Bienvenue en France

What a trip.

I arrived in Paris, waited a long time to get off the airplane, waited a relatively short time to go through customs, and was separated from the safety of the nice middle-aged couple from Gainsville who were on their way to Rome ultimately for a cruise through Italy and Spain (who thought I was 17 and joked about me ordering hard liquor, then ribbed me about ordering champagne as though I never “got away with it” in the states) and was thrown out into the wide, deep waters of the deserted Charles de Gaulle airport, just before dawn, with ninety pounds of luggage (not including carry-on items)

Confession: I had help from kind random masculine strangers. I think my luggage might have been left on the quai a few times with me speeding away in a metro if I hadn’t. But really, no one was going to make a quick getaway hauling that stuff.

Anyway, three hours later, after finding the train station, buying a metro ticket (not cheap nowadays…), asking directions from lots of uniformed people and making them repeat everything they said slower, then just looking at the map anyway because it was easier, finding my way through the gare st-lazare to where the actual train trains are, buying a ticket, getting on the train, putting my stuff in a compartment that turned out to be first class, putting my 38 pound bag of books over my shoulder so I could get through the narrow train hallway, and stupidly pushing the button on the door to the second class compartment, which wouldn’t open because the train was leaving, then letting a nice woman from Sydney Australia explain to me that the French guy was asking me if I wanted to put my luggage on the rack and just sit in first class, Im in Rouen. I was about ready to leave all my stuff and wear the same clothes my entire trip. Also about to cry. A security officer at la gare commented that I’d brought enough for a month. I don’t think he believed me when I corrected him saying no, seven months. Had a nice conversation with the woman from Sydney. Her husband (marseillais) is in Le Havre (right on the channel), her son is working as a patent lawyer (of all things) in Paris (and getting darned good at French I imagine) and her daughter is working in Marketing back in Australia, where she has to go back to to help her take care of her 16 month old grand daughter. I think you have it relatively easy, mom.

But I eventually got off in Rouen, and after finding the pay phones, realizing I needed a French phone card to use them, buying a card, and waiting on a bench, attracting amused and curious glances from passers by, was reunited with Mme L. She is very Scottish and sounds almost exactly like Professor McGonagal from the Harry Potter movies. (and I had the strange feeling, running through train stations with my mountains of luggage, that I should have been carrying a cage with a snowy owl in it too. Lucky none of my stations were concealed behind brick archways. I don’t trust the wheels on my suitcase at a run). We got to the school, I got introduced to lots of very nice French people whose names I don’t remember. They have something called un conseiller principal which I kept trying to liken to a guidance counselor, but he kept telling me the conseiller d’orientation does all the scheduling and finding universités, etc. I believe its a little more like our principals with all the discipline responsabilities but none of the administration. I’m sleeping in someone’s apartment which I think came with his job but which he’s not using. Kinda run down and abandoned looking, but functional (note- and on campus around everything else- perfectly safe, doors lock, don’t worry mom). Apparently some of the students come from far away and live in sort of dormitories, which seem by the common areas on the bottom floor a lot like college dormitories (foozball tables and the like). More about them later.

Mme L and I spent the day together. Her house she described as a fusion of Scottish (hers) and French (her husband’s) cultures. Lunch was very French: a simple salad of tomatoes, parsley and vinaigrette (which I ate- the tomatoes were actually very good, firm and fresh. She said she got them at the market), ham, noodles and pineapple (I’m eating what’s put in front of me these seven months. Call Entertainment tonight. People Magazine. The National Inquirer.). Then she served cheese and offered me fruit. And then we had coffee. Boy, was that coffee. I never liked it when coffee in the states tastes too bitter and burnt. This was not it at all…very smooth. Wonderful. Not at all like what they had on the plane. Her husband was very thin, quiet with a shy smile (maybe it was because we were all speaking English) and very helpful. He’s a retired German teacher, and Mme L kept pointing out how nice it was to come home to dinner ready. We all kept switching between French and English, easily. She also has a gorgeous five-year-old black lab named Argus (named for the dog in Ulysses, I think, who remembers his master after he’s been gone 20 years. I couldn’t help thinking of Argus Filch), who came running every time you said his name and brought me socks. Also laid his head on my leg as I ate, gazed at me with his big pathetic brown eyes as I ate my cheese, and rolled over so I could scratch is belly. Dog after my own heart.

We wandered Rouen after that. It’s beautiful. Lots of cobbled pedestrian streets, ancient buildings with the beams crossing the white plaster walls, red tile roofs, balconies with overflowing flowerboxes, little shops selling expensive clothes, cheaper clothes, a wonderful place with tons of neat post-cards, brasseries fronted by large fields of tables, salons du thé. Also a cathedral, with oodles of delicate stonework like scaffolding, which along with the dark stains on the walls and the statues gave it a look of being under construction. But awesome when you looked beyond. It seemed bigger than the basilica in DC, but ancient, almost ruinous. I kept seeing posters of it when there was some show in which different paintings Monet had painted of it were superimposed on it at night with projectors. But the goal of the trip: a little office which had lots of advertisements for rooms and apartments for students. Also baby-sitting jobs. Jackpot. The places I had found online weren’t convenient to Rouen or the school by bus, and another English teacher had gathered some ads with unfurnished apartments that were more than I’d planned to spend, but we found four rooms in this office between 150 and 250 Euros a month with lots of utilities included. Also shyly mentioned to Mme. L that I’d wanted to stay in a convent but didn’t feel like knocking on the nuns front door and asking if I could stay, and Mme L mentioned that some friends of her son’s had stayed in a convent right by her house when they were going to school. Party. Bonus.

After a coca in a brasserie (beautiful wood floors, art nouveau stained glass), I decided my brain really wasn’t working right. Felt a little dizzy too. Decided to put off calling places until tomorrow, and go back to my room to kill time until 8 o’clock, which I decided was the earliest reasonable time I could go to bed. I cleaned out the tub, took a long hot bath, and went to the cantine (cafeteria- they have a cafeterie too but it’s a small room for the faculty strictly for coffee). I was all wanting to talk to the students but a little nervous, brought a book to read. People stared at me as I went in and finally one boy, dark curly hair and dark skin, with an earring, asked me who I was. I told him, and he started practicing his English. He told me I could eat with the surveillants (the RA’s, I guess) and I said I wanted to eat with them, which was arranged. By 7: 45 pm I’m still working on dinner and it seems like the whole cafeteria is gathered around our table. We’re speaking English, French, correcting eachother, joking, having a grand old time, and lots of people seem to just be watching. I’m thinking wow, they like me, they really like me. Turns out a lot of them were giggling about how I was eating. I got all the same kinds of food Mme L had served me, but all on the same tray, and I’m eating a little of this, a little of that, not really paying attention. Apparently this is really funny, because everyone knows you’re supposed to eat things one at a time, first the entrée (salad), then your main dish, then your cheese or yogurt, and finally your desert (I had some sort of custard and incited more giggling when I started eating it with a fork.) Looks like I’m teaching already. Way too fun to be work. Part of me hopes this is really my job and I’m not getting overly familiar with everyone so they can run all over me later, but for the moment I’m just enjoying it.

And here I am. I went to bed at 9 and woke up at 1. Apparently my body thinks I pulled an all nighter and took an afternoon nap and that it’s time to be up now. It’s now 3. Maybe now that my body thinks it’s 9 we can try again.