Alliance Française de Tulsa is pleased to announce the recent success of its Northeast Oklahoma French Student Exchange Scholarship.
For Spring 2024, Sophia Miller was selected to receive scholarship funds to support her trip to France as part of the Eleanor Kirkpatrick Franco-American Fellows Program with the Alliance Française D’Oklahoma City. Upon her return, Sophia created a presentation and report for the members of Alliance Française de Tulsa.
To learn more about the French Student Exchange Scholarship and how to recommend a student for consideration, click here.
Continue reading to hear more about Sophia’s trip, cultural observations, activities, and research.
Recap by Sophia Miller
Culture is the difference that connects us all globally. It allows people to experience and learn from each other with a certain interconnectedness that cannot be recreated. Having the ability to experience French culture and be directly immersed in everyday school and family life is an experience that was far beyond what I could have ever imagined. I am very grateful for the opportunity that the Alliance Française of Tulsa and OKC gave me to have that cultural immersion in the Fellows exchange program.
Culture shock for me was something that came subtly, such as the differences in public transportation and classrooms. Public transportation in France is widespread and for everything that we had to do when touring the cities of Compiègne, Paris, and Amiens, we had to utilize some form of public transport. Buses, the metro, and train systems were all things that I found very intriguing. They were very accessible and were usually quiet and calm. This was something that stuck out to me the most was the basic expectation of being respectful of everyone’s space in such a small and busy environment. Even during my experience on a school bus I had experienced this same feeling. Compared to my own hectic school bus at home, it was as if I had walked into a dream.
As a part of the program, I was immersed in school with my host who attended the high school. For two weeks, we were students at the Lycée Charles de Gaulle in Compiègne. School life in France was similar to ours, students were given basic core classes and homework on a regular basis. The lack of technology in French schools was a shock to us Americans, as personal school computers such as Chromebooks were not anywhere to be seen. There was only one class available that focused on technology, and that was the computer class. In this class, students would be given projects to do on the computers such as utilizing Canva for slide presentations. My host and classmates had a project presentation on social media and the facts and statistics on their chosen social network platform. I was lucky enough to watch the process and be an audience member of their presentations. Though the school was not dense in technology, the use of paper and pen was, of course, more common for notetaking and work. Almost every student wrote in cursive and utilized a four-way pen on specialized lined paper. In fact, I was gifted one of these useful pens by a French student as a welcome! Students would also glue their assigned pages into their notebooks to stay organized.
A common stereotype is that the French are cold and dismissive. I had found that this simply was not true! As soon as I began my journey in France, the students and people were extremely helpful and kind. They were just as excited to share cultural and language comparisons as I was. Many were also quick to begin the “English lessons” with us Americans, as they would trade fun phrases and words for us to learn from them. And whenever we visited Paris and Amiens as tourists, many shop owners and passersby were very cordial and understanding towards us. One memory I still reminisce on is a silly encounter with a bakery employee. I was confident as I was going to speak to a French person in French in Paris! So as I began to order, I had hoped to ask the man “Parlez-vous Anglais?”- but what came out was: “Parlez-vous Français?” I realized my mistake as soon as I had said it and apologized embarrassingly. The employee just laughed and said yes, in fact, he does speak French. He then kindly informed me that he did know a little English. Simple interactions like this made our touring visits very comfortable and all the more exciting. One of my favorite unwritten rules of the French was also what I like to call the “greeting rule.” This rule applies to whenever you come into any building or business, you will be greeted with a friendly “bonjour!” and you respond back with the same greeting. I would see this everywhere I went, from a Parisian patisserie on the Champs-Élysées to the local boulangerie in Le Meux (the quaint little town my host families lived in near Compiègne).
One thing that was a part of our trip was the research projects we had planned out in advance. Each of us had a plan and goals set for our projects, and the main objective aside from cultural exchange and visiting historical and tourist places was to complete our studies. Although, unfortunately, most of the Fellows had to revise our goals and plans in order to complete our projects due to some unforeseen circumstances. This also had an impact on what I was able to complete during my time in France. My project was on the difference in animal welfare in the United States and France, a crucial part of my project was to make field visits. This opportunity to visit these places for our projects was cut short, however, we were still able to overcome and adapt to these unfortunate circumstances. This allowed me to focus on what my fellow peers thought of animal welfare compared to students in the United States. One thing that I would like to highlight was that the French students had a more positive outlook on how animal welfare is in their own country. While my own peers here in the U.S. had positive comments, they had their own reservations regarding the animal welfare system in the United States. I found this very interesting because whenever I researched French animal welfare, there was less legal information available about animal welfare than compared to the U.S. For example, the United States has 10+ legal animal welfare acts. While France does not have acts in place, they do have animal welfare laws within their Penal Code. Animal welfare is a considerably new concept in French culture, though, it may be because it is another “unwritten rule” to treat animals with respect in their cultural standards. After watching and reviewing a few photos and videos as digital evidence, I also concluded that the local SPA (La Societe Protectrice des Animaux) and zoos were very sanitary and safe environments for the animals who resided there. As well as having similar characteristics as zoos and shelters in the U.S. visually.
Even though we had only spent two short weeks in France, it was a life-changing experience for me. I was given the opportunity to meet international friends and acquaintances and build on my French language learning and my understanding of French culture. This was a lifelong dream that was achieved during my high school years, and I am very thankful that I was able to experience this adventure with the help of the Alliance Française de Tulsa’s scholarship program and the Eleanor Kirkpatrick Franco-American Fellows Program with the Alliance Française of Oklahoma City!
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