Global-Scale Trust—Confidence & Connectedness in Moving to France
Copy and Editor: Jeni Fjelstad
Creative Direction: Catie Menke
Each year thousands of young people move across the world to become language assistants who teach their first language in K-12 classrooms. This year more than three thousand of them packed up their jackets, photos, and yes, baby blankets, to move to France.
This giant journey takes loads of trust, confidence, and decision-making skills, and while some parts are an absolute dream, others are full of shadows. Marta Tesoro, from Madrid, Spain, joined the teaching assistant program hoping to improve her French-speaking skills as a translator, make new friends, and experience self discovery, and while she didn’t end up in Martinique like she’d hoped, she’s making the best of every day.
“I knew I wanted to get out of Spain when I finished my degree, actually. I love my house, I love my family, and I really love living in Spain, but I just wanted to improve my French,” Marta said.
Getting better at interacting every day in French is a goal of almost all assistants, including Olivia Solano, from Chicago, Illinois, and Natalie Finamore, from Louisville, Colorado. The two women needed to trust each other from day one when Olivia’s AirBnB didn’t work out and she had no one else to turn to. Luckily, she called up Natalie, a stranger, fellow assistant, and future roommate, and asked to crash on her couch for the night.
From then on, Olivia, Natalie, and Marta became instant friends and are all living together in a four-bedroom apartment. While each had lived abroad before, this time feels a little different. Teaching assistants are built-in friends and confidants, and together they all have to trust the system, handbook, and professors as they wait for responses and are placed randomly in a city three months before departure. Being in a small town in the Alps region gives them a chance to reinvent themselves, something Natalie said she loves.
“I could become a cute little mountain bike girlie,” Natalie said. “I could be a city-dweller, I could be a trail runner, or I could be a teacher — I’ve never done that before.”
As many people as they meet, as many French friends or assistant friends they make, independence and self are at the core of the experience. Marta shared she’s been able to solve problems on her own and take on the unexpected, a common thread among assistants.
“I do think you have to be super independent and be cool with yourself to travel to another country because you’re going to have to be with yourself alone, a lot of time,” Marta said.
Olivia said it connects also with being young people establishing themselves for the first time outside the family unit. She found her perseverance and focus as a traveler, putting trust in herself that she’s capable.
“Sometimes we search too much for things that are evidence as to why we are not worthy, but this whole experience will be a huge piece of evidence for us to look back on and be like ‘wow, actually, I am worthy,” Olivia said.
Natalie said she found the mindset for moving across the world in herself. Since she’s lived abroad before, she felt like she had a knowledge base to depend on herself for this even though she didn’t know exactly what would happen.
“I knew that I could do it and that no matter how weird it would be when I got here, I’ll be alive at the end of it,” she said. “It’s better that the time passes and I do something that’s scary and weird than the time passes and I do nothing.”
And she was right, shadows and difficult parts come with the experience too. For her it’s been finances, balancing her brain power between teaching and adventuring, and the pressure to be doing impressive activities all the time. For Olivia, the shadows have been that she feels blocked when she can’t exactly express herself in French, as well as to maintain her safety as a young woman traveling alone.
In Marta’s experience, the first week was awful: she moved into a dirty apartment, had her phone stolen, got sick, and then was forced to taxi to work after the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere. Even with all this, she’s had bright days and pleasant surprises.
“I thought I was going to feel a bit more insecure with the kids because I’ve worked with kids before but not with 15-20 kids at the same time and not in a different language,” Marta said. “But I’m super proud of myself actually because I’m really chill with them and they laugh.”
Olivia said normally she’s introverted in the U.S., preferring to stay home and recharge. But at the training with all the regional assistants, she was chatting with everyone in the room and making them laugh.
“Changes that have surprised me — I am feeling a lot more extroverted than I have ever been.”
But with the internal changes and ever-present surprises that come with a big move, some things are always the same. Natalie recounted that her favorite things still make her happy, at home and elsewhere — cooking, thrifting, and running.
“One of the things I always notice when I go abroad is I’m always just me, like I still feel like myself,” she said.
Together, they’re improving their French, exploring the region, and looking forward to school vacation, when they’ll be able to travel to Cannes and Nice on the southern French coast. Continued travel within the country and Europe is a vision each of the women share, which will surely lead to many memories of markets, pubs, beaches, and mountains together, always believing in themselves and each other.
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