shopping in France can be scary...

Even when its not Halloween.
And you though Giant Eagle was bad...

Feast day of Saint Bienvenue?
What a night.
God is alive and kicking in France.
I stayed for a day at the retreat for teenagers Anne and Cristophe were giving. Charismatic; I felt a little out of place. But even so… even though the language barrier doesn’t help…I feel so much more at ease with people I don’t have to feel like hiding my faith around!
A boy got up and told the story of how he felt called to be a priest at age 7, told God if it snowed before September 27th that year he’d take it as a sign (it snowed September 26th) then got into the gangster rap lifestyle, started buying the clothes, picking up chicks, hating the police (with no reason whatsoever to do so) stealing (not too much) and cultivating that hateful look all the rappers in the videos have in their eyes (he’s 12 by this point) then had a powerful experience that turned him around, allowed him to give all of that up, to live for God- all before the age of 16. He’s something. Or rather, God's really something
The retreat was put on by the Community of the Beatitudes- I’m still not sure I understand it. It seems two charismatic Christian (Protestant) married couples at one point wanted to live together in community, then they converted to Catholicism, grew, and had all sorts of members feel called to join the priesthood and religious life. Result: a group of brothers, sisters, priests, single and married people all living, praying, and working together. And spreading across the world. To Denver, notably, where a young student found out about them from a group called FOCUS at her school, joined in Colorado, and was sent to the community just outside Rouen- where she invited me to stay next weekend. And explained all the community’s history to me, because I wasn’t sure I was getting it in French*
It’s a small world after all.
I also got to vent to her a little about the state of religious liberty in the State of France. And she did a little counter- venting. Apparently Parisian restaurants are allowed to deny service to anyone wearing a habit. She said something about an attempt to irradicate religion in France altogether, spawned from a fear of Islam, but spreading to everything else. I asked her if she thought this assessment wasn’t a little extreme, and she pointed back to the schools. Touché.
Which is why I will never again whine about Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/ Ramadan/Winter Solstice/Festivus celebrations. The more the merrier. Make all the television stations wish us a happy one, separately, every commercial break. Just please don’t forbid anyone to celebrate them. Religious diversity. Bring it on. Just don’t pretend it doesn’t exist.

oh, who am I kidding making political commentary?

and yeah, i know things in the US are far from perfect (I don't think they have religious groups founded on the basis of "God hates fags" in France...)

anyway...

Car Dieu est un Dieu puissant
Il régne de son saint lieu
Avec puissance, amour
Car Dieu est un Dieu puissant

*Don’t worry Mom and Dad, they’re not a cult, they’re very loyal to the Catholic church, and I’m not thinking of joining!

Set a goal to get four things done…and achieved it. Maybe that’s the secret…settle on a few things that need to get done and leave the rest for later, instead of freaking out over how much one has to do and not getting anything done…
That was a piece of cake! I think I’m getting smarter! (falls into a hole)
(ok, not yet)
Listened today to some radio station I’d taped before coming here…country music…How am I supposed to convince my French students that we’re not a bunch of gun-toting wackos when one of the first commercials I come across is for this gun shop in Griffin? I mean seriously, I may be a little sheltered, but the only gun I’ve ever, ever seen in person that wasn’t carried by a policeman, secret service agent or member of the military is hanging over the door to our kitchen- our antique civil war rifle that hasn’t worked much less been shot for at least a hundred years. And don’t all the Swiss have guns? Or am I falling prey to stereotypes now? If by the wildest chance my officially Swiss, organ-playing friend is out there reading, any input on the state of firearms in Switzerland?
I think there are things about the US that people just love to hate. Like Bush. One of the first classes I observed was given a copy of that picture that circulated around on the internet…I’m sure everyone’s seen it. The one with Bush and son proudly holding up the big fish with the flooded ruins of New Orleans in the background. And then we spent forty-five minutes discussing how it portrayed a president who cared more about amusing himself than the suffering of his people. And granted, maybe it’s his poor speaking skills, but he doesn’t sound exactly sincere when he talks about such things…
and yet…it was news to them that Bush isn’t solely responsible for the state of New Orleans, that the federal government’s role is to support the State Government in an emergency (that is right, isn’t it? Or do they take over if the state government can’t fulfill it’s obligation), that outlaws were shooting at rescue workers, that red cross trucks were waiting to deliver supplies to the superdome but the governor wouldn’t let them go, fearing that it would only encourage its occupants to stay longer and be raped and mugged and beaten up some more… (or do I have this wrong? That’s the impression I got of the situation…) So yeah…everyone loves to blame Bush for things, and yes, he’s commited a great number of serious bêtises, but the situation in New Orleans is not exclusively his fault…
Anyway…
Discovered something that has me even more confused about France…the laic school system that won’t let me as a teacher wear a crucifix to contaminate the minds of their youth and won’t let any of its students wear headscarves or yarmulkes gave me this date book of sorts to record abscences in… it looks destined for students, like everyone gets a copy the first day or something… and I’m flipping through it, hoping it lists Easter as I’d kinda like to know when it is…and I notice there is a different name next to each date on each little section of the calendar… and I’m wondering if Damien and Côme and Marguerite were all chosen somehow out of the school district and they get their birthday listed in the official district schedule or something…but when I run across "Thérèse de L’E.- J." and "Francois d’Assise," not to mention "La Sainte Croix" and "Nativité de N.D," I’m deeply confused. It seems as if the French have these mixed relations with religion, particularly Catholicism. One one hand, they had a bloody revolution a few centuries ago overthrowing the current authority, notably the church, and they cradled philosophers like Sartre and Foucault. On the other hand, they can’t throw out their Catholic roots without denying a culture over a thousand years in the making. Like I have a lot of errands to run and business to do, but forget about doing it on Tuesday…everything’s closed on All Saint’s Day.
Enough for tonight…Sorry I’m always complaining…I’ll have nice things to write soon, I’m sure.
A Happy Feast day of Ste. Narcisse to all.

Stop RIBbing me!

To start off with: I’M OK! Nobody worry about me! I have enough money to survive on for the moment, and Anastasia and T. have both offered to lend me money if I need it, which I don’t plan to! I’m just ticked off with my bank.
I’d walked in one morning, intending merely to gather information about opening an account, thinking I’d have to have a signed proof of residence, evidence that I was in the process of getting my green card, vaccination record, last month’s bowling scores etc etc etc in order to get an account. But no. They just wanted my passport and the letter saying I’m employed. Great! I thought. The education ministry people had instilled the fear of French bureaucracy in me, but this is a piece of cake!
I should have smelled something funny when they kept telling me "You should recommend us to any other assistants you know. We’re a good bank." Didn’t tell me why, just that they were a good bank. Um hmm…I just figured they were patronizing the slow foreign person. Now I’m wondering whether or not they were trying to convince themselves too…
It seems every time I go in there, it’s something different. They tell me they’ll have my bank card and check book ready for me by that Friday, and my code sent to me in my mailbox (at school) on Saturday. Great! Less than a week!
"So getting an account is a piece of cake, hmm? Let’s see how you deal with this little slice…"
Even a week is not soon enough. The office at school absolutely needs my RIB (Relève Identité Bancaire, this number used to identify your account, which you have to give to all sorts of people like employers and phone companies to give them access to your account. And the bank gives you several…something to do with security…I’m still lost) to do all the paperwork so they can give me an advance on my pay. French paperwork being what it is, it takes the state two months to deal with all the information that comes before my monthly salary, and so I have to apply to the school for 75% of my salary at the end of my first month so I don’t starve waiting for two months salary at the end of November. And I have no RIB as yet…so I go to the bank, explain my situation, ask them if they can give me a RIB in advance. They seem slightly flustered, but they punch buttons on their computer and come up with something they assure me will work.
I turn it into the Proviseur adjoint (sort of vice principal/secretary to the principal, I think) along with my birth certificate, a copy of my passport, my Iowa test scores, and two letters of recommendation from my orthodontist. Well and good. I can rest easy. She assures me multiple times that I should get paid at the end of October, I’ve done all there is to do.
It seems my bank hasn’t. Friday, Saturday, then Monday and Tuesday roll by. Nothing in the mail. Nothing at the branch. Finally they promise me, next Saturday. Saturday rolls around. They have my check card, but not my checkbook. Well and good. It’s better than nothing. Mini drama where they won’t exchange my dollars on Saturday, as described before. End result: I have a card. I’m good, for the time being.
But I can’t help wondering where my checkbook has gone. After all, I still haven’t paid rent, and a checkbook is kinda vital for that. I go in several times to check. Nothing. Finally someone discovers it hasn’t been ordered. Oops.
In the meantime, the end of October rolls around. I’ve made up my budget, discovered I’m running a little short on funds, and start to wonder exactly when I’m going to be paid. I drop by today to see if they’ve heard or had anything. I wait in line for fifteen minutes, give the lady the paper with one of my RIBs, and ask if I’ve been paid yet. Nope, I’ve given my employer a bad RIB. I’m going to need to give them another one.
Now when they gave me that first RIB, I must have asked five times if this will work, if I could indeed get paid with it. And the answer was oui oui oui oui oui. There has to be some reason they needed this number at school a good two weeks in advance OR ELSE. It can’t help to suddenly change it, even with the nice note they wrote me to give to my employer explaining the problem (with "erreur" misspelled, as I find out later). Not to mention everyone at school is on vacation until Thursday of next week.
So yeah, I’ve broken down in tears by this point. Not because I’m desperate or because I’m going to starve, but out of sheer frustration. It’s always something with this bank!!! If I knew all the other banks weren’t like this, I might go ahead with the trouble of changing after all this. Here is my recommendation: Don’t go to that bank. If things don’t get any better I might just put the name and hope French people with good English skills google it and come across this.
I call Anastasia to ask if she’s been paid (she hasn’t but all of her school friends have and she has her own drama now, poor thing). She comes to my rescue, gets indignant at the bank with me, lets me know I’m not crazy or demanding, helps me look through my papers and call the school (no one is there,) and feeds me. And lets me pet her cat.
Have I emphasized enough how great she is? Probably not. I really hope if, when I return to the states, I come across some poor lonely lost foreigner, I can be as kind to them as she is to me. And Annemarie. And Anne and Cristophe. And the Raskins for that matter…but yeah, I have a lot to pay forward.
(Her cat, by the way, if I haven’t mentioned it before, has all this fur growing out of his ears and is named Volvox, after some ancient French monster with the same trait)
I also told her some of you were thinking of coming to visit. Apparently everyone would love to meet you. So come! (but let me know well in advance so I can get you in the habit of using everyone’s real name…) (and if you can’t because you’re up to your ears in law school debt I understand, don’t worry you know I love you!)
And pray that I might find a sense of charity towards my bank…
Vocabulaire:
Baby Foot: Foosball
Enceinte (n): enclosure or enclosing wall
Emboiter le pas à quelqu’un: to follow on someone’s heels
Cachmire: cashmere
Chantonner: to hum

Operation Moules Frites: Accomplished

Anastasia was good for her word. Her cousin Laure was in town for the "holiday," and she took us to the seaside town of Etretat: the ocean, pebbly beaches, a golf course (of all things,) nestled among spectacular cliffs (Monet did a painting of one of them- there was a little display showing the painting right in front of what inspired it) and that simple North Coast France delicacy, moules frites. These are not, as the literal translation implies, fried mussels, but rather mussels with fries. Like the English fish ‘n chips. Only better, they assure me.
Mussel greenhorn that I am, I was skeptical. But ready to try anything. We were each brought a big pot, with a little one on top for the empty shells, along with a big platter of fries for us to share. The fries were cold- nothing to write home about (although I am). We weren’t even brought ketchup (or mayonnaise), and I didn’t know whether it was permissible to ask for ketchup, although it seems mussels and fries are low-brow enough that anything goes- Anastasia even ordered a—get ready for this—coke to go with them.
Exploring the French shellfish- soft drink taboo, it seems that with fancy dishes- like oysters- one is expected to drink fancier drinks- like wine or champagne. It isn’t necessarily disgusting to drink Coke with oysters or potates gratin à la dauphinoise, just not as well-bred. But if you’re young and eating with young people you don’t care as much. In fact, Annemarie served me and her sister Coke with lunch the other day—but only because her parents weren’t around.
The mussels themselves we ordered cooked in white wine with parsley and herbs. We ate them by first picking the meat out of a little shell and then using that shell as pincers to grab the meat out of the other shells. This didn’t keep our hands from getting sticky, but it was fun. I have to say they were delicious. Because they were delicious- as long as you didn’t look at them. That way they seemed like slightly brine flavored, tender morsels of meat. However, looking revealed something down-right organ looking. And when you then ate it…you couldn’t help thinking of little mussel brains squishing between your teeth (was that what the black squiggly looking stuff was?)
Similarly, it’s a little easier to be American with your eyes closed. I’m reading an article on Islamistes—oddly enough in a French magazine, ostensibly dealing with their attitudes toward the French and their affect on France, but so far they’ve only talked about Arab nations and the United States. And yeah, I’d be pretty ticked off too if someone barged in and told me I had to wear a veil from head to food and eat merguez (north African sausage), but it seems like- apart from the war- this is what we are doing, at least from the Arab perspective. Why, how, I’m still not sure.
But how do you balance human rights violations with respecting another culture’s values and beliefs? Which just leads back to relativism: are human rights simply what you believe they are? So if you can convince yourself it’s just to force your beliefs on another country…the circle continues…
(I love y’all, don’t want to start huge heated nasty debate) Just finished re-watching Swing Kids- which always awakes the "there’s evil in the world we have to do something!!!" side in me…but what to do? How do you fight evil without creating more of it? How do you bravely confront it in all your bare naked honesty and weakness without falling prey to it? And how do you dance while doing it?
I know I’m naïve, and I know I’m here to open my eyes a bit…and I imagine several of you may be ready to supply me with lots of other information. But go easy on me a bit, ok? It’s painful, and I’m here among strangers, the vocal very small minority of which are ready to blame me personally for everything that’s going on, or at least my complex would lead me to believe so…whereas y’all are (for the most part) my countrymen (and countrywommyn) and we’re in it together…
It seems we’re a young, naïve country, when it comes down to it. Drink Coke with your oysters if you want. Do what tastes good. "Feel the flow, hear what’s happening—we’re what’s happening. Don’t you know, we’re the movers and we’re the shapers. We’re the names in tomorrow’s papers- up to us, pal, to show ‘em…*" Which is all well and good…"there’s a place for us," but not everyplace…not us exclusively…
Don’t get me wrong. I love the US, and I’m loving it more and more the longer I’m away from it. But it really doesn’t need to be everywhere
*"Our time," from Steven Sondheim’s "Merrily we Roll along," sung by recent high school graduates…but it kinda fits…
Things I’ve seen that were painted by Monet:
The Rouen Cathedral
La falaise d’Amont (the cliff of Amont)

all that's missing is the cigarette

I made myself put up Spear Hit posters today. Three posters: that was my goal. Then I could reward myself.
Lunch here is big, and dinner is usually late (one of the apartments I looked at served dinner, and the lady told me they usually ate at seven so the kids could get to bed, and said she hoped that wasn’t too late.) You can see where this is going. In Britain sometime when there were more kings and queens and ladies in waiting, some princess just couldn’t go that long without eating, and tea was born. Here it’s a little less of an institution. But generally people will stop and have a bite to eat and something stimulating or relaxing sometime around four. I’ve been trying for weeks to just duck into one of the little coffee/pastry shops to sample something.
Patisserie du Palais is right across from Le Palais de Justice, the big court house. There would have a lovely view of its old façade, complete with gargoyles and the like, if it didn’t happen to be under construction at the moment. I’ve only seen one building actually being built around here, but seems like all the old buildings are constantly under repair. Or there are signs all around them saying not to stand too close because chunks of them keep falling off.
The inside of the patisserie makes up for the disorder outside: track lighting, warm orange walls, a huge case filled with marzipan, chocolates, vienoisseries (pain au chocolat, croissants, brioche, anything really that’s not quite bread and not quite pastry), meringues, macaroons, charlottes, mousses, cakes, tartes, tortes etc etc etc… I manage to pick out a sable aux noisettes, a sort of hazelnut shortbread, I think, to go with my café au lait. Next time I think I’ll splurge on something, as I don’t plan to make a habit out of this.
After scrambling for a few minutes to find a pen so I could write all this down and have something to do with my hands (and not being able to find one,) I decide I should just concentrate on savoring. Maybe Pascal was on the right track…maybe sitting still isn’t so bad after all. My coffee is brought to me in a small cup, half filled, with a little pitcher of frothed milk, a little paper tube of sugar, and a tiny spoon to stir with, on which lies a single glazed almond. Small quantity, sheer quality. As I stir my coffee in the calm of the shop, gazing at the muted traffic outside, I can’t help thinking: This sure beats Starbucks.
Vocabulaire:
Briguer: to solicit (an honor or a post) Il briguera un siege de depute de Gironde en 2007
Enclencher: to engage (like in star trek, I think… it says "tech" in the dictionary…) il est accuse d’avoir enclenché le genocide.
Attiser: to poke (as in a fire) figuratively: to stir up. Il a accuse certains journaux égyptiens d’avoir attisé les tensions.
Étau(x) (masculine): vise (grip) L’étau se resserre autour du president libanais après le rapport Mehlis.
Interpeller: to call out to, to question (someone speaking at a meeting), to take (someone) in for questioning. Il a été interpellé Samedi sur ordre du procureur général. Or Ce roman m’a interpellé: I could really relate to that novel.
Attentat: attack attenter à: to make an attempt. Attenter à ses jours: to attempt suicide
Verrou: bolt. Sous les verrous: behind bars.
Étayer: to shore up (a wall), to support (a theory). Ces elements pourraient étayer un deuxième rapport de l’ONU.
Tendance (when adj.): trendy?
Siglé(e)(s): abbreviated?
Retentissant(e): resounding (success), major (scandal): Il y aura ces retentissantes
Colères d’objets

lonely in a crowded room

You’re in a room stuffed with people from wall to wall. You hardly know anybody; what’s more what you speak of their language is confounded by the loud music and everyone talking at once. The two glasses of champagne you’ve had so far haven’t helped either. As you happen to be an introvert, you keep looking for reasons to go upstairs, where it is quiet. And yet, you reflect, even though everyone is singing, you’re probably the only one there who knows and understands the words to the larger half of the songs they’re playing
Until they start playing all the French songs and you realize you can’t even fake it; you’ve never heard these songs before. And you realize your awkwardness, the tension you feel when anyone approaches you speaking English or asking about the United States or its attitudes on XYZ—it’s partially your fault. You’re at least as arrogant about your own culture as any one around you is of theirs.
Resolved:
- LEARN FRENCH
Get over persecution complex
Spend minimum time alone in safe little English bubble and talk to people
Only approaching things that are hard have never been easy for me. Y’all know how I get when I try to start a paper. Or maybe you’ve seen me climb the ladder to the high dive and have to climb back down five times before I get the courage to jump. Or there’s the time I had to stick my finger in Anatomy lab so I could test my blood and it took me a good five minutes to get up the guts to do it, even though the instant I pushed the trigger on the needle I’m thinking, wow, this isn’t so bad. I guess it’s time to pull that trigger.
Otherwise the party was lovely. Everyone was beautiful. I learned about Rock and Roll dancing ("Of course you know rock and roll dancing, it’s American, right?" More like a European answer to jitterbug), ate exquisite chocolate mousse and candied fruit with almond paste and little toothpicks with what looked like tiny diced potatoes but which were actually tiny scallops. We danced until five in the morning, by which time we had moved on to m&ms and apperatif crackers and all the French songs everyone knew by heart and could belt out lustily… I was more at ease by then. The party was a great success. I’ll echo L.E. "It was great." "Why?" "Because it was hard."
We slept until noon, ate breakfast, then lunch, wondered over train and mass schedules for awhile and finally figured I should stay the night and go to mass with them. We went to a tiny hospital chapel, me, T. and H., her sister. It was more like a school room at times; people would raise their hands and ask the priest questions in the middle of his announcements. I understood almost all of it. Party. Bonus. Went to housewarming not exactly party but crèpe gathering with one of the dancingest couples at the party last night. Apparently they know salsa and this rock and roll, and she does ballet and modern jazz, but swing is still a mystery.
And darling…you’ll be comforted to know that while H. has no great love for peanut butter itself, she concedes that peanut butter M&Ms are delicious.

Left the R.s’ to their preparations to leave for the Grandparents’ in the country and Guadeloupe. T. unfortunately, has a month left of work. She’s working (for my cell phone company in fact) on a temporary basis and hasn’t had any vacation for 14 months, except maybe a little off for Christmas. Exhausting for everyone, but imagine for someone who’s used to a week vacation every 7 weeks of school. One more month to go and she’s free to make wedding preparations.
Woke up from my twenty minute nap yesterday that lasted an hour and a half from a dream that I was in this elementary boarding school with all French kids and no one wanted to pick me to work with them on projects because I didn’t speak French well enough. Woke up determined to socialize. Kept hearing clanking and thuds and grunting and crashing coming from next door. Sounded like someone trying to put a very heavy box of dishes on a very high shelf. Thought I’d be neighborly and go over to help. But he was just lifting weights.
Still exhausted, hiding in the English bubble. Resolved: review resolutions.

American in Paris

Ok, sorry I haven’t been keeping up very well with my blogs (although some of you out there could be writing more too…after all, I do need words to hang on, don’t I? J)
So this weekend I go to TR’s engagement party. T. and her family have a beautiful three story house just outside of Paris, but close enough to still have a great view of the Tour Eiffel and Sacre Coeur. I drove down with Anne and Cristophe, as well as their children. In between exclamations over cows and digging out of games to amuse the two year old, Anne and I had a lovely conversation about weddings and conversions and various books we’d read. Cristophe commented every now and then too. He doesn’t talk too much. We were running a little late for their baptism (a triple baptism, all friends of theirs, conducted by a priest friend of theirs. I think one of the fathers was the guy I stopped outside the church and who introduced me to Anne and Cristophe in the first place) but luckily, it happens to be in the next town over from TR’s suburb, and she comes and picks me up from a nearby metro stop, after a few phone calls back and forth and lingering over coffee in a nearby bar.
Preparations are in full swing at her house. While everyone is cleaning, straightening, setting up sound systems and flowers etc, we go shopping and put together a hasty tasty lunch. We catch up a little too. G. and T. have been dating I believe as long as I’ve been dating L.E. (that is, Lord Ellidor. Some of you know what I’m talking about and the rest at least know whom.) G. was in Africa for a little while while I was there last time, and we bonded a little talking about how much we missed the significant others (my first and only other trip to France was the first time I’d been away from LE for longer than a week or so since we’d started dating, right before we went to college. It was a very emotional time for Buttercup.) and life resonates with a note hinting at significance when I think she’s getting married just a month after me, like we’ve been living parallel lives or something (except I don’t think I even know ninety people between the ages of 12 and 29 that I could invite to a party. Between me and LE, maybe, but they’d be coming from all over the country. Hopefully they will be coming from all over the country when we invite them to the main event…)

Everyone was so much older than they had been that it seemed like I was visiting completely different people, almost. The 5- 10- and 13- year olds I saw last time are now 11- 16- and 19. The youngest is as much the exhibitionist he ever was, only now instead of showing me his toys and cartoons, he’s explaining to me how his Dad salvaged their disco ball from a big Parisian night club he had a project at (he works with acoustics in buildings) and how the whole family had been making ice for a month to be able to fill the bathtub with it in order to keep the champagne cool. As accommodating as ever, they have lots and lots to do, and the place is all excitement and flurry.

Vocabulaire:
Flare: used mostly with animals, in a figurative sense, intuition
Machine à choc: still don’t know…maybe that’s what made the music so loud?
Boule aux reflets: disco ball

“I don’t understand…we do it all the time in Mexico.” –Pedro Sanchez

Approximately 99% of the people I meet are unbelievably nice and helpful. The rest are just clueless. I want to think they think they’re being nice and helpful, but oooh… Like the lady at the cell phone place who kept telling me the phone plan I wanted, who kept insisting I wanted that one and no other, even when I persisted in asking her about other programs. Lady may be too strong a word. She looked about 18. Or the prof this morning, who was telling me all about his research on the United States where he compared answers to a questionnaire on the values of American youth (18-24) to that of French youth. I naïvely asked him what they found. “Oh, American youth are much more selfish than French youth, he answered earnestly, and went on to describe how more ridged American youths’ views with regard to drugs, sex and abortion are. He seemed completely oblivious to the facts, or at least failed to acknowledge, that
I am an American youth.
He might himself have biases as to what is “rigid” or “selfish”
I might be the least bit offended or uncomfortable at his assessment of my culture.
“rigidness” and “selfishness” are hardly objective terms fit for labels of groups being researched (unless maybe he had an instrument to measure either construct, in which case I’d like to know which country developed the instrument.)

I’d also like to know who designed the questionnaire, who translated it, what kinds of questions where on there, what mode of response was required, etc. I’d also like to know where he gets off calling American youth rigid when in his culture, teachers can wear no sign whatsoever of any faith, students can only wear religious jewelry within certain diametric parameters, and anything as overt as a headscarf or a yamulke is strictly forbidden in schools. So yeah, go ahead, drink, have sex, smoke, do drugs, but don’t dare identify yourself as a member of a religious community while under the roof of a laic institution.

This has been my biggest beef with France…I don’t understand how saying an institution is separated from any church implies that everyone involved in that institution has to be, and I can’t understand how it is just in a modern nation to force people to choose between fulfilling the obligations and rule of their religion and attending public schools.

And abortion…well, most of you know what I think about that. I gently tried to suggest to Monsieur that one might have other reasons besides rigidity to oppose abortion…but he didn’t seem to notice.

I hope I didn’t make any of you too mad…my intention is not to start up a great controversial debate here, I love you all and think you’re great, and I understand that cultural sensitivity may not exactly be my middle name. But this is what makes me feel the most lonely here (well that, and searching in vain for a phone card with a decent rate to the US): the idea that there are all these restrictions I don’t understand about how I practice my faith (and the restrictions apply even more so to people of other faiths, and to people who live here full time). And I understand people are just less outspoken about controversial things here. Nobody here, for example, would ever put a political candidate sticker on her car. You just don’t discuss things like that. But why, then, is it ok for the teachers to make dirty jokes about my religion in the cafeteria? Or for Comic books about good Baal-worshiping prophets and the evil empire of the Vatican to be sold in ostensibly “laic” supermarkets?

I know these things happen, and have been happening for centuries…but I don’t have to like it… and I’ll admit I’m still young and naïve enough to stamp my foot when the world isn’t fair.

Lessons of the day:

You cannot re-cork a bottle of cider
If you could, it would not be wise to drive the corkscrew all the way through the cork
I should practice more with a corkscrew in case I’m ever asked to use one in public.
I can handle 2% alcohol.


Français du jour:

Tire-bouchon: Corkscrew
Playback: lip syncing
Objet Volant Non- Identifié (OVNI): UFO

Gang aft allay (sp?)

This morning I got out of bed and made a list of everything I needed to do and how long it was going to take. Then I drew up a schedule of exactly what I was going to do and how long it was going to take. I even started taking notes on what was causing things to take longer than they should, like not being able to find my shoes and staring off into space for 10 minutes because I don’t feel like getting all my laundry together. But you just can’t control for everything. Things just happen. Like having to pray through a mini crisis of faith when you manage to put the host in your mouth before you’ve asked the Lord to “only say the word” so you can be healed, or having a basket load of groceries checked out before you realize you can’t find your check card and walking 20 minutes back to your apartment only to realize that it was in your purse the entire time, or going to do your laundry and having to work your way around a movie being filmed in your Laundromat.
When things don’t work out exactly as you’ve planned, there are then opportunities that you didn’t have before, but those opportunities take more time. Today, as I was not then wearing my teacher hat, I decided to be a reporter, and I interviewed the teacher and some of the lycée students who were filming the movie, and took lots of pictures and made lots of notes, remember that an old teacher had told me I should write an article on youth in France for this one magazine. Why not? What better opportunity would I have to examine the unique opportunities of French youth than right here, getting in the way of my preordained prescribed daily routine?
Apparently this was a class of terminale littéraire students, working on a movie which would be shown as part of their baccalaureate, the big test high school students wanting to go on to higher education have to pass. There are three main paths to your bac: littéraire, sciences, and economics/sciences. Each path has different concentrations. I so would have gone for a bac littéraire (and apparently my parents would have tried to talk me out of it, as sciences is seen as the most challenging and the best for future studies/careers by parents, though this is not necessarily the case.) Anyway, in this particular school, instead of studying the usual mix of art and literary subjects, the students have the opportunity to study film, including theory and all the practical aspects. Each student had taken a different role in the production in my Laundromat. I sat and chatted with the caterers (they were delighted with the English word.) One of the students had written the piece, a sort of study on ennuie focused on an encounter between a modern museum curator and Blaise Pascal. (At first I thought they were shooting a news report, and when I saw Blaise hanging out in his long wig and ruffly poofy shirt, I couldn’t help but think that people involved in audiovisual endeavors in France were awfully daring in their fashion tastes), another was directing, another was shooting and another was in charge of the sound. It’s great they’re getting practical work experience, the ability to fulfill their role on a team and whatnot, in addition to all the academics. I have the caterers quoted (as I translated them) as saying “ It’s great we get to do something out of the ordinary that a lot of lycée students don’t get to do,” (apparently there are only 4 schools in the Academie de Rouen with this sort of program)

I later put on my PR hat to deliver a poster for Anne and Cristophe. The person at the Catholic book store I was told to go to apparently was not the one she talked to about putting the posters up. But he did anyway.

After more commotion I got home and put the teacher hat back on to figure out what to tell my secondes about immigration in the United States and spend a long time selecting scenes from Napoleon Dynamite and making a list of vocabulary, including “sweet,” “buttload,” and “bowstaff.”

Lessons of the day:
If you spend a buttload of time preparing a lesson which requires your computer, put it in front of the door, so you have to trip over it before you leave. Otherwise you will forget it and have to think of something else to do for an hour.
If you can’t find your bankcard, find a quiet, secure, comfortable place to empty out your purse one more time before going home and looking for the card.

Français du jour:
Boquiner: spend quality time with a good book (familiarly known as a bouquin)

Tea with Annemarie

I hardly know how to type on an A;erican co;puter any;ore. I keep ;aking ;istakes.
I had tea with Annemarie, two of her friends, and the student from Minnesota who’s staying with her family. It just so happens the Minnesota girl has cousins from Peachtree City. She says she loves it there. Then Annemarie asks us if Atlanta was a very beautiful city. What do you say to that? Ok, I guess the short answer is “No, not really.” Paris is a beautiful city. Rouen is a beautiful city. Washington DC is a beautiful city. Savannah and Macon are beautiful cities. Maybe I just keep equating beautiful with old. But Atlanta is, well, a dirty urban sprawl monster that’s a nightmare to drive in. Forgive me, my hometown, but the truth hurts.

But it has its moments. I mean, any city looks pretty in the twilight pictures they take for postcards. And there’s the Fox theatre. And the view from the top of the sundial at night when all the tops of the buildings around are solitary, neighboring temples at the summit of mount Olympus, in another dimension.

Anyways

Once everyone else had left, Annemarie filled me in on a little of what they’d been talking about (conversations are still hard to follow, especially among people under thirty years of age). Apparently she’d had a somewhat sudden, painful breakup with a boy she was very much in love with, who is now calling her again and saying he made a mistake, he made it painful on purpose so it would be a clean break, but “il n’avait pas encore tourné la page.” That is, he never got over her. She’s very much hoping he’ll ask her out again, but he’s leaving to do an internship in London in three months and she doesn’t know if it will all work out. What could I do? I told her my love story. She seemed encouraged (though a little shocked, surprised, and amused that I’d been broken up with when a certain someone decided he was an atheist, and was almost broken up with again when he thought he was called to the priesthood.) I I hope it all works out for her…

We both had places to be at eight. After doing lunch with that one couple last Sunday from 12-5, having tea today with Annemarie from 5-8, and having had dinner at Pierre’s that one night from 7pm- 1am, I realize you could really spend your entire life eating at people’s houses in France, if you had enough invitations.

I went to Ecole de la foi (School of (the) faith). They crammed an amazingly thorough overview of the bible into an hour and a half. And I understood most of it! They went over the basic general progression of events, different translations, why we have more books than protestants, why all the gospels and slightly different and how, all the different sources for the old testament, how all the different books of the bible belong to different genres and you have to read them slightly differently, all the different ways you could interpret the Bible etc etc etc… it was amazing! If I keep going to this every other week, I might just be able to approach understanding what my better half will be studying J

And we prayed afterwards in the chapel, inviting Mary into our lives to help guide us through reading and understanding the Bible. And that was awesome. But the really cool part…and yeah I’m a geek but it kinda sent shivers up my spine…as I was leaving, I passed a big poster sized print of sepia tinted photograph of a lady with long hair. It took me a few seconds to process what it was: Ste. Thérèse of Lisieux in the role of Ste. Joan of Arc. Not ten meters from the place where Joan of Arc herself was martyred, in a church named for her.

No work today. I called the phone company and I will have a ligne fixe (land line), they tell me, no later than November the 7th. I hope they don’t have ties with my bank. I still haven’t received my check book, and the other day, when I tried to use my bank card for the first time, it wouldn’t work, either at the cash register or the ATM. I had to put back my groceries and breath deeply, reminding myself that God’s taking care of me, even if I only had five euros in my purse and no way of getting to the rest of my money (don’t worry, mom, it’s working now. Everything is fine. Breathe.)

Today Anne came to chez moi to record a radio broadcast. Turns out the Centre Diocesan, where I live, is also where they broadcast the Christian radio station in Rouen, and Anne came to talk about the concert on “Halloweens,” by the French Christian Reggae group, Spear Hit (say it fast, you’ll understand). I got to watch Marc. He was a little fussy, but we were ok. It’s amazing…I’m still kinda scared, having responability for such a little baby even for only a few minutes with his mom just in the other room, where we can both hear her voice, in fact, but she deals with him 24/7- and she’s only two years older than me. Yeah, mom, I know you had me when you were even younger than I am. I’m hoping all the taking care of kids stuff just switches on when you get pregnant (or your wife does).

Anne is incredibly open and talkative and friendly. And she is completely confident and comfortable saying things like, “I’ll manage somehow. I have the Holy Spirit working with me,” and asking me to pray for her while she was recording. And it’s completely natural…she’s not trying to be “pious,” this is simply her mode of thinking. She marveled that the person interviewing her, who works with Catholic teenagers, seemed surprised at her saying things like that. I guess I’m a little taken aback that she’s French, and Catholic no less, and saying things like that.

But it’s awesome.

It turns out she and ____have a baptism to go to Saturday morning in a town just next to the one where TR lives. So they’re giving me a ride! Rock on!

Tonight: Fais-Le Avec Christ (FLAC), a group of young people who meet and talk about Jesus. Praise and Worship stuff too, apparently, a lot of it. Never felt entirely at home with Praise and Worship (never know what to do with my arms and legs) so I don’t know if I’ll go back, but I’d love to see them all again. This was a mixed group of Protestants and Catholics.

I have a confession to make.

I love protestants. You do great things. You love God. Great. But when I do ecumenical things, part of me is afraid of putting my Catholic identity in second place, like I have to shove Mary and the Real Presence in the closet or something. I think this comes of living in the South, where, no matter how accepting and open and welcoming are, you feel like other Christians are tolerating your Catholicism, with a great deal of GRACE! Not that GRACE! isn’t wonderful and I’m not happy to help anyone get it any way I can. It’s just…well, in the United States, Christian tends to mean Protestant. We all objectively know Catholics are Christian too…but even still… when I said that we had a Christian radio station here, did some of you wonder what it was doing in the Catholic diocesan center? Broadcasting shows about celebrating the Eucharist? I’ll admit I did. Here, if you say Christian, people think Catholic. Someone told me today that sometimes they try to explain they are Protestent to people and those people have to get them to explain what Protestant is. They usually know that some sect of Christianity besides Catholicism exists, but they’ve never seen enough of it to understand. I hope none of them feel cut off there.

By the way, in case you haven’t noticed, I have a bit of a persecution complex. More about that later.

Français du jour:

* T’es ouf, toi? (verlan-“fou”)- Are you crazy or what?
* Ciemer- “merci” (verlan)
Secte- cult (I think). This is the reputation evangelical protestants have in France, though undeserved, because of some groups that exhibited…
Débords, excès- excesses, or things that go a little overboard
On a passé un bon moment- we had a good time.
Prendre du recul- to take a step back and take time to think about something.
Reculer: to back up

Bus-2 Etrangère- 1

Last night I saw peanut butter, right next to a single brand of pancake mix and microwave popcorn: saveurs du monde. These were located on a small shelf above the mexican food. The peanut butter was Skippy, in chunky and smooth varieties. A 12 oz jar went for 3 €65. A little American embassy right in the grocery store.

I finally found the Catholic station on the radio this morning. They were talking about world missionary week and how it was important to make foreigners feel included and welcome in the Eucharistic celebration. Really, they're doing a pretty good job. I feel loved.

The bus was later than I was today! I got to school an hour before my class. I checked my email and pondered my vending machine coffee.

My first class went ok, except I did most of the talking. I guess that's pretty good for a bunch of students who found out just yesterday afternoon that they had to show up at eight. I made them all say their names and the last movie they'd seen (answers ranged from Phildelphia Story to Fight Club), and we played "never have I ever." I was the only one who had never eaten snail and the only one who had ever eaten shark. One girl had never flown in a plane, and three of us had never been to Germany. They seemed to understand English quite well. Or at least, the ones who did managed to translate for the ones who didn't. Five minutes before the end of class I let them ask questions. Have you ever been to New York? Thank goodness I don't have to answer for Bush again! I had pictures ready of my New York friends (I'm saving you for next time, Scyndie).

None of my other classes showed up. I did sit for two periods with Ringo. (on whom I had barged in on earlier engaged in this profound discussion with another English teacher all about accepting one's mortality, in which he made a comment that amounted to "We all want to do something about New Orleans but crying only adds more water." I guess I should have found something else to do, but I figure if they really didn't want me around they would have spoken slow enough for me to understand). I entertained two of his classes by showing them postcards and giving them American slang words like "Bling" and "sweet" and "He was like..." (by the way... please send me other slang word definitions. Complete with definitions. I'm way too square to be teaching teenagers.). But mostly they taught me french slang words.

c'est chaud- it's hard (difficult)
Tu touches en (anglais, football etc)- you're good at___ (but i made the mistake of saying "tu te touches en something" and Ringo was quite amused.)
darasse: big drunken party
gestape: car
bégère: to vomit
kiff: to like something (je kiff tes chaussures?)
les darons (le daron/la daronne)- parents
Bidon: uncool
un thon- (a "tuna") an ugly girl.
( it seems there are a lot of words for undesireable women relating to fish. I asked if it was because all the French men made them feel like throwing themselves in the ocean, and one boy said they'd be doing humanity a service. Then he assured me he was joking. yeah...)

Verlan (slang made from saying words backwards)
kebla- black
rebeu- arab
meuf (femme)- girl

They taught me other words too for various body parts, which I let them record primarily so I wouldn't say them by accident.

I also asked them about peanut butter. Apparently, most had tried it and didn't like it. It's like the American Vegemite! Can you imagine? I'm living in a world where it is inconcievable to eat oysters with coca cola, where peanut butter is despised as too greasy, the reason Americans are so fat...and yet every pizza, mushroom pizza, tomato basil pizza, you name it, whether it says it or not, is topped with diced ham, and people offer you mayonaise with your French fries...

And by the way, sweetie... not that your head needs to be any bigger...but all the French girls think you're cute (and so do I).

So you can't come visit me. Sorry. :)

No, please come.

Bus- 2 Etrangère- 0

Yesterday I had lunch with Annemarie, who I met at the mass the other night. Her sister is just finishing Harry Potter herself (in French; she'd already read it in English, which she prefers, but this way she gets all the details.) She's also having me to tea tomorrow- it was supposed to be today but I'm an idiot and, even though I know the difference perfectly well, I keep confusing things like 7pm and 17h. That is, I was supposed to be there at 5 (17h) and kept thinking 7.

It seems Mary has answered my prayers and is making me more aware of my faults, and more patient with them. At least I'm getting lots of practice.

For example: this morning. My first class is at 8. I will get there on time! I just miss the 7 am bus that goes to mon lycée. I know this because I saw the busdriver of the line I wanted and asked him if he went there, which he didn't. See, I am learning something. So I wait for the 7:18. A bus from the right line arrives. This has to be the one, right? If every other bus goes to the school, and the last one didn't, then logically this has to be the one. Wrong. Is he sure? Yes, quite sure. So I walk up and down the long line of busses. Finally Mr. Wrong, waiting in his wrong bus, calls me over and tells me Right Bus has arrived. I go to the end of the line. I don't see it. Then I do- driving away. Fast. Up until this point I have kept my cool. I havn't broken down at all for three weeks- probably a personal record. But at that point, I lost it. I was going to be late. Running and searching and panicking had all been for nought.

Now after all the times Ive done this and all the times God has taken care of me, I really should know better. Mr. Wrong takes pity on me (you know, if everyone does this every time I break down crying, I don't know how I'll ever stop.) Even though he isn't supposed to, he drives me part of the rest of the way to school. I walk very quickly by the glow of the bright orange moon on the horizon, over the corn fields. And when I get there, guess what: no students. Apparently no one told them they were supposed to come today. Just like no one told me I had a class at 10. Which it turns out I don't. "Pontuellement," I learned today, does not mean "puctually" but "every now and then." Which is great, because I'm much better at being intermittent than punctual.

So today I worked out the schedule, played on the computer, and tried to stay calm.

But great news: TR, who I stayed with last time in Paris, just got engaged to G! She was dating him six years ago, during my first long seperation from John! They're getting married next September! And I'm invited to the engagement party next weekend!

God is good (and don' t forget it)

The dramatics must be catching. I almost threw a fit this morning in the bank when they told me they still didn’t have my check book they were supposed to give me a week ago. They did have my bank card. They do not, however, change American dollars into Euros on Saturdays. But the Post office just across the street does. However this post office, as opposed to the one by the train station where I’ve been happily cashing checks for weeks, has noticed that my passport signature does not match the one on my traveler's checks. Yes, I signed my passport a good six years ago. My signature looks different now. I nearly launch into a tirade of pathos, bemoaning my useless travelers checks and imploring the young man at la poste, must I get another passport? What is one to do, stranded in a country with a passport that does not show your very signature? Go to the tourist office, he says. They’ll probably take it.

They do. And they only charge me two euros for their service; less than the bank, which charges five, but more than the post office, which does it for free. Oh well. What really brings tears to my eyes is the exchange rate; or rather, how few euros the remainder of my dollars are good for.

So I deposit my money, nearly crumbling again when I realize I don’t know whether she’s put the money in my checking or savings account, then again when she tells me they’re in a compte courante and I have no idea what that means. I just gave them one of the five id numbers they’ve given me. At the time they asked me how many I wanted and, when I kept acting confused, would switch to English for the poor American didn’t understand. The poor American, indeed, understands the language. She’s still just trying to figure out why one would require more than one bank identity number. For security, they keep telling me, but what does that accomplish? Indeed, in every bank in Rouen, you have to ring at the outside door until it unlocks, then pass into the interdoor chamber and rep

Wilkommen, Bienvenue

I have to say that if all the stereotypes we have about snobby French people are true, then I happen to have incredibly fantastic luck at only stumbing upon the nice ones. I've been asked to people's houses to eat, people I barely know mind you (don't worry, mom, they're all girls my age or married couples from my school). Saturday I spent the afternoon with the lovely couple I know thanks to the random Parisian "Jesus addict" I met after mass. This has been the most relaxed meal yet...indeed, with a six month old and a two year old, no one expects soufflé. We talked all afternoon (inbetween feeding children, calming children, putting them to bed and taking them for walks.) The girl he knew from somewhere would be fascinated at what I learned about French Masons. Also: I never thought about this, but a majority of French women smoke, and a majority use the pill...apparently doctors here don't tell people this probably isn't a good idea. Actually, I don't know the actual statistics, but both are kind of a given... anyway. Christophe, the young father is involved in putting on a very public, free concert featuring- no joke- a French Christian Reggae band. On Halloween (all saint's eve, rather, here). And he says I can help :)

and wouldn't you know it, when Anne, the young mother, is not staying at home with her very small children, she is a speech pathologist.

That' s me in the corner...that's me in the spotlight

Training meeting. We learned that we have to avoid speaking English in our classes at all costs and gain the respect of our students by answering any sensitive political question they ask us. Then we learned we might sometimes have to resort to speaking English in our class and might want to avoid political topics if at all possible. Looks like I have to figure this one out on my own.

It turns out Ringo has not only never taught anyone to sing something or choreographed anything, he has never any done theater. Period. That’s what he likes about this whole project, he says. Should be interesting.

We had a grand total of two guys and fourteen girls show up to drama today.
a lot of the kids really seemed to get into what we were doing and enjoy themselves. We ended up with a lovely rendition of the scene in Forrest Gump where he’s looking for a seat on the bus and no one will let him sit with them. Minus the southern accents, naturally. Also played at “Ministry of silly walks” (démarches de con).

However, three of the girls refused to do anything but stand around. During their silly walks, everyone had to label themselves with a particular adjective, and we kept doing things that required us to act that particular way. One girl labled herself as “depressed” and almost started crying. She was crying at regular intervals over the session. Another girl decided she was depressed too and kept running off. I had completely forgotten high school was this dramatic (no pun intended). Like I can talk. But it’s really maddening when everyone is doing it at once.

“On fait combien de bisous aux Etats- Unis?“

Yesterday morning I was so proud of myself. I had managed to rush through my morning routine enough, after having lain too long in bed and hitting the snooze button too many times, that I arrived at the Gare Rue Vert bus stop in plenty of time to catch the 8:14 bus that goes all the way to my school, rather than stopping half an hour away (on foot). I even bought myself a congratulatory croissant. So, when the number 72 bus comes, naturally, I get on it, feeling all safe and cozy, and snuggle into doing something. Now, the display over the windshield said “Collège Verheeven- this should have been my first clue something wasn’t quite right, as my stop is considerably after that one, but no matter. I was quite aware things were not going as I had planned, however, when I looked up and say that, not only was there no one else on the bus, but the bus is heading back up towards my building. I jump up and rush to the front. The bus driver immediately begins to talk in a defensive tone. He apparently hadn’t seen me, I should have checked the windshield board (I had! And the inside one wasn’t displaying anything!), which now, apparently, read “Depot.”

Lesson: Always, always ask conductor if he is going to my school, or indeed the location. What else can you do?

The bus driver tells me to catch a number five bus to Hôtel de Ville and get on the next next 72. But by now I don’t trust buses farther than I can throw one, and the idea of getting on one bus to catch another seems quite counterproductive. I take the metro to catch the next 34 which doesn’t stop short of my school instead. Some lady mumbles to me in an accusatory tone, and continues to do so even after repeated attempts to let her know I don’t understand a bit of what she is saying. I finally ignore it.

I arrive at the stop for the 34 in time for the 8:49, just as the sun peaks over the hills surrounding Rouen. I ask the driver waiting there if he is going all the way to my school. No. Phew! Another disaster narrowly averted. Now I wouldn’t mind walking, except that every time I do, I manage to be passed by a bus. Hence, there must be quicker ways of getting where I am going.

I finally get on the correct 34 bus, verify it is indeed the correct bus, and sit down. The number and color for the 5 line are painted on the side. Oh well.

Have you ever pushed yourself so hard to do something you almost made yourself cry?

I was determined to speak to French and/or Catholic people today. I tried stalking some at mass today. Which was odd- some random lady kept trying to steal the microphone from the priest and the people talking about World Youth Day during the homily… anyway, the random lady was nice- offered me aperatif crackers at the little snack table afterwards- but she didn’t stay long. I’m a mess- cowering in the corner. The people I do steel myself to talk to don’t say much in return. I’m just about to leave, huddle myself into a payphone and cry to that poor boy who always has to listen to me when I’m in such a state, when a group starts heading back down into the church, as everyone else is leaving. What are they doing, I ask the lady ready to lock the door behind me. “Having a picnic dinner, she answers. Do you want to join them?” “Am I allowed to?” I snivel as I prod the spearhead of my desire to meet Catholics and speak French, no matter what, into my own back. “Of course,” she answers. I assume she sees that I have nothing to eat with me.

She doesn’t. Everyone has brought their own dinner. I’m standing around like an idiot.

Now, if you stand around like an idiot long enough around a group of well- intentioned people, they are bound to take care of you.

They gave me a sandwich to eat, listened to my halting French, repeated when I needed them to- everything I needed. They even walked me home. Or a group of us walked eachother home. At one house, someone pulled out a copy of HP et le Prince du sang mêlé. From that flowed a discussion and agonizing over the fact that we couldn’t remember Scabbers’/Wormtail’s (Croutard/ Queduver’s) real human name and it would bother us forever until we remembered. At another house, after saying goodbye and kissing each of my cheeks, the girl asked me, “How many kisses do people do in America?”

Anyway, World youth day either attracts or creates holy people…I was so welcome!

French words/ terms I’ve learned recently:
Le croquis: (n) sketch
“Ce n’est qu’un croquis, pas une vraie carte” (in Geography class.)
La bâche: tarp
“On s’est couché sur une bâche” (stories about JMJ)
JMJ: Journée Mondiale de Jeunesse- World Youth Day
Tirer la chasse d’eau: flush the toilette
“Les toilettes préfabriquées- où il n’y avait pas de chasse d’eau!”- more stories about JMJ
Le bizutage: hazing bizuter: to haze (first year university students)
“On a bizuté mon frère en l’obligeant à s’habiller de PQ, comme une momie.”
La veillée: a vigil, as in for the dead; or a gathering around a camp fire to sing songs, often of a religious nature (Kumbayah, My Lord…)
Entraider: to help one another

Nationalities people have guessed for me (today):

Scottish
Irish
English
Polish
German

(I guess English, Polish and German aren’t too far off…)

France is playing Cyprus tonight…tomorrow we should have a good idea of how its going to go. Some French guy tried to tell me this last week, of course, but he kept saying they’re going to play “Chypre” and kept explaining it was this little island between Turkey and Greece and I felt like such a dumb American…

Today I went to a group called “Tandem,” intended to help people learn French and English by pairing French primary-school-teachers-in-training with English- speaking assistants such as myself. We’re supposed to build up to spending 45 minutes of the 90 minute session speaking each language and writing notes on how we could improve.

My partner looked like so many other cute blond girls at home. She said she’d come from Caen and was quite happy to get out and study where we were—I guess not much happens there. But she was incredibly nice and helpful. However, English didn’t seem to be a strong subject with many of the students there, so communication could be difficult…It’s great they make people take more than one language in general here, but sometimes I think when they cram so many subjects into so little time, students don’t make as much progress. I mean, they may study English for many years, but that’s many years for two or three days a week, wheras my four years of highschool Englih were for five days a week. Frequency is very important for a foreign language.

Apparently I’ve been pronouncing “en” the same as “on” all this time…I’m quite self- conscious about it now but maybe I’ll improve quickly then.

Met Aruther and Amelia there, along with Elizabeth, one of the Polish Canadians. I asked her why there were so many of them and she could only figure it was a complete coincidence. She didn’t know any of the others (except, I’m sure, through all the information they’d exchanged trying to figure their particular situation out) Apparently Poland is supposed to join the EU in 2010, but she still has to brave the medical exam.

We all ended up eating in this crêperie, something I’d wanted to do since we got there. Walking around, you pass one about every five minutes. We all ended up with desert crepes. I mean, when you see something like “chocolate sauce, brownies, and vanilla ice cream” on a menu, can you resist? I mean, without hiding the menu and/or the table tent under the table. I ordered the “croquant,” a crepe with almond brittle, vanilla ice cream and whipped cream (chantilly, like the lace). We all tasted each other’s. Arthur had rhum flambée. Very different. It must have still been burning a good three minutes after he got it, just a little haze of fire that kept disappearing and reappearing each time you thought it had gone, with a taste that seemed to change just as fast in your mouth from sweet to bitter to burning.

But it was the cider I’d really wanted to go for…
Sparkling. Cold. In what looked like a coffee cup. Only it was bigger than a shot glass and so wouldn’t have passed for a coffee cup in France. The other assistants asked if it was hot. Oh no. Just served in a big coffee cup. But it was wonderful. Bolée Doux- I recommend it.

On a whinier note: The prefecture, where I’m going to get my titre de séjour, tells me, oh, you should get an appointment- except when I go in to get one they don’t have any until January the third. Guess I’ll just have to get there at six in the morning after all. Also need an official translated birth certificate. And why can’t I just get a friend to translate or someone to approve it somewhere? Because then it wouldn’t be official, of course. I need to call the palais de justice about it.

Also, I go to the bank to find out what happpend to the bank card and/or code which was supposed to be sent to me last Friday. Don’t worry, come back Saturday, we’ll figure everything out. No problem. I’m sure whatever got lost on the way to the school will come pack by then.

Sat next to a lady from Virginia today in the internet café.. kept asking me how to find the periods and @ sybols etc. on the French keyboard. It’s nice to be the one answer the questions about how you get around. My keyboard there, on the other hand, kept switching between French and international. Time to learn to switch between the two, i guess

Good news: I’m walking without a limp now!
Bad news: I lost my voice.
And I’m falling asleep. It’s been a long day. Goodnight.

PS France won, 4-0!

and everyone send me the addresses to your blogs...especially you, sweetie!

And somewhere in Rouen in some little folder is a study in black and white…of my lungs.

I jaunted to and from Paris today and had lots and lots of fun at my medical checkup. There was a crowd of about twenty people outside the door when I got there, apparently waiting for someone to get back from lunch so we could all go to our 1:30 appointments- this was at 1:15. Once in the system, we were processed pretty quickly, and would have been more so except a lot of us were assistants and, after being stuck with ourselves and a strange language so long, many of us were quite ready with real human interaction with people we could relate to. I saw Ramid from Jersey, who I’d met at the meeting, two Amelias, one from Toronto and another from Philly (I think), Candice from San Fran, Gary from I don’t remember where, and Alex from…Atlanta! He had just arrived the day of the meeting, backpack still on back, waiting to meet his professor…no stress. He said he’d come so late so he could take the GRE…

So first they called our names and had us verify that all their info was correct- not easy with us noisy Americans jabbering away in English, and them pronouncing our names last name first with very strong French accents, then they checked our weight, vision, eyesight, fine fine fine…and then…go into the little room and take off your shirt, bra, necklaces etc. and put your hair up. All fine. I’m waiting for them to reach in and hand me a robe or something. Nope. Man barges in. Come on out, time for your chest x-ray. Not like we’ve built up any doctor- patient relationship of trust or anything. And they couldn’t just stick us and have us come back in a week to make sure we didn’t have TB. I know it’s not such a big deal in France, that people go around topless on beaches all the time…but I’m not French! That is why I’m getting this exam done, by the way. Because I am not French! Or even European! I just feel bad for all the Arab women who were there…probably wasn’t any better for them.
At least they didn’t make us pee in a cup. (though I think I would have preferred it)

Ok, so the guy was very professional. Or he probably was. I was too busy trying to cover myself up to really notice.

Blood pressure listen to your heart have any health problems take any medicine the pill parents have any health problems vaccines up to date fine fine fine… here are your lungs wait for your signed paper saying you are up to French health standards ALL DONE!

Hung out in a brasserie (bar) with Alex and Amelia (from Toronto) at the train station waiting to go back to Rouen. We had a great time on the bench there talking about crime, French kid questions, Teacher questions, all kinds of groovy things there. Amelia kept having kids ask her about American hip hop songs, does she know what a Candy Store is (snigger snigger)—and she has middle school kids. Said she was familiar with about everything they threw at her except some poor kid all dressed head to toe in Slipknot (?) gear…she didn’t know too much about Slipknot and the kid almost cried! And they’re asking her (right in front of her supervising prof) if she’s smoked marijuana and the prof is just waiting for her answer…looks like I got off easy. All I have to do is familiarize myself with Tony Parker.

France and Switzerland tied, by the way. There’s still hope if France wins the next game.

Rode back with A&A too (no problem, mom). Apparently Alex mentioned something about how his last name probably came from someone who had owned his great grandfather or something and it may be Welsh, and his prof was really interested in his sharing this with the class…no pressure. We got to tell Amelia all about Stone Mountain too. I know I really should be hanging out with more French people…but it was great to talk to other étranger(e)s for once.


And I did talk to a French guy- Julien, who I caught on his way out the door at mass (which was great…they had this whole crowd of people with Autism and Down Syndrome, etc… was great to see them and have mass with them and what’s more…the reading and the sermon were slow enough for me to understand for once!!!) He was on his way back to Paris, to his wife and one-month-old daughter, but he seemed to understand right away that it would really be great to hang out with other Catholics (note to you who aren’t: I LOVE YOU!!!! YOU’RE GREAT AND I’M GLAD YOU’RE IN MY LIFE!!! And I’d be thrilled if you were all here with me! I just feel the need to belong somewhere right now, with people who share more with me than the English language or a desire to learn it…not that that’s true of all of you! Oh, y’all know what I mean…) and gave me his email so I could get the number of a nice young Catholic couple in Rouen! Who knows, maybe they’ll even let me babysit…

just call me Frenchie...

I left my bedroom window open today for half an hour and I’m still finding half-dead bumble bees crawling around my room. No flies, no moths, just bees. Found one stuck under the foot of my tights…I don’t know what stopped me from getting stung. Divine providence, deciding I’m having enough trouble getting around on foot around here without a big swollen foot…

There is one professor, we'll call him Ringo, whoI haven’t mentioned yet. He has longish gray hair where he isn’t bald, some bristly white stubble, a black leather jacket, and a motorcycle.

Ringo likes to use lots of films in his classes. Which he says isn’t strictly legal. In fact, my first day, he told me if I ever wanted to know what wasn’t allowed, I should just watch what he does.

Today his class had to summarize for me, in English, the movie they had most recently been watching—The Graduate. Probably not an easy narrative to relate in a class with a rather flirtatious older teacher (ok, so he flirts mostly with the other teachers. I think, being aware of the American taboo on workplace flirtation, he goes easy on me.) but they did ok. After recovering from the shock I induced when I told him I hadn’t seen it, he played some of it. Man, Mrs. Robinson’s so creepy! I just recently read a book, too, about a twenty-year-old English au pair (why are au pairs almost never positively portrayed? There must be some good au pairs…) who seduces the thirteen year old boy in her household and then gets angry one day and shakes his baby sister and blames it all on him and then he goes mute… on behalf of all the females of the species, I apologize to any guys who may have gone through any of this… not the mutism and framing, the other stuff. That is, being REALLY seduced by an older woman when you’re really not ready for it.

Anyway…

Ringo is starting up an Anglophone theater group for our lycée (that’s French secondary school for those of you learning French, Sweetie. 15-18 ans). Originally he was going to have them play specific scenes from movies. He asked Anastasia and I to be part of it. We both wanted to do plays. He was expecting two or three people to show up for his informational meeting on Friday afternoon. We got 18, and news of more who couldn’t make it that day. More than he’d been bargaining for, and more than can be kept occupied with a few select scenes, even with all three of us involved. So his current thought is to adapt Grease. We shall see... All those greasers and teenybopper poodle skirt girls with French accents…sounds like fun

also: does someone want to tell me how I can connect to your blogs? put up a link or something? and can i do something with someone on LJ too or no?

France has gone to the dogs

List of dogs I’ve seen so far:
Airedale (lives in the flower market in la place du vieux marché), very well behaved but looks bored most of the time
Bassett Hound
Boxer
Bulldog (go dawgs!)
Chihuahua
Cocker Spaniel
Dachshund (sp)
Jack Russell Terrier
Labs (golden and black)
Poodles (fantastically coiffed)
Rottweiler (impressively muzzled)
Scotties (black and white)
Shi tzu- carried in its own little bag (I kid you not)
Spaniels (some sort of red and white one- there are two that bark furiously at me every time I walk past on my way to the supermarché)
Spud McKenzie dog- you know, the really ugly ones
Whippet
Lots of mutts

Number of times I’ve slipped in poo: 1

the rest of the story (so far)

Ok, now that I have my computer up and running on French power:

The rest of the story.
(by the way, it sure feels good to type on an “international” keyboard as opposed to the French keyboard, zhere everthing you type co,es out like this; It cqn be very trying; I zonder if other countries use the “internqtionql keyboqrd” or zhether they hqve their own qnd “internqtionql” just ,eqns “English;”)

Dqy I mean day two: I was tired. I mean really, really tired. And stupid. This is the word professor McGonagal used. I don’t think it’s as strong, or at least it can be used in a more temporary sense, in Scottish. I was introduced to lots and lots of people whose names I didn’t remember at the time (I’m getting a little better), and then set about trying to find a place to live. I fixed a rendez-vous (not necessarily of a romantic kind, in French) with a man in town for 12:30. Whoops, it’s already 11.

***long complicated story follows. If you don’t want to bother, skip down to the ***

So I get on the bus and get down there. Looks like I’m in the area just in time. Only I was so out of it last night (and this morning) that not only do I not know the man’s name, I have no idea what his street number is. But I have his phone number.

So I go into a bar-tabac (think bar/café/ convenience store w/out the food) to ask where there is a phone. Right across the street, silly. So call him. He isn’t there. I call his mobile. He still isn’t there. I wander around for a bit, wondering if I should just give it up. I find the phone again and call him again. He asks where I am and if he should just pick me up in his car. Don’t worry, Mom, I told him I’d prefer to find it myself. He’s there and gives me directions, telling me the name of the road. It is not the road I thought it was. Silly me, didn’t ask how to spell it. Kept asking people where it was. Nobody knows.

I call again. Am I sure I don’t want him to just pick me up? Yes, I’m quite sure, thank you very much. Just tell me the address.

Beep. Silence. My phone card has just run out.

Now you can’t use just any phone card in a French telephone. It must be a France Telecom card (or at least have a toll-free French access number; well, I didn’t think of that and it’s a good thing I didn’t because then I wouldn’t have been able to call all of you later on when I did.) So I go into the bar-tabac to buy one. I’ve decided on one and go to pay when, what do you know, they can’t accept my bank card. It has a magnetic strip, and all the cards in France now have microchips. And no one takes American travelers checks. I am exactly 20 cents short of the price in Euros. Also, all the banks and post offices are closed until 2 because it is lunchtime. Now I could have easily found an ATM machine, I realize that now. Maybe I was too tired to think. Maybe I didn’t want to find out that none of them worked either. More probably I was so focused on not panicking or breaking down crying from the sheer frustration of it all that I wasn’t thinking too hard. I was also very, very hungry.

Nothing I can do about the appointment. Time to eat.

Step into a nice little boulangerie-patisserie restaurant. Make the waitress understand that really I don’t need the salad and the cheese and the desert, just a nice little quiche. Try not to gross people out too much with my table manners. Refuse mineral water; luckily the waitress seems to understand and brings what must have been tap water. I try to sneak the bread into my purse when no one is looking. At this rate, you never know.

I’m feeling much better. The monsieur trying to pick me up is now busy until five o’clock. Fine. I will see him then. A tout à l’heure. Just as well, I have an appointment to see another place at seven, which I was very smart to make before I even came here and realized the murky swamp waters getting around here entails. Call other places. Most are full, as most house students and all the students have just settled in ahead of me. So much for waiting until you get there to find a place. Arrange a meeting for early tomorrow. Bon. Walk around a whole lot. Then realize that there may be no more busses to get back into the country if I wait that long. Call back Monsieur. 12:30 tomorrow. Fine. Change 7 o’clock to Saturday morning.

***so, bref, much ado about nothing accomplished. I walked around all day and yes, used up another phone card for nothing. Wrote it all off as a learning experience.

I was glad I saved the bread though (ha, don’t you wish you’d read the whole story now?) because I took a nap and ended up sleeping through most of dinner. When I went begging they gave me a little cheese and a big hunk ‘o bread, didn’t charge me. Waved and said hi to the students, who didn’t seem too interested. Oh well. Back to sleep. Woke up again around one.

Day three:
Boy do my legs hurt.
But no worries.
Found a bank. Looked at two apartments. One was very nice, beautiful view, quite affordable with the right paperwork (I qualify for housing assistance). Monsieur turns out to be a lawyer. His wife teaches French as a second language. They have a six-month old baby and a six-year old. The upstairs is reserved for students, and there is already a Chinese and an Indian girl living there. He suggests it might behoove me to try to learn Chinese, as it has the largest population of speakers.

The other place has a chapel.

Guess which one I pick.

Ok, mom, it’s not as bad as all that. This place is the same price as the other without all the paperwork (trust me, I’m wading through enough French paperwork as it is. I think that envelope you gave me for my papers has doubled in size), has probably a little more space, I only have to share the bathroom with two or three more people than in the other place, and the fridge and microwave they gave me can be augmented by a hot plate, which one of the teachers said she’d lend me, so the “kitchen area” is pretty much the same. The room is essentially a dorm, located in the Rouen Diocesan center, which was once a seminary. Their real chapel has been converted into an, albeit beautiful, amphitheater. (Ok, theater with stadium seating. They call them amphitheaters around here, even when they are indoors), and there’s a little room with the altar and the blessed sacrament and an icon of Mary, with benches and appropriate lighting and little portable kneelers and cushions. Quite functional. The lady who showed me the room seemed ready to bend over backwards to make sure I had everything I needed. She also, while she had me trapped in the “amphitheater” gave me a lecture on how there will be an ecological catastrophe if Americans don’t mend their ways. I’ll get right on it as soon as I have regular internet access.
So it’s not a hike to Mount Everest to get there (unlike the other place), They don’t want $75 dollars to house visiting friends (unlike the other place COMEVISITME), and it’s still right close to down town, metro stops, shopping, restaurants, cathedrals, the place where Jeanne d’Arc was burned, etc. But it’s a safe area with lots of nice students and it’s warm don’t worry about me mom.


Day four: Saturday

Went to look at the other place. It’s a little out of the way, and I’ve already decided.

Bummed around town some more. Called John. Ran into the Benedictine sisters of the Blessed Sacrament (sweet), bought a rosary.

Had dinner with some of the other English teachers. We’ll call them Pierre, Anastasia and Maude. Pierre is very single and lives with his Labrador (must be very popular dogs in France) – she’s adorable. And very well behaved. Except during the cheese course. Anyway, I’d heard when you go to people’s houses to have dinner in France you can bring flowers. Not wine, you silly American, that’s like bringing a can of green beans. So I consult a florist on what to bring a man who’s hosting a dinner and she puts together this Calla lily with these orange peppers and some palm leaves and bamboo- voila. Suitably masculine, and affordable, flower arrangement. See photo. (If you guys (John, Justin and Tom) don’t know what they are, you might want to look close as there’s a good chance you’ll be wearing one next August 12. But not purple.)
Maude picked me up. We got lost. It’s out in the country past all these roundabouts (grand points) and she’s no better with maps than I am. Ok, she is, because she knows the area better. But we still had to call Pierre several times. He welcomes us in, takes our things, he’s cooking something delicious. But let me explain a little better the cast of characters.
Anastasia is incredibly stylish. She puts together these awesome outfits and has this bobbed hair the shade of Axelle Red’s (John knows what I’m talking about. I don’t think she sings like her though.) I saw her at work in jeans and this green blazer that looked like a rag rug, over a sweater, with these earrings- she looked so posh! And you’d think she’d be snobby but she isn’t in the least (see next entry). She also is the one who is lending me the hotplate. She brought the guy she is cohabitating with, Paul, who is also very nice, but a little quiet. Reminds me a little of some of the engineering guys back at school, except he’s actually much more into the humanities and is also teaching them in a Lycée (but not English). Maude is quite soft spoken, with short curly hair and glasses, dresses more like I do. Pierre is quite professorish, in a friendly sort of way. He reminds me a little of our Physics teacher back in highschool, enthusiastic and buoyant about his subject, with a quiet and kind voice. Only less into the Beetles.

In fact, everyone was so cultured, talking about the theater and books and opera music. Seriously. I felt like I could sum up Jeff Foxworthy’s comedy in “You might be a redneck if you’re: American.” Not to bash America. I just felt a little behind. I guess these are teachers; that isn’t to say all random people in France are the same. Teachers also seem to work in better conditions here (more about that later), and so seem to attract stronger students (who aren’t necessarily living off the moral benefits of teaching- thank you to our wonderful teachers, don’t think I’m degrading what you do). Definitely more the haute PBS crowd. I did, however, understand a good 70% of what was said, and we did talk about some books I knew. Like the Da Vinci Code. They all thought it was full of “conneries” (B.S.), though they said nothing of its historical or theological aspects. They were appalled at how he had the layout of Paris all wrong. You cannot simply look around you and see the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower and whatever else he said was there all in one place. Paris is a big city, and its wonders are, well, a little more spread out. You also cannot run straight from L’Arc de Triomphe into the bad part of Paris. Apparently the bad part of Paris is mostly way out in the suburbs (side note- they’re trying to explain to me how new teachers always end up teaching in the suburbs, which are like our inner cities. I said the suburbs I had been in weren’t so bad, and mentioned where I’d stayed last time was in France. They laughed at me. I think I’d said something akin to “Big cities in America aren’t so bad. Why, I stayed in Buckhead in Atlanta…”) All this was corrected in the French translation of the book (which is everywhere around here).

We also talked about Harry Potter some: formulaic, they said, but mixed well so it worked. Can’t argue there J) Funny- when I say “Harry Potter,” no one knows what I’m talking about unless I try to use a really really exaggerated French accent. Maybe I should just pretend to be Fleur.

Points to me: They were all impressed I knew what Proust’s “Madeleine” was. Thank you, Haiku U.

This was all sitting in the living room drinking the aperatif- I had orange juice, others had wine or vodka- with some crackers. This lasted a good 45 minutes. Eventually we moved onto the salad (entrée)- tomatoes, avacado, lettuce, and tuna. Great. Then was served the entrée (plat principal)- Lamb (mea culpa!!!) and Potates Gratin à la Dauphinoise. Think Potatoes au Gratin only better, with a subtler kind of cheese. Then came the compulsory cheese and bread. Don’t remember what they all were, but there were three kinds. This was where the Labrador decided she was invited. She kept poking her nose up through my arms by my plate. And finally: desert. Tarte aux pommes- not quite apple pie, with a pearsauce (like applesauce but with pears) from Pierre’s grandmother’s orchard. Besides being cow country, Normandy is also apple country and this is apple time. Then back into the living room. We’ve come full circle. We talk another 45 minutes over tea and coffee. It is now 1:30 am and I’m stifling yawns. Finally people decide they have enough work to do tomorrow to get ready for Monday that the party must break up. “French kisses” all around. Much nicer than clubbing. For me at least.


Day 5- Sunday

Went to mass at the Cathedral, Nôtre Dame de Rouen- it happens to be the feast of its dedication. Choristers who look like miniature monks complete with scapulars, organ, incense, the whole nine yards. But I’m sitting on the side, close to the altar so the echoes don’t interfere with my comprehension too much. I’d planned to be at the Benedictines- but once again, I’d neglected to look at the bus schedules when making plans. You’d think I’d learned by now. But you know this is me, so no, you probably wouldn’t think. I only get a little lost on the way to Anastasia’s. She lives in town, right off a metro stop. I would have been fine if I hadn’t been running late and too impatient to actually wait for the metro (fewer of them, being Sunday). But she spots me from afar and takes me home. Again, aperitifs, don’t remember what kind of crackers we had with it, only that I ate a lot of whatever it was, then salad, some sort of Asian dish with noodles- she apologized that it wasn’t particularly French. It was good anyway. We skipped the cheese and went straight for the heart- tarte aux fraises (strawberry tarte). By this time, Anastasia’s friend, “Jeanne” had shown up. Jeanne, Anastasia explained, has a tendency to catch accents as one catches a cold. Having spent several months in Texas, Jeanne had a rather Texasish drawl. It sounded like some Texas- Minnasota hybrid to me, but was definitely understandable and quite American. Jeanne is also studying to be an English teacher. All the other English teachers have very British accents, and use rather British words, like “till” and ‘brilliant,” and , as Pierre would use as an example of things British people try to get French people to say when they’re trying to be funny, “French Envelope.” (If you don’t know what it means- don’t worry about it.) Anyway, another nice time sitting around with coffee and tea. Everyone else smoked but were very nice about opening the window and blowing it away from me…I’m so pampered! Anastasia even let me use her phone to call home. She swore it didn’t cost too much…I hope so.

Day 6- Monday
It’s la journée des assistants. Lots of other people milling around speaking languages other than French. At least seventy Americans, a few British, Canadians (including 3 who had duel Canadian/Polish citizenship. Who woulda thunk there were so many Polish-Canadians?), New Zealanders, Jamaicans, Indians, in addition to the assistants for other languages, Russian, Arabic, German, Spanish, Portugese, Italian…quite exciting. And overwhelming. It didn’t seem like we accomplished much other than being welcomed in all the different languages and having all our paperwork explained to us very quickly in French. Too quickly for me. They tried to go over everything with us in English later, but for some unknown reason they decided to split us up into primary and secondary schools, and then into European English/ other English. And then we found ourselves in front of a nice British lady who could answer none of our pressing visa questions, because the nice American lady went with the primary school people. I’m still trying to figure out why they didn’t just split us up European/other. Oh well. Note of explanation: It’s a whole lot easier to work in France if you’re from the European Union (so the Polish- Canadians had the advantage). The French paperwork monster likes to prey on us étrangèr(e)s. In case I haven’t complained about it before, France has all the benefits and problems of both a parliamentary government and a democratic government. Result: you can’t so much as buy a lottery ticket without an attestation de whatever, and a photocopie of it, 2 photos d’identification, your passport and two copies of it, all of last year’s paystubs, and photocopies, your first grade report card (and a photocopy of it), the receipt and report from your most recent oil change (and a copy of it)…well, you get the idea. The great thing is that none of the actual administrators want to deal with all this either, so they refuse to make photocopies of anything themselves. I’ve heard so many French people have complained about bureaucratic paperwork that I don’t feel out of place contributing…
But yes, no one could tell us anything about visas. I still don’t know how to go about getting my birth certificate translated. We tried to call the prefecture, where I’m going to apply for my titre de séjour, but they said their next permanence de telephone (time you could call and talk to a real person) was October the 17th. The Embassy could tell me nothing, except that if they didn’t specify that the translation had to be official, I was probably ok, but that didn’t necessarily mean that after waiting in line starting at six o’clock in the morning (and that isn’t an exaggeration: that’s the time I was told I should probably be there to ensure that I wouldn’t stand in line all day until the place closed without being seen.) they wouldn’t say “oops, you need something else, come back another day.” AAARRRGGGGHH!
Day 7- Tuesday
There was a strike today. Only one out of every three busses were running, so lots of students were absent. A lot of the teachers were taking part and weren’t at school, though I hear most of the strikers work at the university. I asked one of the students what it was all about and they just shrugged and mumbled something about the French liking to strike. One of the teachers said it was more or less a bi-annual thing. There is almost always a major strike of some sort in the Fall and in the Spring. One of the main issues here, I finally dragged out of someone, was that someone was considering doing away with professional substitute teachers and making other teachers fill in when someone was absent for too long. Now, French teachers work pretty good hours compared to American teachers- they actually have time built in for planning lessons. And this is with their 35 hour work week, 5 weeks paid vacation in addition to summers, etc. Not that this isn’t the way it should be. But they pay for this: for their great pay and working conditions they seem to have fairly large unemployment rate. And then there is everything getting interrupted twice a year for strikes. Another of the teachers mentioned that the students strike sometimes too- but not as often. She could only remember it happening about three times in the last eight years. The average French citizen seems to know quite well how to defend his/her rights. But some of the other teachers seemed to feel pressured into throwing themselves into the mob. There seems to be a lot of pressure to join unions and be really active in them.
I decided I had to do something downtown. Big mistake. When the bus finally came we got deadlocked in traffic. I got off fairly early and walked the rest of the way (my poor legs), and kept trying to avoid the crowds like a good safe American traveler, but they were everywhere…parades and signs and drums and slogans. Nothing that seemed more dangerous than your average fourth of July parade…but it was no ordinary day.
Wednesday Thursday Friday: observing classes. Lots of questions, some offered spontaneously, others fairly dragged out of the students by professors: Where are you from? Have you ever been to L.A.? Do you like Bush? Do you like Eminem, 50 cents, Snoop Doggy Dog? Why are you here? Why do you study French? Do you speak any other languages? What’s the weather like where you come from? Was your area hit by Hurricaine Katrina? How many brothers and sisters do you have? Does your brother speak French? Do you like French cheese? Do you like Rouen? Have you been to France before? Do you like Paris? What French movies do you like? What French actors do you know? How long are you staying? Are you going to be a French teacher? An English teacher? What are you doing after you leave here, anyway? Do you like Tony Parker? Céline Dion? Johnny Hallyday?
They seemed rather disappointed that I didn’t know who Tony Parker was. Ok, so you quiz me: Name a basketball player, any basketball player currently playing, and I think the only name I could come up with is LeBron James (sp?), and only because you really can’t avoid it in Cleveland. I didn’t know San Antonio even had a team (they do, don’t they?) much less that they had a French player, a player from Normandy, in fact. Que je suis conne! So please, Val, or anyone, please educate me: can you tell me anything about this team or this player? Or better yet- send me a bubblegum card!
A bit exhausting, though exciting. So many can hardly communicate at all in English, and some seem fairly comfortable with it. So many classes seemed to have 2-3 people asking all the questions, smiling, nodding, and everyone else staring blank faced. I just couldn’t speak slow enough!
There is much to be strategized.
Saturday:
Bummed around all day. Slept late. Had an adventure finding a clock radio. Anastasia told me to try Monoprix. Monoprix told me to try LeClerc (I heard L’eau Claire). I take the metro and wander around this mall for about an hour looking for L’eau Claire, kept asking directions from people who seemed quite convinced it was very simple to find. As it was. LeClerc is a huge supermarket, which in France amounts to a super Walmart, only people are walking around with bread and dogs in little baskets under their arms, and you can find Moliere and Antigone in the book section, in addition to Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Several detours, but I have my clock radio, for a meager 5 euros, and have been listening to France Bleu, which seems to play everything from Aretha Franklin to Céline Dion to REM to MC Solaar (France’s own rap star) to “Sexual Healing.” There was also this great Franglais song à la Dean Martin that went something like: “you are for me, for me, for me, formidable!”

Sunday: Went to mass at St. Romain (I think), was kicked out much more nicely (Excusez moi, mademoiselle, mais on est en train de fermer) than I was at L’Oratoire St-Joseph in Montréal (ON FERME.) Bought a piece of apple cake from some girl scouts (I think they were girl scouts). Would have bought the madeleines but they wanted 8 euros for them. Talk about inflation. Ate reconstituted noodles in a plastic cup for lunch. And for dinner. Bought a nice new soft baguette and walked around eating it. Cleaned up a little. Read the newspaper. Apparently the French soccer team played last night and may or may not be qualified for the world cup. I have to admit I’m interested to see how they did. Allez les bleus! Went to vespers chez les Benedictines, which was great except they kept switching between Latin and French and I couldn’t keep up. I think there were only about ten of them. Some seemed on the young side, but still…if you’re so inclined, pray for vocations for them! (and you can call John and thank him, Mom, that you don’t have to worry about me joining their numbers)

Ok, so I’m now up to date (whew.) Sorry if I bored you. I’m trying to do an entry a day. Maybe I’ll do a week in review for those who really don’t feel like analyzing what I had for desert every evening. Have a lot more I want to comment on but it can wait for now. Tomorrow I brave trains and trams to get to my doctors appointment, necessary for my titre de séjour, as I am from outside the European Union and therefore may not be healthy enough to stay in the country. Or that’s what the nice British lady kept joking at our meeting. And it’s in Paris. They tried to get it closer, but no dice. I plan to make a day of it, at the least. Bon soir à toutes et à tous.