My American Dream...

What I am about to open resides into the totality of my character into which I was making small steps when I went flying as an Airline Hostess.

When I left France, I was a child teenager.

I believed in love at first sight, in the sanctity of my good soul and an honest respect for my solid common sense.

After two years in the USA, I had become, so I thought, a grown woman with enough ambitions and desires to realize that luck had nothing to do with the way my life would turn out and with this realization, I knew I would be solely responsible for the choices I would make in the future. I was following the paths I felt were right for me.

But before that, as a student in France, I had top marks in languages and always the main character in the school play which punctuated the end of yet another school year… and which, by the way, made all the nuns cry profusely.

In English, The Beatles were, of course, at fault here. I fell hopelessly in love with Paul and, as a result, for the entire British population…at least those who lived around The Beatles.

My American Dream was really and truly born the day when my father came home from Polynesia, having stopped in Los Angeles on his way back to France.

He had with him the most incredible visions of this new and modern continent where everything was huge, wide and wealthy. For me, in a secluded environment of central France, I fell in awe listening to him.

I remember he had brought some stationary paper and envelopes from the Hyatt Hotel and the letters embossed in gold from this prestigious establishment attracted me, silly and juvenile as I was.

It prompted me to send an application to attend an American high-school as a student for one year.

Yes, I almost made it , and achieved that goal.

Unfortunately, after having passed all the usual tests, I was stopped at the very end by a mere technicality. The AFS (American Field Service) couldn’t match a host family, similar to mine, to welcome me.

However, I dreamed on and not being too disappointed, I managed to convince my parents to let me further my English studies at another school…in the U.K.

It was the “sister” convent to the one in France where I had gone through all school grades since the age of twelve, which made it easier to be accepted, of course.

So I went on and took the normal secondary school curriculum for one year, at the English Catholic school in Somerset (UK)  populated like the one in France with nuns in long black dresses and two black and white layers of knee-length veils covering their anonymous heads ( As a child, I had heard and always remembered they were married to Jesus…)

From morning to night, prayers were recited aloud, and today I still remember my “Our Father Who Art in Heaven “.

From night to morning, I kept on dreaming about America…!

                    “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education…”

                                                    - Mark Twain -