In my usual fashion, a comically bad* 12 hours

*Since I am alive and well and living in France, let’s take my use of the word “bad” with a grain of salt, shall we?

It started last night around 7pm, when I threw my laundry into the washing machine.  At around 10pm, over two hours after the wash cycle had ended, I realized that it was still there.  Unfortunately, the dryers were already in use and the laundry room was due to close before I could use them.  I carried my cold wet clothes up to my room, defeated.  My mom was on the phone with me, nearly pissing herself laughing as I wailed that I might have to resort to using a big scarf as a towel, since mine were damp and freezing cold.  I hung my clothes around the room, draped on the radiator and over my wardrobe doors.  In the morning I realize that in addition to still being half wet, many of my clothes are streaked with dust thanks to my brilliant placement on places I can’t reach to clean properly.  Massive dilemma: what in the hell am I going to wear to work?

I settle hesitantly on tights with a 5-euro top from H&M that flirts the line between casual-but-short dress and beach cover-up.  Thankfully I have a clean long cardigan, which I wear over it to (I’m hoping) make it look less like I’m two months early for Spring break.  Dressed, I begin to pack my bag for work.  I have approximately 6 minutes before I absolutely have to leave.  And…my wallet is missing.  I look everywhere even though I know it could only be in my bag because I only took it out to – oh, right.  Laundry room.  I put on my coat and run downstairs – and there’s my wallet, mocking me from on top of the dryer that I never got to use.  Finally, I head out for the tram.

From about a block away, I see my tram pulling away from my stop.  “That’s okay,” I think, “because there’ll be another one in three minutes.”  And there was.  And about 45 seconds after I got onto it, it nearly got into an accident, pitching forward and screeching to a halt and causing everyone to stumble a bit and a few people to scream.  No matter though, we got right back on our way.  My bus was at 9am.  My tram pulled into the bus station at 9am.  The bus was already gone.  There’s another bus in 35 minutes, and it will get me to Blaye with exactly 6 minutes to spare before I’m due to begin teaching. 

Okay.  Coffee time.  There’s a man who recently opened a tiny coffee/breakfast trailer at the bus stop, and he makes me an extra-hot cappuccino after he hears that I have half an hour to wait in the cold.  He bids me “bon courage!” and I am off on my way.  The cappuccino was great.  Delightful, even.  Heavenly.  Until, 5 minutes into an hour-and-fifteen-minute long bus ride, it hit my bladder.  By the time we reached Blaye I practically sprinted to the school and burst through the doors of the teacher’s lounge looking like an overly-caffeinated-and-potentially-dangerous lunatic.  By some miracle I made it to class on time, where I was greeted by apathetic French teenagers in no mood to speak English.  By 5pm this had gotten pretty old, but I guess it should have been clear from approximately 10pm last night that today was not meant to be a raging success.  TGIF, eh? 

The Biggest Misunderstanding of All

Today I made the mistake of trying to teach my students a new word.

A mistake, you ask?  Surely an English teacher should be trying to teach her students as many new words as possible.  Oh, no no.  Without any shadow of a doubt, a mistake.

When I ask whether anyone knows what the word “egotistical” means, the only kid who (I thought) understood me replies, “…Someone who thinks with their penis?” 

“Uhhh….WHAT?!”

And this kid actually says, “What?  You said TESTICLE!”

Five minutes later I had stopped laughing enough to choke out “That is absolutely NOT what I said!”

I wrote the word on the board and everyone goes, “Aaaah ouaais, egoiste!” and I learned that next time maybe I should start by writing the new word on the board instead of frantically finishing that way.  Though to be fair, there’s really no way I could have predicted the word “egotistical” could be misconstrued to such an extent.

To add insult to injury, later in the class my students watched in delight as I tried to drink from my water bottle without first removing the cap. 

What a Monday.

A Week in Misunderstandings: The Highlights

I had a really good week at work.  Let's say it was because I saw almost all of my favorite classes and they actually participated.  Let's pretend that it's not also because I only worked two and a half days.  In any case, as always my students entertained and surprised me with their "English."  Here are a few of my favorites from this week:

- SEVERAL students said that a woman in their text "fell pregnant" instead of "got pregnant"
- one student created the expression "to fall into tears" instead of "to cry"
- one student correctly used the word "flabbergasted" in a sentence, much to my delight
- one student used the term "fight to the bitter end" no less than four times during one single conversation, which was in fact about the woman who had "fallen pregnant"
- when I didn't understand the movie title "Stuart Little" through my students' strong French accents, an entire class of seventeen year olds pretended to be mice until I figured it out
- while playing Hangman, one student's accent made him say what sounded like "Hey!" instead of "A!" and "Hi!" instead of "I!" so every time he guessed a letter it sounded like he was just greeting someone enthusiastically
- several students referred to quotation marks as "inverted commas," which leads me to believe that teachers actually tell them that's what they're called
- one student dropped his pen and reacted by saying "Oh, SUGAR!"
- one student beatboxed for nearly a full minute without provocation, for absolutely no apparent reason at all

Like I said, a really good week at work.

Somehow...

I have duped many of my students into thinking that I am an actual cool person.  Mostly this has to do with the fact that I am a New Yorker (the fact that I am not from the city has little to no importance in their eyes), which gets me instant cool points with any French adolescent.  But today we did a lesson on American music and I had them listen to a Kanye West song and try to write down the missing lyrics on the handout I gave them.  Apparently, massively cool.  Later, we discussed musical preferences - their tastes ranged from Pink Floyd to Sum 41 to Snoop Dog to Aretha Franklin.  An eclectic group.  They had me recommend my favorite bands, and they recommended some French music that doesn't suck.  We spent some time in each class bashing Katy Perry and wishing we could sing like Adele.  It was a fun day at work, and really what more can you ask for?

Last Night

A friend and I sprinted for the last bus so fast that I swear we could have qualified for the Olympics if only someone had a stopwatch.  Ah, well.  Next time.

In other news, I have a three-day weekend and then two days off next week.  A hectic and practically unmanageable schedule.  Since my last update, I've gone back to the sales to buy even MORE fabulous things for low, low prices, and I've seen a whole bunch of movies in English, French, AND Franglais (Hollywoooo!).  All is well in Bordeaux.

SOLDES.

Today I woke up at the crack of 7am (on my day off!) because sometimes the case can be made that I am an actual crazy person.  Most of Bordeaux woke up with me, though, because today was the start of the Soldes d'Hiver - Winter Sales - which means that pretty much every single store in France has massive discounts for the next week.  The whole country, on sale.  It's kind of like Black Friday at home except there's no WalMart and I'm pretty sure nobody ever dies.  I'm happy to report that I took full advantage of the sales and I'll be wearing my purchases with an extra little smile knowing that I saved approximately one billion euros.  I mean, I didn't do the math, but... I'm sure it was something like that.

Class-y

(That was a poor pun, you can ignore it.  I just didn't know what else to call this post. Why do they all need titles?)

Yesterday, approximately half of my classes stared at me blankly whenever I said something or asked a question.  I’m sure I’ve said this before, but an hour is a REALLY long time to be in front of a group of people who have no idea what you’re talking about.  It’s even longer when they also clearly don’t care, which was the case for a whole bunch of my students.  In general I don’t mind the students who don’t understand as long as they show that they’re still interested and/or trying.  I do mind the students who act like they’d rather be anywhere but in my classroom.  Luckily each group of shitty students was followed by a group who was genuinely interested in hearing what I had to say.  It was the first time I had met many of them and I was happy to answer their questions, which ranged from “Are you married?” to “What are your feelings on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?”  During my last class of the day, which was one of my favorite groups, we discussed which celebrities are Scientologists and whether or not we would still consider marrying them.  You know, the usual.  

Hangman is a dangerous game.

Today I let my first class play hangman because we were all exhausted and I like them, and also I hadn't planned a lesson (oops).  Imagine my surprise when the first kid gets up to the board and his word turns out to be WHORE.  For God only knows what reason, I let them continue playing after that (let's blame it on the jet lag), and luckily the other words were far more tame.  As class was ending, the whole class tried to convince me that I should do their next session in French.  I tried to explain to them that me speaking French during English class would defeat the whole purpose of English class.  They told me they didn't really care about that - they just want to know whether or not I suck at French.

Not a terrible day, but I'm glad it's almost over.

Back to Bordeaux, Back to the Blog

I've made it back to Bordeaux after two weeks chez moi in New York drinking iced coffee and spending good ol' quality time with the fam.  I left from JFK on Monday evening with my feet still tingling from the shoes I wore out on New Year's Eve and a solid 12 hours of travel ahead of me.  As with the last time I flew to France, I walked sadly past the first class bed-seats to my rightful place in Economy.  I was seated next to a family that smelled vaguely of salami and in front of a family still donning their shiny plastic New Year's party fedoras.  The flight was fine save for the fact that there was plenty of turbulence but only one movie option (it was about robots).  I tried to sleep, but only ended up dozing for about 20 minutes.  We landed in Madrid five minutes ahead of schedule, giving me just over an hour to get through customs and security before my next flight was due to begin boarding.  Sounds like plenty of time, but let me tell you something about the airport in Madrid: it's enormous.  It took ages for me to get from one terminal to the next.  Luckily I was the first person from my flight to get through passport control, and I got through security quickly enough once they decided that I'm not a terrorist.  I got to my gate with five minutes to spare, then promptly fell asleep as soon as I boarded my flight to Bordeaux.

When we landed I groggily gave up any hope of taking public transportation home, and instead got on line for a taxi.  When the taxi driver asked for my help lifting my suitcase into his trunk, I chalked it up to the fact that many French men have approximately the same body type as the Olsen twins, when I should have chalked it up to the fact that my suitcase was really fucking heavy.  No worries, though, I realized my mistake - as I was lugging said suitcase up the four flights of stairs to my room.  By the time I made it up, I had resolved to never leave again.  Sadly, my plan to live in bed for all eternity was foiled by pangs of hunger and the fact that my room was entirely food-free thanks to my two-week absence.  I went to the small grocery shop a block away and bought the absolute bare-minimum to get by, then returned (four flights of stairs! Again!) to bed and stayed there for the entire afternoon and all but 30 minutes of the evening.  So there you have it, folks.  I am back in Bordeaux, and I am finally conscious, which I take as a good sign that I may actually survive this jet lag.  It was touch-and-go for a day or so, but I have high hopes for a full recovery.