To be honest, I didn’t grow up traveling.
Growing up in rural Iowa (USA), vacation meant staying up late with grandma to watch British sitcom Keeping up Appearances, or driving 9 hours south to Oklahoma to see my father’s side of the family. My favorite adventures were often going to the art museum with my Mimipop, scoring flea markets with dad, or ice skating at the local rink with mom.
I’ve always felt that the best part about growing up in a place lacking mountains and oceans is that it forced one to find beauty in what others may view as mundane. From nothing we are the visionaries with a special superpower which allows us to be amazed at all that the world has to offer.
At 16 I joined an Art Club trip to Paris, where we spent a week visiting the City of Light’s seemingly infinite number of museums: the Louvre, Musee d’Orsay, Pompidou, Rodin Museum… it sparked an obsessive desire to learn French, and to one day get back.
Left: portrait at age 16 in 2006 from the Eiffel Tower on a school Art Club trip to Paris. On right: photo from 2019 at age 29 from the Eiffel Tower showing the city to my parents.
My 16th year was struck by a tidal wave of music by Serge Gainsbourg, Francoise Hardy, France Gall, Jaques Dutronc (not Johnny Hallyday, which the French often ask if he is a big deal in the states). I went to bed listening to French radio stations FranceInter and FranceCulture. I altogether stopped reading English books, spending my ice cream shop income on $20 editions of French vogue that took an hour-long drive to reach. I even awkwardly stalked any French speaking person I came across to just hear the language. France was my first love, well before any boy. And there was no turning back.
After graduating from the University of Iowa with degrees in journalism and French and several worrisome looks from family and friends of where life would lead me, I spent a year teaching English in primary schools in a small village in France’s Vendée region, followed by a Master’s program in Chambery, and a marketing gig in Grenoble. Three years of odd jobs here and there (including teaching English to the French military), and in desperate need of an income allowing me to pay piling student loan bills, I decided to relocate to the United States, granted that I could find employment doing the one thing I loved: speaking French.
Photos from my jobs teaching English in France: to the left – a shot from my classroom of French military students, and to the right a self portrait made my one of my favorite (if a former teacher dare pick favorites…) primary school student in La Roche-sur-Yon.
In an interesting turn of events, I ended up working at a French consulate in Boston, a job which a little over a year later would have me back working in Geneva, Switzerland, a city roughly an hour from where I lived before. It felt as if I was picking up from where I left off.
Five years later I found myself married to a tennis enthusiast and sweet-hearted Genevois, spending evenings dancing in our small apartment kitchen and cuddling on the couch with our Ragdoll kitty Baloo.
Why Swiss Serendipity?
The more I write, the more I realize my reason for keeping a virtual documentation of sights and sounds.
I used to believe that talking about France and my love for learning the language would be perceived as snobbish, and thus turned into a hobby that I kept mainly to myself.
The reason for this blog is twofold- for one, it provides a virtual compartment to collect photos on my camera roll and pages from my notebooks, a virtual diary if you will. It also helps me learn about Geneva, and Switzerland more broadly. Forever having a curious mind, I enjoy researching the places we stumble upon. Who knew that the restaurant we ate at was once a favorite of Edith Piaf’s? Or that Geneva’s Escalade tradition honors a woman who spilled a pot of hot vegetable stew onto a French soldier?
Second, I hope that my story will illustrate how traveling and a life abroad can be accessible to anyone, anywhere. For as they say, when there is a will, there is a surely a way.
