Bonjour, salut tout le monde, bienvenu a happy hour! Aujourd’hui, nous presentons une nouvelle copresentatrice.
Oops! This is not a French show, so let's try that again. Hello everyone and welcome back to happy hour! Actually, that was my attempt to try to speak a little bit of French. And do not laugh at my accent, the reason why I started the show like this today is because today we are having with us a new co-host, Sarah. Hello, Sarah.
Hello
Sarah has a very interesting identity. Sarah, you now have dual nationalities, right? Britain and France, and you also lived for a very long time in France and also fluent in French. So today we're going to talk to Sarah about her interesting experience in France and all these cross cultural tips. So Sarah, could you introduce yourself, maybe give us a little bit of self-introduction in English and then in French?
OK. No problem. Perhaps I could start with French first and you can see if you understand.
OK. Testing my listening.
Bonjour tout le monde, je m’appelle Sarah, J’ai trente-et-un et originaire de Bristol, dans le sud-ouest de l’Angleterre,mais je vis actuellement à Pékin, je suis professeur d’anglais.
Okay. I think I can understand like 80% of that.
It's quite a simple one, but that's really good. So I said my name's Sarah and 31. I come from Bristol in the southwest of England, but I'm currently living in Beijing, which is why I'm doing this podcast. I'm an English teacher here, but I'm going to be going back to France next summer.
So let's start with a little bit about your background, shall we? Where did you grow up? You grew up in Bristol, did you say?
Yeah. So I was born basically in the southwest, quite close to the midlands in a place called Worcester. I moved to the Bristol area when I was fairly young as well. So I didn't really grow up in a multicultural environment. The villages that I lived in were mostly white British, to be honest, and my schools were relatively similar as well. So although some people growing up, attending international schools might have a variety of nationalities amongst their friends, I probably only knew a couple of people who did not have white British backgrounds.
Before we did this whole program with Anlan, and then he was telling us about the British school system that you had a choice of learning, for example, French or German.
Yes, absolutely! So as a child in primary school when I was going through it, you didn't really have any access to language courses because I guess it wasn't the most important type of class at the time. But as soon as you get to secondary school, so when I was in the school system 20 years ago, we were given the option to study French or German. So I started with French. I think most children studied French at secondary school. When we got to our GCSE, we got to choose a second language if we wanted to. And I actually didn't choose German. The German teacher asked if I would participate because there weren't enough people in the class and they knew that I rather liked learning languages. So yes, I ended up studying a bit of German for a couple of years as well. I don't think I knew anybody who was bilingual growing up or at least I'm not that I was aware of. But my mom had travelled a bit when she was younger and she seems to be able to pick up languages relatively easily.
So it runs in the family.
I don't know, perhaps. She certainly instilled a certain tolerance of ambiguity. We talk a lot about that when with regard to learning languages that if you want to be really successful, particularly when you're starting out, you need to be able to accept those ambiguous communication situations.
Not always being one hundred percent correct.
Yeah. It's the idea that you don't always understand everything that's being said and they might not understand a lot of what you're saying either. When you're starting out it doesn't always matter.
I think the overall communication is always the most important thing.
Absolutely!
So you started learning French when you were in school and then a little bit of German afterwards. But when was the first time you went to France?
Well because the UK is so very close to France geographically. I think Brits particularly since air travel has become cheaper and because I live in the south does mean the access to mainland Europe is some, it's quite easy. And I was lucky enough to grow up in a family where they thought that traveling was beneficial. My parents did take us on a couple of kind of budget weekend breaks to France before. So I did visit Paris as a teenager. So I had.. my parents always encouraged us to try and speak a little bit of the language that when you feel like you have to perform. It's kind of embarrassing. The pressure is quite unpleasant. So if they might say to when you're sitting in a restaurant, they'll ask you to order your food in French. But it feels embarrassing when you've got people watching you.
Exactly!
I know that me and my sister, I don't think we enjoyed it much.
But talking about Paris, Paris, I guess for a lot of listeners who have never been to Paris and also for that matter, for a lot of people who haven't been to Paris around the world, they would have this almost picture perfect perception of Paris. So what's your first impression of Paris? Like honestly.

I think whenever you go anywhere that is somewhat romanticized, you're going to be disappointed. I think I had the same when I went to London as well because the way it was portrayed in the cinema， in the media, it's over scene when you're getting off the tube in London or when you're getting off the dirty metro in Paris. It's not as romantic as it seems. If you see someone, I don't know, urinating in the tunnel, that's not very romantic.
I have to say that the first time I went to Paris, I felt the same. I didn't have really really high hopes. But I still found, for example, really the metro and you could smell the urine like … yeah … that's a bit of a put off.
It's an efficient transport system, but it's dirty.
Especially when you get used to some of the better more modern transport system.
Absolutely!
Yeah. OK. But you did not have like experience with the best first impression of Paris or France for that matter, but why did you decide or when did you decide to go to France for a longer period of time?
So I guess the origin of the decision was that I enjoyed French at school. I took it at A-level. And then when I was deciding what I wanted to do with my life as a teenager, I wasn't quite sure. But I knew that I was interested in finding out more about the world in general. I felt like I didn't know enough. So I studied French and international relations at university. And so obviously part of the sandwich course is quite a popular format for undergraduate degrees in British universities. So as part of my university degree, I had to spend a year abroad. So in a French speaking country, obviously France is not the only option that you have for that. But that's the one that I wanted to choose. And so I had the opportunity to do an internship, and I decided to not choose to go to Paris, partly because a lot of kind of these large cities around the world, they're very similar in the sense that the same types of people are attracted to them. I don't want that to sound negative because it isn't just an observation, but that's not what I was looking for when I was searching for an internship. I was interested in a lot of the internships available in the large cities were corporate ones. So in large companies and I wasn't particularly interested in that because I guess I just don't really have that kind of personality. I'm not very suited to that kind of workplace, I don't think.
So you went to like a small town?
I did. It's …
How big?
It's … for Chinese people, it probably be considered like a tiny village. It's about twenty five thousand people.
Twenty five thousand.
Twenty five thousand. So for China that I think that would be kind small. For France, it is relatively small. But there are kind of like, I think there are quite a few towns that are that size. But even for France it is relatively small because it's not, even some French people, I think the only reason they would have heard of it is because it has a large viaduct which was opened by the president. It was inaugurated by the president of France. So they would have heard about engineering.
Engineering project.
Yeah, that was expensive.
Alright, so before you went, you must have had a perception of life in France, for example, if I'm thinking about life in France, I would always image as a picture of perfect rural areas, you're riding a bike with a baguette. You're wearing something very much like pinstripe or like a French style print and then you're very stylish and very sort of healthy fit that sort of image. What was your perception and are there any differences between this perception and the actual reality?
I feel like what you've just described is actually relatively similar to what I experience when I was in Millau, this small town. So I definitely think it's not representative of lifestyles in France in general because although you do still have a huge amount of rural areas, I think much more than in Britain for example. We have similar population sizes but there's a lot more open space in France. So you do still have quite a few people living in villages and hamlets around France. But I think if you were to describe that to somebody living in the middle of a large city, they would say that that's not representative of their lifestyles. But just so happens that where I went to live. I think I was probably influenced by this romantic vision of France and when I saw that an internship that corresponded with the type of job I was looking for and that …
That setting, that idyllic setting.
They met this, that was very similar to this ideal that we have of rural France. This is very romantic ideal because obviously not all of rural France is romantic and not all aspects of it are romantic. But I do think I found some of that romanticism in this town, in these very old stone buildings with …
Cobbled streets.
Cobbled streets, pleasant weather, people with a very healthy work life balance, lots of artisans, so traditional crafts people. Because the town I was living in was a traditional glove making town. So craftsmanship and independent boutiques and things like that. They are still thriving, I think.
So how lucky that you actually lived in a picture perfect almost like straight from living the dreams, straight from a novel or a movie scene. And on that note, let us wrap up this episode in the next episode, we're gonna continue our talk with Sarah, where we're gonna delve deeper into French culture and also compare the differences between Britain and France. We'll see you next time.
Ciao ciao.
Ciao.

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