In Which Our Author Has An Epiphany

I've been getting bent out of shape about my students making fun of my accent all the time. It happens a lot: I say something in English and they repeat it in a dreadfully exaggerated American accent. Then they laugh. It makes me want to scream.

Today my 10th graders were at it again; I kept hearing echoes of my voice all over the place. I was about to lose it when I happened to eye some of them and realized they weren't looking at me at all. They were completely focused inward, working hard to recreate the sound, oblivious to my reaction.

That's when I realized it: they're not making fun of me. In fact, what they're doing is trying very, very hard to sound American. Because sounding like an American is cool.

It was just about the cutest thing ever, and I had a big stupid grin for the rest of the day. Good times.

Dinner Party: Do These Pants Make Me Look Grim?

I was invited to dinner at the home of a retired French teacher from my school. We were joined by a retired math teacher, a retired history teacher, and a retired-something-else teacher. It was a regular ol' teacher fest. I'd been told beforehand that everyone wanted to spend the evening practicing their English. Only when I got there, someone said, "Perhaps we could speak French just a little at the beginning, and then start speaking English in a few minutes?"

We spoke French all night. Well, I should say they spoke French all night. I mostly listened and made grocery lists in my head. Ostensibly everyone had gotten together to meet me, The Visiting American, but it didn't take me long to blend in to the upholstery, apparently. It's not that I didn't want to participate, it's more that they talked about hip replacements and osteopaths (like chiropractors who crack all your bones), carpal tunnel surgeries and the various classes they take in their ample leisure time. (Art! Music! Stretching!) There was a quick inventory of who had parents still living, then their care and ailments were discussed at great length. Turns out my parents are pretty healthy, so again, not much to add.

Don't get me wrong, it was interesting. They wanted to talk about Roman Polanski, and you might be surprised by their response. The consensus was that they didn't understand why the European elite rally around him; if he committed a crime (and in their minds, a grown man and a 13-year-old girl does, in fact, constitute a crime), then he should be required to atone for it.

Also interesting: they all lost at least one grandfather in "The War of 1914," and one or both of their parents grew up with no male presence in the home. Americans make a lot of noise about France's resistance to our military endeavors, but you've got to see things from their side. We think of wars in terms of our brave boys heading overseas to defend freedom, and that's true, but for the French it wasn't a distant thing. These wars were fought in their backyards. The Battle of Verdun (in northern France) lasted nine months and killed a quarter of a million people. France had 1.6 million casualties overall. (To compare, the U.S. had 117,000.) They also had more casualties than the U.S. during World War II, and with a fraction of the population. Is it any wonder they're so reticent to go to war? Any wonder they'd rather exhaust diplomatic option when it comes to dealing with Iran and Iraq?

Do me a favor. Please stop perpetuating that whole "we saved your asses" thing. They know. They remember. And they're eternally, sincerely grateful. It's just that this gratitude doesn't extend to following the U.S. blindly into yet another war that could kill off a substantial chunk of their population.

I'm off my soapbox now. Dinner was lamb with apricots and prunes. (Yeah, prunes. I accidentally took one too many from the bowl and wow. I'm pretty sure my ears are clean, too.) For dessert we had ice cream and stewed pears from somebody's father's orchard. Wine was consumed. French was spoken. Somebody drove me home at 11:30 (which makes it an early night, in terms of French dinner parties). I managed to get a couple of hours sleep before school the next morning.

And oh yeah, I've got another invitation to dinner. And this time they swear they're going to speak English. We'll see.

Black Day

They changed my schedule while I was gone. I had no warning. All of the sudden, I'm up to six hours of classes on Monday, with two hours at once in my very worst class (the angry-at-the-world kids). I was in no way prepared for this; just getting through one hour with them is torture. Two hours is inconceivable. Not only that, but The Man has decided to divide one of my other classes in to two "modules," which increases my overall teaching load.

My 10th graders showed up first thing and started whining about their quiz; one kid kept (literally) screeching at me that he was absent all last week until finally I just told him to sit down and shut up before I smashed his face in. (I said it in English, which makes it easier to get away with.)

After this I went to my 11th grade class, but no one was there, and the next thing I know, some guy from the office is running down the hall telling everyone to evacuate the building. I asked another teacher what was going on, but she didn't know. I went outside and got knocked to the ground by a mob of kids running off campus... to watch a fight. Seriously? We evacuated the building because there was a fight going on outside? In what universe does that make sense??

Eventually I herded my students back inside, but at this point they were wild. Now, in the U.S., this sort of thing happens all the time and I don't really have a problem reestablishing order. Here, I'm at an utter loss: I don't have enough command of my subject to take control of the lesson, and I'm not adept enough at French to intimidate them properly. In other words, they can walk all over me and they know it. This has never, ever happened to me before in my teaching career, even in the the depths of the Mississippi ghetto. I have always been able to keep my kids in line. Not here.

I've made jokes before about locking myself in the bathroom to cry, but today I actually did it. Twice. In the same hour. My colleague Stéphane told me I looked "quite tired," which is a euphemism, I suppose, for "like you've been bawling your eyes out for twenty minutes." I agreed that I was, indeed, quite tired and also I was having some allergy problems (which we both knew was a lie but allowed me to salvage my dignity). He was trying very hard to be helpful and gave me a copy of the lesson he's using with the class we have in common. I looked at it (a text on the history of the Internet) and thanked him profusely then locked myself into the bathroom to cry some more because this is part of my problem. This is the kind of lesson they give-- the history of the Internet, people-- and I'm supposed to find a way to engage academically-challenged students whose grasp of English is extremely poor with a two-hour lesson involving expressions like network, Internet gateway and linked via telephone wires.

When the two-hour group showed up, they were fighting mad, assuming I'd requested the schedule change. I was exhausted and defeated and finally just said, listen, I don't particularly want to spend two hours with you either, but we're stuck with each other so let's figure out a way to make it tolerable. I asked them to write an anonymous note describing what they want the course to be: we could spend all our time preparing their end-of-year exam, which is dry, thankless work involving analyzing texts and images; or we could start from zero and relearn English all over again. (Most of them have a shaky grasp of the language at best.) I said I'm more accustomed to working with beginners and would probably want to do ridiculous interactive games and skits which would seem childish and beneath their dignity, but in the end might actually allow them to speak English.

I guess this went a ways towards restoring good will (how, I don't really know), because they were fairly cooperative for the godawful Internet article. We got through the day and I finally got home, and my mother used her psychic mom powers and called so that I could cry some more and get snot all over the phone.

I've decided that today is my Black Day, the point that I look back on and say, "Yeah, that was it. That was the worst day. Everything got easier after that."

So, there it is. My Black Day is over. Everything will be easier after this.

Weekend In Paris

Last day of meetings, this time at the lycée hotelier where we'd had dinner the night before. By that time I was on information overload, so I'm not sure I really processed anything that was said that day. Annie brought her niece so that we could role play the conseils de classe, which are meetings held each trimester with an administrator, the teaching team, two student representatives and two parent representatives to discuss the progress of each individual student in the class. Yeah. Totally looking forward to that.

We said our somewhat emotional goodbyes, even though Mr. Moto brought us the good news that we'll meet again at the end of January (except for Maureen, whose third world location makes travel costs prohibitive).

I took the metro to my friend Caroline's office, then sat quietly while she finished working on a project. We got to the train station with about two minutes to spare and Caroline asked if I really wanted to take the time to buy a ticket because nobody ever checks and it's no big deal. I told her I'd already been controlled twice, so we got a ticket. And no one checked it.

Her new place is in a town 3 miles outside Paris, and it's adorable. It's on the fourth floor, which is a painful climb, but it's bright and airy and spacious and absolutely beautiful. We had a delicious dinner of ham-and-cheese crepes, with pastries for dessert and a respectable amount of wine.

Saturday we went to the market in town and it was awesome. They sold everything there from fruits to fish to rastafarian caps. The guy selling melons offered to let us sample one, and his sales pitch went like this: "You've probably had better, but you've probably had worse, too." He was right, so we bought three. And happily they were even tastier than the sample melon.

Caroline's mom came by and we went into the city. The artists' neighborhood in the 20th was having an "Open House" day, so you could go in to the artists' workshops and look at all their stuff. It was pretty cool. After that we checked out an exhibit called "Frigos sur le Pont des Arts," which was kind of hilarious-- refrigerators on a bridge.

There was a disastrous episode wherein I complained about my jeans not fitting any more and Caroline decided she would help me find some new ones. Only we haven't shopped together too much, so she didn't realize what would happen: I'd try on two pairs and become unreasonably frustrated when they didn't fit, would refuse to ask anyone for help and rashly declare that nothing would fit, no matter where we went, and I would just want to go home and feel sorry for myself.

Frankly, I don't know if it was mental exhaustion from meetings or emotional exhaustion from this first month of school, but I was in total shut-down mode. In short, I was a terrible house guest, no fun at all, and poor Caro just had to put up with me. So we went back to her place and had dinner; we'd intended to watch a movie but ended up watching about two hours of Les Simpson instead. Somehow it's funnier in French.

Sunday we headed back in to town; only when we got to train station, both ticket machines were broken and there was no one at the window, so it was impossible to buy a ticket. Argh. At any rate, off we went to the Mémoriale de la Déportation, the Holocaust Memorial. It is stark and striking and moving. I was taking pictures like crazy and Caroline was standing very far away from me looking perturbed. Finally she came up and whispered that she didn't think pictures were allowed, so I stopped. (I never did see a sign, but I guess I believe her.) Anyway, profit from my contraband photos now:

We had a fantastic lunch at a Lebanese place near Boulevard St. Michel, then it was back to Caro's place to pack up my stuff. She walked me to the train station, but I guess we were a little behind schedule, because the train was pulling away and I had to literally run to get on it.

And yeah, I got controlled. Obviously. Without a ticket. I tried telling the guy that the two machines were broken and there was no one at the window (which was true enough, in the morning), but he whipped out a cell phone and called the station to verify, so I was SOL. I had a few seconds to recall a book I read about French people and what the author calls Persistent Personal Operating, where you essentially have to make them care about you personally, generally by giving them a sob story and throwing yourself at their mercy.

And so... I cried. Isn't that such a wretched girl thing to do? But French men... well. Anyway, it wasn't my intention to cry, but I was just so tired and fed up and sick of everything that I got all choked up and went the Noble Martyr route and said of course I'd pay the fine immediately but could we please hurry because I was going to miss my train to Le Mans. He asked to see my ticket, then fussed at me for only booking a ticket Paris- Le Mans rather than a Caro's Town-Le Mans ticket. I told him how sorry I was (not particularly true) but that I didn't know that was possible (which was true) and got a brief lecture on How To Buy Train Tickets. I choked up again and said I'm sorry, I didn't know, I'm just a poor little foreigner, etc. He asked my nationality, I told him, he said, "That's a beautiful country. I don't know Alabama, but I like the U.S." Then he said that since I was an American he would let me go this time. "But go quickly or you'll miss your train. Take the 13 line for Chatillon and that'll take you directly to the Montparnasse station. Now hurry!"

French people. I will never understand.

Paris Day Two

On my way to the metro in the morning, I ran into Mark, another exchange teacher, in a café and we both took the train together. And both got controlled. (Sorry for the franglais, but the English word escapes me. The contrôleur is the guy who comes through and checks that you have a valid ticket, ergo we call it being controlled.) This was new; I mean, I knew contrôleurs existed, but in all the time I've spent in Paris, I'd never actually seen one. Neither had Mark. It was no big deal-- I had a ticket, and I don't jump turnstiles or anything-- but it was odd.

Mark and I got to our meeting location (a high school in the 14th, right next to Montparnasse Cemetery) but we were early so we went down to the corner and had (another) coffee. When it was time for our meeting, we went to cross the street and a guy on a motorcycle pulled up and looked intently at us and said something which sounded friendly but you never know with French people and anyway, why was a random guy on a motorcycle talking to us?

Our meeting was being held in the Chinese Pavilion, which was neither Chinese nor a pavilion. (Discuss.) It was, in fact, a large square room on the edge of a basketball court. But okay, fine. Our friends from the Commission arrived, among them the leader himself, the guy with the long aristo name, and Mark leaned over to me and whispered, "Oh man, that was the guy on the motorcycle!" And he was right; we just hadn't recognized him because he had his helmet on and we didn't expect him to scoot his way around the city.

We heard from the principal of the school; the guy whose job is roughly vice-principal in charge of discipline; and someone who's sort of the head counselor (I think). The training session was run by the Inspecteur Général, a very friendly and helpful woman named Annie. In the U.S., teachers are observed and reviewed by their school administrators; in France there is a team of professional reviewers in charge of evaluating teachers in each district. Annie is the boss of all the foreign language inspecteurs in France.

She's worked with exchange teachers for several years now and I appreciated how frank she was. She had a Q&A session, where I stirred the pot by asking, "How can we possibly engage and inspire student learning when the texts and documents they give us to work with just plain suck?" Suddenly everyone in the room was sucking in air; you'd think I'd asked her cup size or something. But she just shrugged and said that for the most part she agreed with me. She claimed cultural differences; American teacher editions are full of tips, ideas, plans and suggestions on how to present the material. A French teacher would be appalled by this sort of setup as it suggests they are incapable of preparing a lesson without help.

Yeah, I get that, but still. I'm perfectly capable of planning, executing and evaluating a lesson, but if the textbook writers want to do the lion's share of the work for me, I'm down with that.

Annmarie and I were paired together to observe classes; we saw an English class that made me want to gouge my eyes out. (Two words, people: James Joyce.) And then we observed a Spanish class, which was excellent for a couple of reasons: first, having no knowledge of the language allowed us to really take a step back and just watch the interaction without getting caught up in the content. And second, this was a seasoned teacher who ran a tight ship but gave a high-energy, interactive lesson which seemed to appeal to her students. And also it was fun to try to pick out the Spanish words that looked like French words and guess what the text was about.

Between observations, Annmarie and I went to stretch our legs and ended up on Boulevard Raspail, which I always think of as Hemingway country. We had a drink in one of his old haunts (at the current rate of conversion, I paid $8.75 for a glass of orange juice), then headed back to wrap up meetings.

Dinner that night was an experience; first off, I got controlled in the metro again, which is insane. Everyone agreed that I had terrible train mojo. (Hint: this is also foreshadowing.) We arrived at a lycée hotelier, a high school which specializes in service industry studies, where our dinner was prepared and served by students. They were all dressed in fine dining suits, very earnestly presenting the menus and suggesting wines. They brought our fish out and dressed them in front of us, they did a tableside presentation at dessert which involved setting liqueur on fire. And all the while their teachers were running around offering help and yelling, as the case required. It was just about the cutest thing I've ever seen. The food was excellent!

Dinner conversation was fascinating, as it always is when French people are in charge. I sat next to Mr. Moto, who talked about his diplomatic adventures around the world. We discussed the situation with my STG class, and he was refreshingly blunt about how poorly they've been treated by the educational system. (Roughly, STG kids are perceived to be not very bright; they're given little encouragement or help and are basically being babysat until they either pass their exams or drop out. Most are minorities, many are first-generation citizens, and most are understandably angry at the world.) Those of you who know my history of teaching in the hood know these are the kids I like best, even if they don't like me. And they don't like me. See that whole "angry at the world" thing.

There were lighter moments, to be sure. I found out that Mr. Moto was born in, of all places, Chattanooga. I know, right? After dinner, Annmarie was bold enough to ask Mr. Moto for a ride back to the hotel. As RFK said, only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly:

Annmarie, whose gutsiness I admire beyond description, went a step farther. When they got to the hotel, she said, "You mean we're done already?" and was rewarded with a nighttime drive through Paris, including circling the base of the Eiffel Tower. I was so jealous I could spit.

To work off the painfully large meal, most of the girls decided to walk back to the hotel, and I have to tell you, wandering the streets of Paris at night is just heartbreakingly wonderful. For me, Paris is a city that never gets old; no matter how many times I go there, it's never enough. And while it was good to be there, it was also tinged with bitterness that I can't be there all the time. I'd move there in a heartbeat.

Not quite ready to tell Paris goodnight (particularly Maureen, my favorite third world denizen, who knew her days in civilization were few), we stopped at the café on the corner and had one more round, sitting on the terrasse and watching the world go by. I slept really, really well.

Paris Day One

Three days of freedom from classes and I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. I got to the train station way early because I was just ready. I ran into another exchange teacher, Annmarie, at the hotel, and we roamed the neighborhood and had lunch together. Then we headed down to our rendezvous point to get ready for our official immigration medical visit.

I'd forgotten what a delight these were. The good parts: reuniting with all the other exchange teachers. I feel about these folks the way veterans feel about their platoon mates: we've Been Through Stuff that no one else will ever understand. We were all positively giddy to see each other.

The doctors took us in pairs-- I was with Joanna, and let me tell you, these docs have the system down. They shuffled Joanna and me around the room like magic; we never once ran into each other, and somehow we both managed to be weighed, measured and given an eye exam within about two minutes. The doctors were cracking jokes-- at one point, Joanna made a big production over the doctor asking her if she were pregnant, which he thought was just hilarious. Seriously, he almost fell down laughing, then he opened various doors to tell everyone what she'd just said.

After the doctors were finished with us, they hustled us into a hallway with three doors, told us to each pick a room, strip down to the waist, and wait for someone to come get us. Ah yes, the chest x-ray. I'd forgotten about this little delight. What's that you say? Drapes or paper shirts to protect one's modesty? Surely you jest. What are you, some sort of prudish American who's so ashamed of your own body you're not comfortable parading around naked in front of a bunch of lab techs? Some people have the craziest hangups.

I tried to brazen my way through it, but it's just a godawful experience. Someone comes to get you and walk you in to the xray room. This is the standup variety, so a helpful lab tech will walk up behind you and smash your boobs against a cold metal wall. At this point, the lab tech decided to pull my hair into a clip of some sort, and that kicked my discomfort level through the roof. After all, scientists have identified hand-to-head as pretty frigging high up on the human intimacy scale, and I felt like Nurse Ratched was rushing me a bit.

After we got our handy souvenir chest xrays, we were called individually to another doctor for a medical history. This is where I lie a lot, because it's so much easier to just answer "no" than to deal with follow-up questions. However, I was so proud to actually know the French word for "arthroscopy" that I eagerly volunteered that bit of information. He then asked what the doctors found and I had to feel stupid once again. It wasn't even a vocabulary deficiency; I remember I asked my knee doctor three times what they did to me, and he told me, but it all went over my head.

Finally we worked our way back out to the main office, where we were given our official visas:

Here we are in the Place des Vosges admiring our lungs:

That night we had a cocktail party with the Agency in charge of our exchange, and we shared the time (and wine, and food) with a group of college students who are spending a semester in France. They're newly arrived and a little petrified, and it was so nice to talk to them about living in France. Honestly, my confidence has been absolutely decimated since school started, so I was thrilled to be able to feel knowledgeable and capable again.

We also got to meet several high-level bureaucrats, including the director of the Commission, a Frenchman with a longish aristocratic name* who was quite friendly and knew me immediately because he'd spent so much time looking at our files. Which have photographs. And my hair makes me easy to identify. Go figure. I also met a very nice lady from the Embassy who travels the world with her daughter and lived four years in New Orleans, so that was fun to talk about.

Maureen (my favorite third world denizen) and I had dinner and a glass of wine, then we went back to the hotel to prepare for our first day of meetings.

*This is foreshadowing. This man will appear in tomorrow's post.

French Music: Paris Edition

By the time this video posts, I will be in PARIS! To celebrate, I am indulging myself: today's selection is the incomparable Edith Piaf. Bonus Points to anyone who sees her biopic, La Vie en Rose. (Marion Cotillard won an Oscar for her spot-on performance. Excellent film.)

Another Day, Another Crisis

Classes were fine today. Oddly, I'm the only one among the exchange teachers who isn't ranting and raving about her secondes (students in their first year of high school). Mine get a little loud sometimes, and there are a couple of worthless specimens, but they behave pretty well and they do what I ask. Today then even politely corrected my French (I used a word that doesn't exist).

Anyway, I got home and the mailman had brought his:

Which means I have two weeks to figure out what, exactly, one wears to a reception at the Senate House in the presence of a former prime minister.

Good grief.

Sigh.

"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it is a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

"Why, what's the matter?"

"Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can't all, and some of us don't. That's all there is to it."

"Can't all what?" said Pooh, rubbing his nose.

"Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush."

Maybe excellent weekends are a poor idea. I woke up this morning in the throes of a full-on anxiety attack, and that was the best part of the day. The low point was the mini-breakdown I had at lunch. Beyond that, it's really not worth talking about. Thank goodness tomorrow is my last day for the week-- I've got to get away from school for a while and regroup.

Argh.

(Not Much of a) SURPRISE: More Castles!

Annie and Richard arrived bright and early this morning for another road trip adventure. This time, instead of staying in Sarthe, we ventured out towards Tours. Our first stop was the Chateau de Montsoreau. It appears Alexandre Dumas wrote a novel about the Lady of Monsoreau (who marries one bloke and falls in love with another one, blah blah), and has been turned into a made-for-TV movie a couple of times.

I've realized that when one is restoring a chateau, there are two options available to draw visitors: you can carefully refurbish and refurnish the place with correct period pieces, though this is a major money pit in terms of upkeep; or, you can not keep a stick of furniture in the place and turn it into a quasi-scientific exhibit. At Montsoreau, they opted for the latter.

This isn't meant as a criticism; it was pretty interesting stuff. During the Renaissance, the Loire River was Where It Was At, and this castle is literally spitting distance from the river. So there was a lot of information about commerce and how goods were transported down the river by boat, stuff about the wines that are stored in the soft-rock caves all along the river, and the ever-popular mushroom farms.

Along with Annie and Richard's dear friends Claude and Christiane, we turned the castle inside out, then went to lunch at a mushroom farm. Our first course was mushroom soup; the main dish was a plate of three large mushrooms: one stuffed with goat cheese, one with rillettes (think pulled pork), and one with... mushrooms. A mushroom-stuffed mushroom. We had a quick dessert (no mushrooms, thank goodness) and jumped in the car to head off to a little tiny church a few towns over.

The village is noteworthy because of its famous castle, Ussé, which is best known as being Charles Perrault's inspiration for Sleeping Beauty. The church, Notre Dame de Rigny, is truly off the beaten path; it's in the middle of nowhere, the exterior is completely uninspiring, but the interior is breathtaking. The church was constructed in the 11th century, and was believed to be a favorite of King Louis XI. Though they don't know for sure, they think it was Louis who commissioned the murals inside, and his royal painter who executed them. Unfortunately, during the period of the counter-Reformation, they were painted over, and have been a bit difficult to salvage.

Claude and Christiane's daughter is a musician, and she and three others performed an impromptu concert in the church. The acoustics were astonishing and the music was gorgeous. The church is a treasure, really beautiful, and there's an association who bought it and have sunk wild amounts of their personal money into saving it. (Their leader is an 85-year-old guy who shocked the crap out of me by telling me he'd been to Birmingham twice.)

When the concert was over, we drove to a nearby village situated prettily on the river. As soon as we got out of the car, I looked down at the boats on the river and realized, holy crap, I've been here before! This past spring, when I was in France with the kids, my hostess Odile took my joyriding through the area and we'd stopped there to walk along the river and admire the boats.

We had chocolate in a little café then took the long way home; I got to see a nuclear power plant! Did you know they make smoke? I didn't. I also couldn't stop the big stupid grin on my face as I kept imagining Smithers and Mr. Burns making nefarious plans inside. I mean really, how can anyone take themselves seriously working at a nuclear power plant? They are all Homer Simpson, one way or another.

Pictures are here. Good times had by all. Don't want to go back to work tomorrow.

Journées du Patrimoine

This weekend is one of the most-anticipated in France. "Heritage Days" are exciting because throughout the country, many normally private buildings throw their doors wide and welcome the unwashed masses. In Paris, you can stand in line for hours to take a tour of the Elysée Palace, where President Sarkozy lives with his hot wife; elsewhere, many private chateaux give guided tours; churches hold concerts, city halls throw parties, and good times are had by all.

(Lest you feel yourselves tearing up over this demonstration of patriotic spirit, it's worth noting that most of these castle owners receive government funds to subsidize their upkeep, and they're actually required to open their doors to the public one day a year so that taxpayers can see how their money is being spent. Still, most folks are down with it, because they've put a lot of work into their homes, and they like showing them off. Sort of HGTV goes live.)

Two of Miss Cake's friends, Annie and Richard, invited me to join them for the fun. When Annie called, she kept saying that if I got any better offers for the weekend, I should feel free to bail on them, because they're not young and obviously I would rather spend my time with hot French guys. (Okay, I added that last part.) So I was pretty much expecting a geriatric couple with walkers-- I even watched for them at my window so they wouldn't have to climb the stairs.

Um, they're not old. They're quite spry and adorable, and absolutely too much fun. Richard kept me laughing all day, and Annie took good care of me.

Our first stop was the church in the village of Pirmil. For a rinky-dink church in a rinky-dink village, the interior was quite impressive, well-maintained and full of little surprises. After the church, we drove just outside the village to visit the Chateau de la Balluère, where our visit was lead by a man who identified himself as "the young mayor of Pirmil."

Interesting character. He was indeed young, and rather handsome too; originally from Paris, a few years ago his mother died of a heart attack and he decided he needed to slow his life down substantially. So he and his partner bought the chateau and he ran for mayor; he lost, spent some time ingratiating himself to the population, and won the second time. He told us all kinds of stories about his constituents, and when we seemed shocked that he should know such intimate details of their lives, he just leveled a look at us and said, "Mayors know everything." I swear, this guy needs his own reality show.

After the chateau, we went to the little village of Asnières-sur-Vègres, because Richard read their was a restaurant there run by English people. (He and Annie are both retired English teachers, and though French by birth, they are Brits at heart.) Off we went to Le Pavillon, where a very harried English guy whose entire staff was on vacation single-handedly ran the only restaurant in the village. We spent a typical 90 minutes on our typically massive French meal, and I was typically useless afterward.

Lunch was followed by a guided tour of the village, which included a church whose bland exterior didn't even hint at the gorgeous frescoes inside. Also, there was a newspaper guy there who was taking so many pictures I began to understand why Britney did the umbrella job on the paparazzi. Dude, seriously, trying to admire some art here...

And then we went to another private castle, this one the Chateau Dobert. It was straight out of a fairy tale. It's been in the same family (their name is de Bastard, heh heh) for a ridiculous amount of time, something like 600 years. Can you even imagine?

Our tour was led by Philippe, grandson of the current owner. He was so cute, charming, and very excited about leading the tour but a little shy, too-- he kept looking at his grandmother for backup. I'm not even going to lie: it took me about 30 seconds to fall madly in love with him. He's probably all of 20 years old, and that doesn't bother me nearly as much as it should.

As he was showing us pictures of de Bastard ancestors, he turned his head to answer a question, completely unaware that this put his face at the same angle as the painting, and I swear to goodness I was looking at the exact same nose on him as on the guy in the Revolution-era wig. Mind-blowing. I mean, we're standing in the guy's castle, surrounded by an honest-to-goodness moat, looking at paintings of his identical (if bewigged) twin and admiring the dining room table (set with china which had an emblem reserved for a count, which they never mentioned but I recognized), and he could not have been more normal and down-to-earth. He had a grand time telling us about his plans to become a military pilot, all the while showing us the 200-year-old bidet in one of the upstairs rooms.

I would have taken tons of pictures, but I was in someone's house, and it felt a bit like I was casing the joint, you know? But I took plenty of the exterior. After we wandered the grounds a bit, Richard lobbied for a detour in Annie's carefully planned itinerary, because it had become essential that I be taken to Solesmes, which is famous for its Benedictine monastery where Gregorian chant was revived and restored in the 19th century. (I have a soft spot for Benedictines, based on my brief but profound experience with Father Joel and the rest of the gang at St. Bernard's.) We walked in to the chapel on the tail end of a mass, and the singing was truly magnificent. Equally impressive were the "saints de Solesmes," some of the most beautiful and affecting sculptures I've ever seen (and that would include my little jaunt to the Vatican). I opted not to play Asian tourist during mass, though, so no pictures for you there.

Side Note: the prime minister of France, François Fillon, is from Le Mans and went to the university here, and now keeps a home in Solesmes. I can see why-- it's a lovely, charming little village, straight out of Central Casting. We had a drink in a little café on the main road and it was everything that is good about France.

Tomorrow we are going to meet some friends of theirs outside Tours, at a place which I gather is something like a mushroom farm, and we will eat in the dining establishment of said farm and have a three-course meal consisting of all mushroom-based foods. (I am concerned about dessert, but otherwise game.)

See all the pretty pictures of today's adventures here.

Pastry of the Week: Merveilleux

Another Friday has come and gone, and as usual, I made a side trip to the bakery downstairs to get a baguette and a Friday treat. The merveilleux caught my eye last week, and I've been looking forward to it for days. I mean, look at this thing: it's round, it's covered in chocolate sprinkles and for crying out loud, it's called a marvelous; how could I go wrong?

Only it turns out I jumped the gun and what I assumed was a mound of chocolatey goodness was actually a dry, hollow cookie-type substance.

Not only that, but it was ridiculously sweet, so much so that I threw it out without finishing it. Those of you familiar with my sweet tooth will be suitably shocked; yes, I'll say it again: it was too sweet. And I eat Fun Dip, people. Sigh. What a waste.

I Am In Love... with this bread thing

Today one of my colleagues, Anne-Marie, hosted an snack-and-drink thing in the English planning station. There were maybe 20 people there, a table full of yummies and... wait for it... champagne. Yes, kids, drinking on campus is perfectly acceptable behavior for grown-ups. I was just bummed that I had three hours of classes afterwards, otherwise, let's be honest, I'd have gotten loaded. Mmm... champagne.

If you look between the champagne bottles, you'll see what appears to be a large brown muffin with a red ribbon around it. Imagine my surprise when someone lifted the lid and the inside was filled with little sandwiches. I think this is beyond awesome. So I sidled up to someone who's familiar with my ignorance and asked what it was: pain surprise, surprise bread. So I googled it, and let me tell you, this stuff is too fun!

Maybe it was the champagne and pastries, maybe it was just dumb luck, but today went pretty well. My students still talk too much, but have now caught on to the fact that I disapprove of this and will make occasional efforts to be quiet. There were a couple of fun moments, namely when I referred to something (I forget what) as terrific, which they understood to mean terrifying. And also we were discussing American icons, and one boy popped his hand in the air and said, without hesitation, "When I think of United States, I think of David Beckham." Good times.

Tomorrow I have my One Class From Hell, and then I have to run home and make my way through a massive to-do list which includes visiting the tailor and miming my way through my alteration needs; the bank; the post office; ironing (sigh); and cleaning in preparation for my Saturday morning visitors.

French Pop, Part Deux

Since last week I shared with you some truly bad French music, I thought I'd take a moment to share with you a song that never fails to make me smile. This guy's name is Bénabar, and he's famous for his clever lyrics as well as his "traditional" instrumentation, that is, piano, accordion and the occasional brass band.

I love this song because it makes me laugh; in it, he earnestly lists the clues-- clothing that is ironed, the sudden disappearance of his porn collection, the presence of fruits in his fridge-- which lead him to suspect that there is a girl living in his apartment.

After a crappy day at school, I need this tongue-in-cheek silliness to restore my good humor. So enjoy, I'm off to prepare for Terrible Thursday.

Open Letter to My Teacher

Dear Becky,

I have grave fears that you have ruined me for all other yoga instructors. No other class measures up to yours. It has been three years since I left Montgomery, and in that time I have made at least five attempts to resume my practice, and I have met nothing but disappointment.

There was, for example, the lady at the YMCA who pulled me out of my perfectly correct Chair Pose and pushed me into a form that wrenched my lower back and made me hate her guts. Then there was the guy who insisted I keep one hand on the wall during Tree Pose. And the woman who didn't believe me when I told her that yes, indeed, that was as far as I could bend.

And tonight was quite the worst of all. I brought my mat, but we didn't use them. Instead, we sat on carpet squares; I was the only one without socks on, because that was one of your holy rules, but apparently it hasn't made it to this side of the ocean. We went an hour and a half during which the most strenuous thing we did was Tree Pose. No salutations, no downward-facing dog, not even a child pose. I tried to keep an open mind, Becky, really I did, because I remember how you said we always come to the mat with a spirit of humility, but around the time he suggested I think of my breath as an old friend I was showing around the house, I had pretty much checked out.

Oh, the bliss of your class, Becky. I remember how within five minutes, I'd have my tail in the air, sweat pouring down my face, feeling strong and limber and healthy, like the human body was the most fantastic creation in the universe. Once, you had me demonstrate Bridge Pose for the rest of the class, and you all gathered around and admired the curve of my back, and frankly that might have been the greatest moment of my life. I am not an athlete, but you found something that I could feel proud of. For the next week, it was all I could do to stay upright; I wanted to approach complete strangers and say, "Would you like to see my Bridge Pose? It's really good."

You always seemed to know exactly what reminders I needed: don't clench your jaw; drop your shoulders; remember to breathe. You're the only instructor I've had who took requests; I lived for that: you know the commercial where the dog is thinking baconbaconBACON? That was me, only it was more pigeonpigeonPIGEON!!! Nothing fazed you: one time you were adjusting a guy's leg and he totally farted; you never missed a beat, just quietly assured him that this was a natural reaction to relaxing muscles, and moved on.

Everyone has a gift; the lucky ones are those who find their gift and pursue it. You were born to do what you do, Becky, and I wish you nothing but continued peace and prosperity. Thank you for everything you taught me.

Namaste,

Melissa

I Am The Weakest Link

The three classes I had this morning went better than last week; a few students are starting to open up a bit, which helps. And just when I was starting to feel an eensy bit of confidence... I went to a teacher workshop.

My colleague Cécile proposed this as a field trip: we would cancel our afternoon classes, have lunch downtown and then go to some sort of lecture at the art museum. So at noon, we hopped in the Deux Chevaux, picked up Guillaume, a history teacher (and the only other teacher at school who also owns a Deux Chevaux) and headed to town where we met Valérie, who used to work at our school but just this year transfered to the snotty uber-rich high school downtown. (I'd pretty much give up a kidney to work there, but I kept this to myself.)

Lunch was delicious but too much-- I am constantly amazed at how these tiny French people can wolf down food like nobody's business. We each had the special, a plate of lettuce, sliced tomato salad, beef, chicken, turkey and cheese. And of course, bread. And of course, dessert. And of course, coffee. I thought I'd puke about halfway through and I was the only one who failed to make a happy plate. How do they do it??

After lunch we walked a few blocks to the museum, where the woman in charge started rattling ninety to nothing about... something. After a while it became apparent that there was dissent about our course of action; the workshop leader wanted us to "choose" our piece of art and start "working" (I'd missed the bit about what we were supposed to do). There was a brief skirmish over the lack of labels on the paintings (the museum lady said they were irrelevant because the kids never remembered the information anyway, and some of the teachers got their feathers ruffled), then we stood around while two people argued over whether we should start working or take a brief tour first; the museum lady objected to this as a waste of time, though by this point we'd been standing and arguing for 20 minutes and wasted time was a moo point.

After the museum lady explained her reasons for not wanting to start with a brief guided tour, she started with a brief guided tour. (Honestly, sometimes I wonder if it's a language barrier or a sanity barrier.) We were shown various paintings she felt would be well adapted to the... thing we were supposed to be doing. Cécile selected a series of paintings related to Paul Scarron's Le Roman Comique, which I had once pretended to read in a 17th century lit class. (Evidently it's set in Le Mans, which I have no memory of, although it does explain why one of the cafés downtown is named for him.)

What happened next was a painful lesson in French education: we proceeded to stare at the paintings and describe them in great detail. This is exactly what happens in class, too. "There is a man. He has a long gun. Perhaps he is hunting for birds or rabbits to feed his friends. In the bottom right corner, there are two men. They appear angry. Perhaps they are quarreling. There are two cows, and a donkey. The donkey is eating hay." And on. And on. And on. Is it any wonder these kids hate school? We skipped the best part-- we did the first three paintings in the series, but in the fourth there was a huge, knock-down drag-out fight in which theatre spectators wielded chairs like they were on Jerry Springer, and at least one person appeared to be getting spanked on his naked bum. And yet, the other teachers remained convinced that the first three were enough. But... but... we skipped the good stuff.

After that, all the groups got together in one of the exhibit rooms and sat in a circle on the floor to discuss our projects. They were all talking too fast for me, so I zoned out. You know that kid in class who's always staring out the window? That was me. Everyone else is scribbling notes, nodding, applauding each other's creativity, and I'm sitting on the floor picking at a scab and wondering where I might find a piece of gum.

The philosophy teachers were the worst; I had no idea what they were talking about. Something about still life and the symbolism of vanity, blah blah. (In the meantime, I was admiring the clear plastic zip-top bag said philosophy teacher keeps her pens in and wondering where she bought it, and whether I could ask her where she bought it, and how precisely to formulate that question, and what her response might be so I could rehearse answers.)

And yes, I did say philosophy teacher. It's a required subject for all seniors and comprises part of their graduation exam. Every year after the exam, the questions are published in the newspaper so the general public can complain about how much harder the questions were when they were in school and kids today just don't know how easy they have it. Examples of last year's questions:

Does objectivity in history suppose impartiality in the historian?

Does language betray thought?

Is it absurd to desire the impossible?

Are there questions science cannot answer?

Again I say, no wonder these kids hate school. And no wonder I feel like an idiot all the time.

First Dinner Invitation

I had my first dinner out last night, and as predicted, I fretted about it for days, changed clothes multiple times and flipped out over the hostess gift. (I bought two. And ended up giving her neither one.)

Mado arrived at four and immediately insisted I change shoes. (We were going to take a walk in the country, and despite the fact that I walk in these shoes all the time, she didn't think they were sturdy enough. So I changed.) Then I figured that since it was sunny and warm and I was going to be leaving my bag in the car for a couple of hours, my carefully-selected hostess gift (chocolates) might not fare too well. I'll double up next time. It'll be fine. Right. Right?!?

Off we drove to the country, to walk through the woods. The landscape itself wasn't that different from my dad's plantation* in the wilds of Blount County. As usual, I managed to unintentionally hurt feelings; she asked if I take walks like this at home, and I answered honestly that no, I don't, because I live in the city, and she understood this to mean that I was miserable and wanted to go home and never, ever set foot in the great outdoors again. I figured this out because she kept looking at her watch and saying, "It won't be much longer and we'll be back to the car." Finally I had to drag the topic out in the open and explain that I was enjoying our walk in the country, it's just not something I often have the opportunity to do. She might have believed me, it's tough to say.

And I wish to high heaven I had brought my camera, because at one point we looked up and there were animals in the middle of the trail. She said "calves," but that makes me think of this, when what we were dealing with was more like this. You know, the things professional rodeo guys get paid large amounts of money to wrestle? Yeah, those. Four of them. Staring at us. And then we looked up (the trail was really worn, so the "ground" was about four feet above us) and saw, I swear, the most enormous, gigantic, terrifying bull I have ever seen. Watching us. Thank the Lord there was a fence between us; if not, I'd have wet my pants and started crying.

The "calves," it turned out, were terrified of us. They'd gotten out of their field and were quite obviously trying to find their way back in. They'd run ahead of us, turn around, run ahead, turn around. Finally, two of them found their way back in, but two were still lost and so upset that they decided to run through the barbed wire to get away from us. Sadly, this is not the first time males of any species have had this reaction to me.

After we finished our walk, we headed into the suburbs to Mado's lovely house, where her husband and the next door neighbor were having a beer. I joined them. I met both daughters, who were precious, and after our drink, Mado and I went into the kitchen so we could continue to chat while I watched her prepare dinner. The neighbor's wife and son came by; the son was eager to show off his English (and did quite well!) though at one point his mom looked at me intently and said in French, "Maybe... I'm speaking... too... quickly." This made me feel a bit stupid; I'd thought I was following pretty well, but evidently I missed a cue somewhere.

Dinner was casual and delicious; we chatted for a long time, the girls showed me their "Tiger Beat" style magazines and we discussed (sigh) "High School Musical" and (bigger sigh, with eye roll) "Twilight." Mado loves it, of course, because everyone on this stinking planet loves Twilight except for me. Dessert was a crumble prepared by the 12-year-old daughter with pears from the garden and Kinder Eggs. Rock on.

After dinner came the movie. We chose Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, which I was really happy about because it was enormously, insanely popular in France last year, and I haven't been able to see it until now. I can say whole-heartedly that the buzz was accurate: it truly is funny.

The premise is this: a postal worker in the south of France fakes a handicap to get a promotion to Saint-Tropez but gets busted. As his punishment, he is... suspended? "Worse," says his supervisor. Fired? "Still worse." He is being sent... to the north. For two years. A fate worse than death!! His wife refuses to go-- she can't possibly leave the south!-- so he will come home every other weekend.

The portrayal of the dismal, wet north is hilarious, and the accent/dialect of the locals is incomprehensible. (Really. Mado's husband had to keep asking me if I understood what was going on and explaining.) Naturally, the punished postal worker eventually finds that the locals are quite friendly and good-hearted, and he's enjoying himself. When he calls home, his wife is convinced he's just trying to make her feel better and insists he tell her the truth, so he makes up stories about how terrible it is. After a few weeks, the wife decides to come visit... and more hilarity ensues.

My favorite part is when Philippe gets fed up that one of his letter carriers is always coming back drunk from his route, so he decides to join him. At every stop in this small town, the residents insist that the mailman come inside to visit, and naturally they're all obliged to offer him "a little something," and he's obliged by courtesy to accept. So Philippe, the boss, gets royally hammered about three stops in, and before long he's knocking on people's doors, his tie around his head, announcing that they have no mail but what have they got to drink?

I've read online that Will Smith bought the international rights to the movie and is going to make an American version called "Welcome to the Sticks," but I really hope that's not the case. Why screw up something that's so charming and funny by trying to translate it? Just go see the original.

Okay, gotta run. French smurfs are on.

*No, my father does not really own a plantation. Come on, people!

Pastry of the Week: Religieuse

Pastry consumption has been reduced to one day per week. (Mousse consumption continues to hold steady, and oddly enough, orange juice is moving up in the rankings.) I have designated Friday as Pastry Day, in order to celebrate having successfully arrived at the weekend. Today I stopped at the bakery downstairs and got a religieuse.

They wrap them in this pretty paper pyramid, just like a present:

It's called a religieuse because, allegedly, it looks like a nun:

Poor girl never stood a chance...

Mmmm, Fridays. So much tastier than Thursdays.

The thing about Thursdays...

Last year, when my friend Kim was on exchange, I remember she said she really, really liked Thursdays because she had class all day and it felt like the most "normal" (American) of her work days. I work all day Thursday and I hate it. I have a class in the morning that's two hours long, and they sit in utter silence and refuse to speak. Today we listened to an interview of a girl who went to high school in Paris and then in Boston, and she talked about the American style of teaching, how it's discussion-based, and the teacher guides the conversation but most of the learning and talking comes from the students. This is a sharp contrast to the French system, which is mostly lecture-based, where the teacher provides all the answers and the students copy them down and memorize them.

Here's the core of the problem: I can't teach in the French style, and they can't handle the American style. They get nervous when I walk around the room; they refuse to admit when they don't understand something I've said; if they ask a question like "What is the reason for uniforms in American schools?" and I do the American teacher thing of saying, "Well, what do you think some reasons are?" they stare at me in shame and horror like they've done something wrong. As far as I can tell, "thinking for oneself" is not a concept that's arrived in the French educational system.

I honestly don't know how to deal with this. At the end of two hours, I thought I might lock myself in a bathroom and cry for a while. Instead I went down to the teachers' room, and when some of my colleagues asked how things were going, I made the mistake of telling them: not very well. They want to be sympathetic, I think, but it's clear they don't quite understand what's bothering me. I'm used to knowing my students, to seeing their personalities, to interacting with them, cracking jokes with them. That doesn't happen here. The kids want nothing to do with me beyond my services as a living French-English dictionary (and God forbid I should fail them in this capacity).

I had three more classes this afternoon; the first was painful (I tried a French-style lesson and was bored to tears), the second was okay (I tried an American-style lesson and it was mostly lost on them), and the third I knew in advance would be blah and I was not disappointed. At the end of the day, I am exhausted, defeated and wondering how many days are left in the school year*. I know things will get better, I know they will, but in the meantime I'm not gonna lie: it's rough out here.

*165.

Urban Legend: French People Are Rude

A more accurate statement is, Parisians are rude. People in Le Mans, my coworkers specifically, could not possibly be nicer. They are warm, they are friendly, they love to strike up conversation with my about the U.S., Alabama ("Forrest Gump!") and how I am finding Le Mans. (I can be diplomatic when needed.)

The problem is that these folks all seem to know me, while I have no idea who they are. So, as it happens, I have given out my phone number at least three times with only the vaguest idea of who the person is.

Today, for example, I left class and got snagged in the hallway. "Ah, la nouvelle collègue!" (My name is, according to all evidence, "the new colleague." Similarly, my name at home is "the new neighbor." Only the couple across the hall just bought a new place, which means I'm ridiculously excited about someone else moving in so that I can say, "Tiens, c'est le nouveau voisin!")

Anyway, this woman in the hall insisted that I come to her office to have a coffee and see where it is "in case I ever need her help." (For what? Who is she? Not the principal, I know that much.) While she fed me coffee and madeleines, she told me all about her past two vacations to the U.S. (National parks; East Coast; she's a trip to California away from the French Travel Trifecta!) and took my number so she could invite me to dinner.

Dinner invitations. They're funny things. People tell me all the time that they're planning to have me over for dinner (it's a big deal here). In fact, they all seem rather panicky and apologetic about not being able to invite me over immediately. (The wife is out of town, I'm so, so sorry, it's horrible that we can't have you over sooner, but we will very very soon, I promise.) A woman that I swear I've never seen before rushed up to me in the teachers' lounge to explain that her son just started school and so "it's all very complicated right now" but she wants to invite me over as soon as she can.

I find this all quite entertaining. Frankly, I'm not in a hurry to fill up my calendar with dinner dates, as this would entail days of fretting about what to wear, paranoia that I am secretly someone's pony in a Diner de Cons, and a last-minute crisis related to the selection of an appropriate hostess gift. All of this culminates, of course, in a minimum of 4 hours of small talk at one stretch, the very thought of which makes me faint.

Full reports as they happen, naturally. But for now, kids, start speaking the truth! French people are friendly!

Side Note: French Pop

This note should really only contain one word: craptastic. There are certainly exceptions (I'd put Raphael or Corneille up against any American act), but sadly, these guys don't get played nearly as much as the other wincingly abysmal acts. It's so bad that the public's preference for English-language music is understandable, and oh my, but they do loves them some Amurican music; truly, you haven't fully lived until you've heard an entire bar full of French folks confidently declaring that Beeelly Jeeen ees nawt mai lawver. In fact, the preference for English-language music is so strong that in 1994 the government passed a law that 40 percent of every station's playlist much be in French.

Quotas. That's always a good system, right? The result, inevitably, is garbage like this:

His name is Tom Frager, and he's a surfer who owns a guitar, a dog and, I suppose, a video camera. (Seriously, if he spent more than $50 making this video, he got ripped off. Also, if he spent more than 5 minutes writing the song, he needs another hobby.) The song is called "Lady Melody" (which is French, right?) and the lyrics are so painful that by the time he gets to the verse about, and I swear, I am not making this up, "je fly away," it's all I can do not to smash the TV to pieces.

The Natives Speak

During the first, strange, I-dont'-know-what-I'm-doing-but-need-to-fake-it week, my colleague Cécile gave me a fantastic time-killer educational activity that I've put to good use in all my classes: I ask them to write for five minutes in English, open subject; I don't care what they write about, I don't care how good it is, I just want them to write. Then I ask them to write in French and answer this question: "Do you like English? Why or why not?"

The results have been eye-opening. Not only does it give me a clear idea of their strengths and weaknesses in English, but I have to be honest and say that I'm appalled at some of their French, too. Heck, my second-year students at Baker know better than to write j'ai choisit. But most of all, it's given me an insight into their personalities; ironically, the ones who tell me in French that they like English because it's easy and they're good at it have generally written crappy English compositions with painful beginner mistakes like "My name is Dubois Pierre and I have 16." And the ones who have written in shamed tones that they have great difficulty and many problems with English are generally the ones whose compositions are best. Go figure. They also all expressed an awareness that English has become a universal language, one of the most widely spoken in the world (after Hindi and Mandarin, one boy primly informs me) and essential to their future careers.

And, sometimes, they're just flat-out funny. I offer you samples:

I have two brothers, I'm seventeen, I'll want after the lycée a school of photographie at Paris. I was am passionate of gym. I have a dream, it's the decouvert of the world and civilization the travels. I'll want a better English.

I was born the 19th March 1992 in Nantes. My favourite sport is Basketball. My last holidays was amazing! I've visited NYC, Washington and Piladelphia. And the accent was complicate to understand. Your accent seems more easier than east coast accent. In my opinion.

My vacationMy summer 2009 was so banal. I wanna go to Norway but my mother don't wanted to go. The life is so unfair. In july, I was going to swimming with my friend. It was so magic. My friends has to do a big party in the night. I was We We telling all night mare. It was so terrible. I was scared.

Methinks this class will keep me on my toes. It's gonna be a long year.

Adventures in Banking, Part 3

I took the bus downtown to pick up my checkbook and debit card. (Yes, the bank is open on Saturday mornings. It's also closed all day on Mondays.) I guess I'm going native, because I wasn't even upset-- or particularly surprised-- to find that neither my checkbook nor my card have turned up yet. This is the M.O. around here: nothing is ready when it's supposed to be, no one can explain why, and you'll always have to make at least one more trip than you anticipate. It's not personal, it's just the way of things: I'm learning to shrug it off like the locals do.

Naturally, the lady who opened my account is now on vacation, and her replacement doesn't work on Saturday. But the nice woman at the welcome desk said she would ask about my checkbook on Tuesday. She suspected the problem might be that there is no money in my account. No problem, I said, I can make a cash deposit. She said this would be a great idea, then we stared at each other for a minute, at which point I had to ask how one goes about making a cash deposit.

Ah well, you see, the problem is that the tellers don't work on Saturdays either (I'm a little perplexed about who does work on Saturday, other than the reception ladies), so normally I would make a cash deposit via the ATM, only this is a bit tricky when one is not yet in possession of a bank card. Solution? The reception lady takes her special bank card and walks with me to the ATM, where we make the deposit together. Assisted banking! Ain't it grand?

In Which Our Intrepid Author Attempts Sport

Tonight I went to a beginners' class on Nordic Walking, which is basically hiking with poles. (Not to be confused with hiking with Poles, which is completely different.)

Getting to the place was a bit of an adventure; the bus deposited me here:

and my first thought was well, what the crap do I do now? And I felt really stupid when a couple of minutes later, the bus came back around and drove past me again. So I grabbed by cell phone and held it to my ear so that all four people on the bus would think, "Oh look, there's someone taking a phone call before heading confidently to her destination" instead of, "Oh wow, that chick has no idea where she is."

Worse than that was when I looked at the bus schedule and saw that the last one of the day came by in about an hour. Okay. So after my hike through the woods, I'd have to hike back home. (It's moments like these that I have to force myself not to dwell on The Car Situation but instead remind myself of the suffering of others: victims of genocide, puppy mills, how my poor mother can't see her driveway from the window. It could always be worse.)

I eventually found the meeting point and the group of 20 or so complete strangers who were going to learn how to walk with sticks alongside me. And I soon as I got there, I remembered one tiny, inconsequential detail: I am incapable of small talk in French.

Here is my problem: people think my French is a lot better than it is. I can't count the number of people who rave about how well I speak. I'm not bragging here, because it makes me want to claw my face off when they say it, as all I can think is if my French is so freaking good then why do I only understand half of what you're saying?!?! Ultimately it boils down to two different understandings of the phrase. When I say "You speak well," I mean "with an ample vocabulary formulated into structured sentences." When French people say "You speak well," they mean "without a horrendous accent."

There's the rub: apparently I am going to have to start speaking with a profoundly obnoxious American accent just to get people to friggin' slow down when they talk to me. As we were walking around with our sticks, people would walk up alongside me and say... something. If their intonation indicated a question, I muttered an agreement; if their intonation indicated a statement, I would use my fallback phrase, "Ah, bon?" Which means, roughly, "Oh, really?" And that was it.

So I met a very nice lady whose name may or may not be Nadia, and who does some kind of roller skating activity that might be roller derby, I'm not really sure. And I also met a guy who just moved from Paris a week ago and is here to coach... something. He liked the park because, you see, they have woods in Paris, but you can still smell all the pollution from the city, and so this park is much nicer. I also met a girl who does karate and is going to email me about this group who meet once a month to practice speaking English. Because, of course, that's going to improve my French. But who cares, I'll go.

The hiking bit was nice enough I guess; I didn't realize we'd be walking quite so long, and after a while all I could think was okay, it's trees, I get it already. (This is not entirely my fault. I was raised by city folks who failed to instill in me a great appreciation of nature. In the same vein, it's also their fault that poor Miss Cake's ficus nearly died, because I honestly thought "ficus" was a generic term for "fake plastic tree," and didn't realize I had to water the thing.)

Well, at any rate, it was fine, and afterwards everyone got in their cars and drove away while I started walking slowly down the dirt path back towards the city. I felt very stupid walking alone while all the cars went past, but what could I do? Then a car pulled up and it was Nadia-- she went out of her way to give me a ride home (and to talk more about this roller skating thing she does), which I thought was terribly nice. Even if I only understood half of what she was saying.

Day 2: Well, that was quick.

Friday is my big day: one whole class. There was an eensy bit of chaos at the beginning, because the class (in the French sense, a classe is a group of students who follow the same program of study) was split between my colleague and me. The problem was, no one knew which group belonged to which teacher or which of the two classrooms they should report to. Since I only had five girls turn up, we all walked to the next building to Stéphane's group, where he and I arbitrarily divided them (he took the top half of the alphabet, I took the bottom) and that was that.

They were nice kids, but I'd been warned that they were not very motivated and would be quick to take advantage, so I was watching them pretty closely. At the end of class, they have five minutes to copy down notes from the board, and after that they're free to chat. Some teachers dismiss a few minutes early; most wait for the bell. One boy copied no notes, waited a few minutes, then stood up and walked towards the door. I put the smackdown on that, then capped it with the American teacher trick of making him wait until everyone else left class first before finally dismissing him. I love power.

Thus, at 8:55 my day was officially over, but I stuck around to discuss my progress with Cécile, do some planning, make some copies, that kind of thing. Then I jumped online to look at the bus schedule; there was a bus in eight minutes and nothing else for an hour, so my options were to dash towards the bus stop or get comfortable. I wanted a nap, so I went to get my coat but I ran into Stéphane. At this point, I had to make a judgment call: excuse myself and get the bus, or make an attempt at socializing.

A or B? Make your guess now. I'll wait.

All right, are you ready? The truth is... that I sacrificed my nap in order to stay and chat. Shocking, I know. You all know how I feel about naps. This should be a clear indication of my need for human company. (It might also have to do with the fact that Stéphane is young, male, and not unattractive.) It turned out to be a good/bad decision; a few minutes into our conversation, a band of English teachers from the vocational school came in and the next thing I knew French was flying all over the place, everybody was talking at once and I had no idea what the crap was going on. There was something about a nature show on TV, something about the cost of plasma televisions and their consumption of electricity, and something about the vocational kids listening to too much rap music and convincing themselves they are victims of society. And when I say "something about," I do not mean that I'm summarizing things for you; I mean this is a full transcript of everything I was able to grasp.

Then I walked home (because there was no bus for another 40 minutes) and took a nap. A long one. And it was fantastic.

As for tonight's agenda... well, I'll tell you about it later. Let's just say fingers crossed that I don't make a total fool of myself (or, fingers crossed that I do, because it makes for a more interesting story).