Vivent les Vacances

Tomorrow I'm leaving the land of bread and cheese to spend two weeks chez moi in the land of ice cubes and free refills.  "Excited" is a bit of an understatement.

Miscommunication is something of a national sport in France

Which is precisely why I spent 9 hours in Blaye today, but only spent ONE of those hours teaching.  And when I say "teaching," I really mean playing hangman with students.  Good times.

Les Gros Mots

Yesterday I taught one of my favorite classes, and when my lesson plan ended a full 15 minutes before the bell rang, I asked them if they had any general questions or anything they wanted to talk about for the final few minutes.  One kid raised his hand. 

“Are there gangs in New York?” 

“Well, yes, they exist.”

“Do you have any friends in a gang?”

Once I stopped laughing at the image of any of my friends partaking in any gang-related activity whatsoever, I explained to him that generally to be initiated into a gang you have to actually murder someone, so no…I don’t think any of my friends are Bloods on the sly.

Maybe I should have known better, but they were actively participating and speaking pretty decent English so I decided to try my luck.  “Any…other questions?”

Same kid raises his hand.  I brace myself.

“Can you tell us the…gros mots?”  For those of you reading this Stateside, “gros mots” is the French equivalent for curse words.  Not wanting to downright reject this kid’s question (they were participating!...and that’s sort of rare in my school), I instead said:

“Well…I’m sure you already know them.” 

It was at this moment that my students shed their timidity to shout vulgarities at me.

One girl went straight up Tourette’s and started shouting, “FUCK! MOTHERFUCKER!”  Other kids chimed in with “Shit!” “Damn!” “Bitch!”…My students usually won’t even go so far as to tell me their name and hobbies without turning red and mumbling, but when it comes to cursing they’re all of a sudden fluent in English, yelling obscenities loud and proud?  Kids these days.

Bonnes Fêtes

This Friday a whole bunch of language assistants got into the holiday spirit..quite enthusiastically.  We took Christmas cheer to a whole new level at the Ugly Holiday Sweater Party. France can't even handle this level of style and sophistication:

You should have seen the looks those antlers got on the tram.

So many snowflake sweaters

The Levain ladies

Why, yes, those ARE holiday leggings

While waiting for the tram to get to the nightclub - -  in retrospect, a large group of  anglophones showing up to a French nightclub in holiday attire must have been a sight to behold.

Nerd Alert

I’ve recently started re-reading Harry Potter, but here’s the catch: I’m doing it in French.  I’m working on an application for a graduate program in Translation and Interpretation, and on their website they suggested reading as much as possible in your foreign language in order to improve your vocabulary and fluency.  Fair enough, but I wanted to start out with a book I was already familiar with – which is why I went to the bookstore and purchased “Harry Potter à l’école des sorciers.”  This is an interesting coincidence because I literally cannot imagine any book being more of a nightmare to translate, seeing as how approximately 105% of the words in Harry Potter are actually made up.  Thus in addition to the regular list of vocabulary I keep while reading (I told you, nerd alert – I actually underline and look up all the words I don’t know) I have to keep a list in my head of all the strange translations – for instance, Hogwarts was somehow translated to “Poudlard.”  In any case, I read a chapter or two every night before bed and it is actually helping me to think more in French, which is helpful because I live in France and as it turns out they speak that a lot here.  

Another Good Day

Sometimes working with adolescents means that you have moments that redefine the word "frustration."  When a class goes badly, it can really be bad.  Happily, the opposite is also true: when things are good, they're really good.  Today was really good.  My classes were talkative and curious and they seemed to actually enjoy the lesson I'd planned.  This whole week, actually, was a pretty good one.  For the most part all of my classes went well enough, and even the students who didn't understand a word I said were friendly and polite.  Yesterday, a few students came into my classroom during their break because they were bored and wanted to chat.  Three times this week, students have come to me after class to ask more questions or talk a little more.  Twice, classes actually expressed disappointment when the bell rang and they had to go back to regular classes.  These are the moments when I really love my job and they make all the other, frustrating moments completely worth it.  I can only hope next week goes just as well - I'll be keeping my fingers crossed all weekend.

Adventures in Immigration

According to the French government, I am an immigrant.  I guess technically that's true, since I live and work and pay taxes here, but it's not like I'm going to live here forever.  Still, all newcomers to France have to go through the immigration process, and I am no exception.  This started in August when I applied for my visa at the French embassy in New York.  A week after my trip to the embassy, my visa was in my passport and I was ready to go to France.  Easy peasy, right? OF COURSE NOT.  Sometimes it seems like France complicates things just to fuck with the rest of us.  Upon my arrival in France, I had to fill in 12356342 forms (maybe that's an exaggeration) and send in copies of my birth certificate, passport, work contract, etc and send it all to the Office of French Immigration and Integration.  Then I had to wait for them to get back to me with the date of my "medical visit," during which an x-ray would be taken of my chest to ensure that I did not bring tuberculosis with me when I "immigrated" to France.  After the medical visit, the Immigration Office puts a special sticker in my passport that validates the visa I've already had since before I even left the United States.  Without this sticker in my passport, it would be illegal for me to stay in France longer than 90 days.  With the sticker in my passport, I can stay until my visa ends in May.  Does this sound complicated enough?  It gets worse.  Without this sticker in my passport, I cannot apply for my French Social Security (health insurance) or my CAF (housing assistance aka welfare) - two things which I really need.  This being the case for all foreigners in France, you'd think that this would all get taken care of relatively quickly after your arrival in the country.  You'd be wrong.  Although European bureaucracy is known the world over for being speedy and effective, it took approximately 3 months for the French immigration office to contact me regarding my medical visit.  If I did have tuberculosis, I could have infected half the country by now.  Way to be proactive about that, France.  In any case, I found out today at my medical visit that I do not have tuberculosis and am thus allowed to remain in France until May.  I even got to keep my x-rays as a souvenir.  Good day?  You bet.

Getting a haircut in a foreign country is the hardest language exam you will ever take.

Not only because you have to make sure to articulate exactly what you want or else risk looking ridiculous for the 6-8 weeks following your mistake, but also because generally salons are places abundant with chatter and gossip and it's not always easy to keep up.  My friend Emily and I took this haircut-in-a-foreign-language "exam" this afternoon, and in retrospect I'd say we both aced it.  We went to a French beauty school because it's way cheaper if you're willing to let a student cut your hair, and now we both know why.  Here's the deal: my student hairdresser is by no means going to be valedictorian, if you catch my drift.  This was proven by the fact that she shampooed the back of my neck and also half my forehead.  This was further proven when her instructor, who was observing from across the room, literally RAN over yelling "Stop!" and then proceeded to grab at the back of my head and say, "What is this?!"  By the time the instructor had finished correcting the haircut already given to me by my student hairdresser, my hair was a full 2-3 inches shorter than I'd expected.  Emily's hairdresser didn't make any major mistakes, but she did make Emily stand up for the entire 30 minutes she was cutting, a sight that had me laughing until I was nearly in tears.  Though the near-tears could have also had something to do with the fact that half my hair was falling to the floor around me.  I was going to post a picture, but decided against it so that I can see my parents faces when they pick me up at the airport in a couple weeks.  So I'll say only this: it is the most drastic haircut I've ever gotten.  It's the shortest my hair has ever been.  And I'll say this, too: I think I really like it.

There are good days and there are bad days.

And then there are days like today, which entirely defy description.  There were elements of the good and the bad, but mostly it was brutally long.  I woke up at 4:45 am and was on the tram before 6am, so by the time class started at 8 I was ready for my nap.  My first two classes were mildly enthusiastic and even understood a majority of what I said.  At the end of  the second class we even continued our conversation for a few minutes in French, since the students had plenty of things they wanted to say but couldn't articulate in English.  I was excited that they wanted to keep talking no matter what language it was in, and they were excited that I was willing to let them do it in French.  I was tired but pleased with how my first two hours went.  And then came hour number three, in which one girl actually cried when I asked her to read something in English.  Not good.  Today was in fact one of the first times I truly felt like a teacher (generally I feel like some sort of jester hired to mime things emphatically in front of apathetic French teenagers), and I suppose it's because today was the first time something actually really went wrong.   After that class finally ended, I happily went into town to get lunch, and at least 5 different students greeted me enthusiastically as I passed, saying things like "Bonjour Catherine!" and, "How are you today?" - which helped brighten my mood considerably.  Then it was back to class, and this time I was thrilled because it was with my favorite group.  We discussed immigration in France and the US, a topic that I certainly couldn't hope to talk about with any of my other classes, but these kids are both interested in politics AND really good at English - double whammy.  That was my last class of the day, so all's well that end's well I guess.  I made it back to Bordeaux in time for dinner with friends, and now I'm going to revel in the fact that I have a four-day weekend starting tomorrow.  Bonne nuit, tout le monde!