveal (truthfully as a suject/i.e., "subjectively") what MAY go through a single, young American girl's mind, while Alone in Alsace.
* Yet Before diving in to this project, I want to thank my insightful and computer-savvy sister for encouraging me to "turn the page." :-) Thanks, sis! You're the best!
KEY WORDS: Moving abroad, living abroad, Americans in Europe
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