Poudlard, Timothée Chalamet, and My French Hairdresser

How I’m surviving France one awkward charade at a time.

Two years ago, my family and I moved from California to a small town in France.

We came for the lifestyle - fresh bread, slower pace, charming villages. What we didn’t expect was how often we’d be forced to pantomime entire conversations just to get through a haircut or a bakery run.

Because when you move to a country where you don’t speak the language fluently, you quickly learn there are two options:

1. Embrace the awkward.

2. Sit silently and hope the moment passes.

I chose Option 1. And honestly? It’s working.

We arrived with exactly un petit peu of French - just enough from two years of high school language classes to muddle through a menu, but nowhere near enough to survive a dinner party.

And yet somehow, I’ve made a friend in my hairdresser. Let’s call him Cédric. He speaks zero English. I’m not fluent in French. And yet, we’ve somehow built a friendship based on the most sacred of cultural pillars: movies, music, and Harry Potter.

It started during one of my first visits. While touching up my roots, he casually mentioned that Harry Potter et la Coupe de Feu (that’s The Goblet of Fire, for my fellow Americans) is his favorite movie of all time.

Naturally, I informed him that Prisoner of Azkaban is objectively superior. He disagreed. I told him he was wrong. He laughed. We moved on.

Next came my homework: a scribbled list of French singers I needed to research immediately. (Mylène Farmer, obviously. But also some lesser-known names that I still can’t pronounce without an audio sample.) He introduced me to his favorite queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race. And then, with all the gravity of a state secret, he leaned in and whispered: “Timothée Chalamet…très beau.”

I looked him dead in the eye and said, “Oui. Je suis d’accord.” We’ve been friends ever since.

Each appointment now feels less like a salon visit and more like an episode of Francophone Pop Culture 101: Hair Edition. There are charades. Wild hand gestures. The occasional desperate scroll through Google Translate. We compare notes on how movies and characters are named in our countries. (Fun fact: Hogwarts is called Poudlard in France, which sounds less magical and more like a plumbing issue, but okay.)

And somehow, despite the grammatical chaos and pantomimed plot summaries, we actually connect.

That’s the part no one really prepares you for when you move abroad. Yes, the paperwork is maddening. Yes, the metric system will humble you (how many grams of cheese is too many grams of cheese?). But every so often, you stumble into moments of pure, strange, delightful connection.

You realize that you don’t have to be fluent to belong. You just have to show up, stay curious, and be willing to look a little ridiculous.

Most French people I’ve met are actually a bit sheepish about their English. So really, we’re all in the same boat - awkward, enthusiastic, and wildly underqualified for the conversation we’re trying to have. But we’re having it anyway.

And that’s where the magic is.

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Thanks for being here.
-Kamille