Rebuilding Rob

The farthest I’ve ever traveled from home was when I spent two weeks in France, during the summer after my sophomore year in high school. Not only was this the farthest I’ve ever been from home, it was also the most time i had ever spent away from home and immediate family

The trip was put together by my high school French teacher. While there were mostly students who I went to school with, there were a few kids from other schools were there as well.

We did the whole tourist thing, seeing multiple sites around the country. This gave us an opportunity to really practice speaking our French. Today, tourism is the biggest industry in France. What I found while I was there is that people didn’t care how poor your French was; they just wanted to see you try to speak the language. It’s too bad Americans can’t say the same thing about people coming here speaking English.

Even as a 16-year-old kid, one of the things that really stood out to me, was the difference in lifestyle between France, and that of people here in the United States. In my experience, France didn’t seem to have the “work, work, work. More more more. We needed to have this done five minutes ago” approach to life. I always felt that French people basically took the approach of “if we don’t get it done today, will do it tomorrow“. That’s nice to suggest that they are lazy in anyway; rather, it’s more of a relaxed, disciplined approach to things.

Up to this point, I had been a painfully shy, quiet, terribly insecure kid. I was a kid in high school, who would look down at his feet, as I watched rather than daring to make eye contact with people. I had a very close, very small circle of friends. I didn’t even have many casual friends in school.

There was some thing about this trip. I don’t know if it’s because I was so far out of my element, or if it’s because I was tired for the entire stay; but I felt like I came out of my proverbial shell during those 15 days in France. The experience made me want more confident, and more secure with myself. Kids who are going to school with for years. It said this was the first time they felt like they ever really got to know me. I was social, and I had people, laughing, with me and not at me.

When I think back to my four years in high school, it really was a tale of two Rob: Rob before he went to France and Rob after he went to France.

To this day, this trip is on a short list of the greatest things I’ve ever done in my life, along with the birth of my sons.

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts:

• The Extra Day: A Ten-Year Memory
• Of Training Wheels and Christmas Lights
• Charity Starts at Home (And I’m Back in My Childhood One)
• The Muscle of Empathy
• Where Do We Go From Here? Five Years Since January 6.

The article “Toujours en France” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob