As some of you may already know...

My dog Bailey, after living the longest, fullest, healthiest, happiest life any dog could wish for, and after several weeks struggle with cancer has, as they say here, disappeared...

I remember when my parents, having gone for a "drive in the country," as I believe it was, brought her home to my brother and I unexpectedly...this ball of orange colored fur...and then my parents and my brother popped off to a basketball game and left me with her, except I kept trying to go into the living room and eat and watch a movie and every time I did she'd cry and cry and cry...

Any of you have Bailey stories to share?

le dîner chez Anastasia

Saturday night I had dinner at Anastasia's house with her and her PACSman and Pierre. Maude, unfortunately, forgot until the last minute and couldn't come. I arrived at 7:30 sharp-on time for once- with gerberas and some catnip (herbe à chat or cat grass in French) for Volvox who is now no longer a kitten.

I reckon I understood about 90% of what was going on...almost everything that wasn't deeply seated in school politics or gossip about names I didn't recognize (probably for the best...).

I actually participated.

I feel like I'm finally starting to fit in as a person and not just as "the American."

How do I love "thee"?

Someone asked me the other day why we don't use the thee/thou form anymore, when just about every other language makes a distinction between plural and/or singular and/or formal "you." I had no idea. Anyone know?

I took that opportunity to ask him why some people used "vous" (formal) for the Hail Mary and other people used "tu," (informal) even though the Our Father is always "tu" (the implication seeming to be that you can be familiar with God, but not His mother...) Apparently back in '66 someone decided since the Bible is all in "tu," the liturgy should be as well...well, this bothered some people and so as a sort of compromise the Hail Mary was kept in "vous," until recently when people, having forgotten the whole compromise story, decided "tu" just made more sense.

Apparently somewhere in Jerusalem they have the Our Father engraved in all these different languages. It appears twice in French, once in vous and once in tu

Current situation

hey, I think this is my 100th post!

Someone mentioned that they saw the protests being illustrated with movies of car fires from four months ago on CNN (they have cable). Just so y'all know (and don't get worried, Mom) none of that is going on anymore! This seems to be involving pretty much everyone, so I don't think they feel they need to resort to violence to be heard. I think the riot police have had to use tear gas and stuff in some of the bigger cities, but nothing major.

The whole mess is about these Contrats de Premiere Embauche (CPE, or roughly, first job -contracts) whereby companies can hire people ages 18-26 with a two- year "trial" period, in which they can let them go for pretty much any reason, no explanation required (except certain like being preganant or black, etc etc, which are protected by law...but then if you can fire someone for no reason, are you going to tell anyone it's because they (fill in discriminatory motive here)?). The students I talked to seem to be concerned that 1. companies will keep hiring people for two years and firing them just before their time is up so that they can hire fresh blood to exploit 2. It will be hard to take out a lease on an appartment if there's no guarentee they will be able to pay the rent for the next year.

The official reason for having them in the first place is to allow more jobs to be created for young people, as their unemployment rate is really high right now.

And I'm realizing how ignorant I am...what's required for you to be able to fire someone in the US? Do you need a valid reason? For anybody? (Law student? Have an answer?)

What's the matter with kids today?

I had to cross a picket line to get into school today. After my first class began a huge hoarde of students began running through the school, shouting and hollering. One of my students reached over and locked the door and I soon found out why. The crowd was cavorting through the school, pretty much barging into classrooms, trying to get other students to join them before they went down to Rouen for the big demonstration. They seemed to be having a good time. The prinicipal looked downright grumpy but I guess he couldn't do much, legally or physically.

It was a bit hard to hold class with all the noise, but eventually the protesters left and the school was left in peace, if not rather emptier than usual. I had six students today. I think some of them are starting to worry about falling behind.

I was impressed that my three first students weren't spirited away by the Pied Piper... however, I was less impressed when we got into the lesson...thinking it was relevant with all the interuptions, I started asking them questions about this whole CPE business, but they got tired of trying to explain in English (even though I kept providing them with vocabulary and asked to do something else.)

So I went on with my swing lesson...and after not to long it became clear they were dying to do something else, particularly as good natured giggling was giving way to downright mockery at my expense.

So I broke down and asked them what they wanted to do.

Take a field trip to the United States, they answered.

Ok, I answered, you get up the funds to pay for our plane tickets and pay me for the salary I'd be missing out on and we'll start making plans. Until then, what do you want to do? Why are you here?

To improve our English, they answered. You dancing is not helping us.

It's cultural, I defended myself. But I tried to lead a discussion!

That's too hard, they answered.

Ok, so they want to improve their English without doing anything hard. Like, you know, talking in that language.

Does this seem a little unreasonable to anyone else?

Perhaps it was the difficult vocabulary. Perhaps they feel if they hear the syllables "C" "P" and "E" together again they're won't be able to prevent themselves from jumping out the window.
Perhaps it was the abyss of my ignorance which demanded to be filled before the conversation continued. At any rate, I spent the rest of the period trying to find something they would be ok doing in two weeks for our last time together. They didn't have any suggestions. I suggested the chat idea, and they reluctantly accepted, provided the topic of conversation wasn't anything political and that I found someone under the age of 30 for them to talk to...

So if you're interested (and don't mind staying up rather late on a Monday night) or know someone who would be let me know. And even if you aren't for this time it would be cool to have people from other classes.

C'mon. You know you want to.

Charlotte Fraise

Happy Feast day of St. Joseph

In honor of this occasion, I splurged and bought this pastry I'd dreamed about trying ever since it appeared in a conversation, allegedly taken from the Cordon Bleu, in my Advanced French book (does anyone else get excited about visiting places they read about in text books? Or am I just that big a nerd?)

The Charlotte.

I really wish I'd thought of taking a picture before I dove in. It's probably one of the most beautiful desserts I've ever eaten (look at the design on the side!)

The counterpart of the American strawberry shortcake (both the desert and the cartoon character), the Charlotte Fraise consists of a sort of thin sponge cake shell filled with a sort of strawberry mousse and topped with strawberry jam and, in this case, two halves of a thin white/milk chocolate wafer, perched like a pair of leaves on a choice piece of fruit.

I guess it's a French thing. Nothing is complete without a bit of chocolate.

There are times I really, really love this country.

School days

Lesson 1- two seniors. The ones at 8 in the morning who never talk. Listened dutifully to my treatise on the origins of swing dancing, giggled politely when I gave my demonstration of the Dean Collins Shim Sham and mastered the basic Charleston step fairly quickly.

long dark teatime- another English professor wanted me to help her grade this practice test for this former student trying to get into piloting school. Yes, they have to pass an English test to be a pilot. There were questions there I had no clue about. A lot of them were probably more difficult than anything I had on the SATs. Who makes up these tests? And what kind of super bilingual person is supposed to pass them?

For example: (and yeah, if you happen to own a business don't answer)

The companies formed a three way a. blah b. bluh c. combination d. body e. bleh

Is it just me or do none of them make sense (ok, three I didn't remember but they definitetly didn't make sense...)


Lesson 2- ten "seniors" acting like "nine-year-olds." As in I take them to the library and they start hiding from me in the magazine racks. I kid you not. Talk to eachother throughout my presentation (though I had the music working this time!) clapped glaringly off rhythm during my demonstration and no one would stand up and learn anything- though one kid decided to try dancing to the music...I'm not sure if he was actually trying to do it or was just making fun of me...

Lesson 3- probably the best lesson I've had all year. With admittedly the superkids who are funny without being immature or crazy and will talk without being begged...heck, they pretty much told me they just wanted to discuss stuff from now on. Forget movies and such. Ok, fine by me.

Anyway, we set up a chat with a certain Seven seas...everyone was great! everyone asked awesome questions and the kids wanted to talk to her again...

Thanks so much, R! You rocked!

Encore Lisieux

One last trip to the home of Ste. Thérèse. I thanked her for the rose. Went to visit the glowing sisters next door, because two had given me their addresses on little slips of paper and, true to form, I promptly lost them. I didn't even know if they'd remember me...I didn't remember the one from Burkina Faso's name (if I ask anyone, tell me it's like Amandine but it's not...hopefully I'll get it...). The one from Vietnam recognized me instantly and reminded me she'd be praying for me on the 12th.

Ok, you take care of maybe thirty people a week, are you going to remember the name of one you saw three weeks ago, much less the date of their wedding? I see someone and I can't even place where I know them from...I really want to work on paying more attention to people when I meet them...I can't even remember names five minutes after I hear them!

Also saw help desk girl from Poland (whose name I also don't remember!) who is going back just before I do...

Tried to go to Sunday program which happens to start in April, unbeknownst to me...ran into a conference run by none other than the Community of the Beatitudes instead! They seemed to be going through the joyful mysteries of the rosary...I wasn't able to make anything really coherent out of it, but things I got out of it:

- the most beautiful church in the world is the soul.
- When Mary went to the temple for "purification" on the eighth day, it was more of a "seperation" then a "cleaning" (which I still don't get...I meant to ask what exactly she was being seperated from, as Jesus had already been born...)
- In (at least old) Jewish culture, the Bar Mitzfa is as important a ceremony as the wedding
- One of God's methods of creation is by seperation: seperation of the land from the water, the day from the night, etc. This appears to be one of the ways of creation predominant in masculinity: the Father tends to start to seperate his children from the mother (or at least the apron strings) and bring them out into the world, contributes to their becoming adults and individuals...just as in "going about the Father's buisness" Jesus achieves his adolescent assertion of independence from his mother (ok, and foster father...who if the holy family is anything like my family had a lot to deal with with Mary's reaction to Jesus' disappearance...)

and BTW, it was exactly a year ago that J. and I got engaged!

who knew?

There's a girl in one of my "11th grade" English specialty classes who never talks, who has bad skin and hair like mine that she looks like she's trying to grow out, and for that matter has the same name I had in French class in high school.

While trying to get English, French, Yiddish, anything out of the mouths of her and her classmates on Tuesday, she admitted that she'd been rehearsing a play this weekend. Oh, what kind of play, where, when is it etc. I asked, and after drawing a map, getting metro details out of her and finally a name, discovered that the play was taking place right in my building.

Considering she never says anything in my class and looks most of the time like she'd really like to be somewhere else, I wasn't sure she'd want me to come, but I did anyway.

Who knew?

Maybe it's a little personal bias, but I think she might have been the best in the show. Certainly the most animated. I'd never seen her look so alive!

And then right after the show she greeted me politely with a few words and scurried off again...

Reminds me of a certain person in my past who never said anything in her 7th grade English class until tryouts for the class play, when everyone was startled to find out that she had a voice and, indeed, it could get very loud and emotive...

(in case you didn't get that, that was me...)

I wish whatever is caging all that energy in normally would let it out a little more often...or at least not be completely closed to anything related to English class...

How does one empathize with kids without trying to see them as earlier versions of oneself?

Les enfants qui s'aiment s'embrassent debout...

Fun teacher's lounge discussion in English with our genuinely English English teacher and Anastasia. Apparently, not only do they have no dress code for students here, but teachers are all but prohibited by law from saying anything to the students about the way they dress. Hence when the English English teacher changes the position from which he teaches, he has to figure out new paths his eyes are allowed to follow without straying into territory that will get him into trouble...

Also the students making out in the halls apparently do not only not care about who sees them, they want to be seen...

I suppose I'm a puritain and an old fogey. I don't get it...

I guess by the same token though they avoid the kind of administration that cracks down on kids who commit such as outrages as wearing t-shirts with a logos bigger than business cards...

But is wearing a religious symbol bigger than a postage stamp really any more distracting than wearing daisy dukes and low-cut shirts set off by frilly bras? Or showing up to exams with no underwear and the clothes to make this evident?

I guess every society has to set limits and each one has different priorities...

But I still don't get it.

Les enfants qui s'aiment se mettent là pour tout le monde.

Paris 2

Val's last day in Paris...just as she's bouncing back from the jetlag she has to go home :(

We saw this movie about a little boy who gets this girl to promise she'll marry him if he realizes his dream of becoming an astronaut and so he does...only to show up on her doorstep to find out she's engaged to be married to this other guy in two weeks. So, although he's apparently a little "special" though a complicated series of events not least of which the fiance going hunting but telling the vegetarian fiancee that he's at his fathers, she ends up agreeing to spend 24 hours- one for every year he's spent away from her- with him and give him a chance of winning her back...It was really cute and the ending wasn't even disappointing...I hate to think we're corrupting French movie making...but I like good endings...

We also visited the Galleries Lafayette, home of this fabulous stained glass cupola and shirts that cost- I kid you not- 1600 euros. They're just hanging there, albeit chained to the rack, with price tags of over 1600 euros. Where anyone can go see them. For free. I was waiting for someone to charge us to breathe the air around them but no-one did.

Luckily they also have merchandise that real people can afford. Val and I, as we don't live to close together, ended up buying almost identical shirts and camisoles...well, great minds think alike, what can I say?

(BTW, this huge store you see? Just for the women's and children's stuff...there's a skywalk that connects it to the store across the street, which has all the men's stuff...)

"Vikings send Culpepper to Dolphins"

Does anyone else read this headline and wonder, "What does culpepper taste like?," and "why would dolphins want it?" and "Vikings? There aren't anymore vikings...are there?" before they remember there's this thing called sports that may always be a mystery to them...

But I'll work on it! (When I get back to the States...)

Paris

Sorry I haven't been writing more...(wow, wonder how many times I've opened a post with that...) I've been really tired when I'm not buzzed and have concluded that either I'm drinking too much coffee or not sleeping enough or both.

Spent Sunday in Paris with Val...it was so good to see her again! I didn't realize how much I'd missed her! We spent a lot of time catching up and I'm not sure we gave the proper attention to all the incredible sights around us but oh well, c'est la vie, and living, old friends are more important than the tombs of megalomaniacs anyway.

We hung out a little in Notre Dame, saw Sainte-Chapelle (the chapel in the building where the French kings used to hold court...the upper chamber where only the king and his court were allowed to go is almost completely walled with stain glass and used to contain this big gold chest with one key which the king carried on him at all times where all these relics, such as the crown of thorns encased in crystal and pieces of the true cross, were kept...though I'm a bit sceptic about the crown...I mean, who would think to keep such a thing? Or go find it after Christ rose from the dead? I mean, before it returned to the elements)

and the musee Cluny (lots of middle ages stuff...including these awsome tapestries)

and the Hotel des Invalides, which has this armor museum and Napoleon's tomb...or temple, rather. I was amazed it took such a huge coffin to contain such a little guy, but Val's sister informed us there are actually five, one inside the other, seperated by layers of cement. Apparently Napoleon was in the habit of raiding his enemy's tombs and mutilating their bodies and wanted to make sure the same thing didn't happen to him...he is surrounded by these wall carvings featuring him huge and barechested, draped in a sort of toga, surrounded by his (smaller) loyal subjects gazing on him in rapt admiration, bearing such self-deprecating statements as "My code did more for France than all the former laws combined." If the cement theory doesn't hold much water, I'd say the coffin was built to hold his ego.

Musee de Cluny crossed off the list. Also eating escargot. Little more than a month left...no time to stop!

Citizens in training

I had three students yesterday. Two in my first class, one in my second, and none in my third. The rest were all on strike. The eternal tradeoff between fabulous working conditions/job security and low unemployment. Apparently the government is considering creating these positions just for young workers that lack the job security French workers normally get, in order to create more of them and lower unemployment among young workers. I've talked both to people who are outraged about this and others who think it's a good idea and that everytime the government tries to change anything people are rallied to strike. At any rate, I'm wondering whether these jobs don't already exist in some form, as my friend T. in Paris hasn't managed to land a permanent job anywhere but has been working a series of temporary positions at the company that provides my cell phone service (and has had very little time off even by American standards).

On a completely unrelated note: I went to Lourdes last weekend, it was fantastic, I wrote in a notebook about it but haven't gotten around to transferring anything to cyberspace yet.

On another completely unrelated note: The little boy that belongs to I guess the campus ministry person just turned two. Last week during adoration he kept wandering around the room, trying to blow out all the candles. We figured he was practicing. Today we all sing happy birthday to him (in English and then in French...which seems to be the way it is normally done and I don't know why) and wait for him to blow out his two candles...and he just sits there smiling at us all with his tongue stuck out between his teeth until someone near him finally has to do the job. Kids.

Snow days...

It's been snowing on and off here for awhile...one day the sky was crowded with big fluffy white clouds, little dark grey clouds, and an ominous sheet of yellow- tinted clouds. I got up the next morning and the sky was completely clear, but by the time I got to the bus snow was falling in huge flakes from a gray sky...all day with Arnold it was on and off...(Arnold: "You aren't allowed to run when I throw snowballs at you!!!) once I looked out the window and could see it falling hard in the field next to us but nothing right in front of the window...

That night I went to Ash Wednesday mass up in Mont St. Aignan (a big plateau next to the Seine valley that Rouen is in) and had adoration at the aumonerie...

I came up from the basement chapel and everyone is crowded around the window. Apparently it' s snowed quite a bit since we went down into the chapel and there is a great deal of discussion as to whether anyone will be able to drive home down the hill.

I was tired and not understanding much of the buzz, and I don't even know how to walk home from the aumonerie, much less in the dark and the snow...I try to wait patiently until people start doing something but everyone keeps standing around, until finally people start to drift out the door, at which point, tears welling up in my eyes (because yeah, I'm really tired and cranky and I don't know what's going on) I turn and ask Pere Andre what we are doing. He has just returned from a scouting expedition and apparently learned from a motercycle driving up the mountain that he should be able to make it down...It wasn't until we'd puttered along down the hill at 5mph for awhile that I asked him whether he'd be able to get back up again...He answers in his cheery way that if he can't he'll just pull over and sleep in the van...

Wow. A priestly model of Christ on earth! I feel so selfish...

I hope he got home...it was really really cold...