Top Ten Reasons Why I can Never be French.

I’ve never had the goal of completely assimilating into France. Nothing against them, I happen to think they do many things right, but I’m here to learn the language and appreciate the people, culture, and cheese (and I’m here because I didn’t have anything better to do and basically a seven-month vacation sounded good). I’ve very much enjoyed my time here so far and have been pleasantly surprised about many things. However, this sojourn also reinforces my suspicion that I’d never exactly feel or consider myself to “be” French and here’s why, David Letterman style:

1. Bises. OK, so I’m dealing with the kisses. I’ve gotten used to them and think it’s kind of cute and I don’t try to intercept them with a handshake anymore (though I still have my kids shake hands at the beginning of each class). I now expect and accept them and think it might even be a little strange to go back home and NOT get bised. But could I live without them? Most definitely.
2. I’m a registered Republican. But again, if anyone asks, I totally voted for Obama… or at least I let them assume I did.
3. I can never make it home from the bakery without tearing (literally) into my baguette. This is considered a bit of a faux-pas, to eat on the street outside of the sacred French ritual of the meal. Would be even worse if I just started gnawing on it; at least I break it off first.
4. I smile.
5. American television. I miss it and most on-line TV watching sites block international viewers. The King of Queens on YouTube and the shows that people have sent to me have been lifesavers. Special shout-outs to Drone for season five of The Hills and to mom for the DVR’d Project Runway! But popping a DVD into my laptop is just not the same as serendipitously catching an episode of The Golden Girls at midnight or an entire season of America’s Next Top Model on a Saturday.
6. I don’t like tiny, yippy dogs that the French carry around in their purses. They look like rats and I want to punt them.
7. I have naturally straight teeth (zing!). Actually, I haven’t met all that many French with bad teeth. Their healthcare is decent and I assume it includes dental. (Just realized how behind I am on my own professional teeth cleanings… might as well take advantage here!)
8. The French seem to have two extremes of thinking. In most situations they either respond with “c’est normal” or “ce n’est pas possible.” I tend to think things can exist in more categories than “normal/routine” or “impossible.” Because for Americans, NOTHING is impossible, right?
9. I don’t carry around a ruler… OK, this is probably one of the most hilarious things I’ve learned about the French. I first noticed it in my classes. The kids ALWAYS have a ruler… not for measuring, but for drawing lines. Even just to underline a one-word title, out come the rulers (when they aren’t using them as weapons or percussion instruments). A friend who works in a high school said her students whip them out for WORD SEARCHES. I’ve even heard that college-aged students can’t seem to take their notes without them. And GET THIS: while writing some prescriptions for a cold, my doctor pulled out his ruler to underline each medication… I about lost it.
10. I’m just too decidedly American. Plain and simple, no ex-patriot plans here, so like it not, I’m a-coming home in about 2 months. SEE YA!

Adventures #12 & #13: London & Lyon

So I’m being a bit lazy by combining these while also posting them kind of late, but I figure they can go together because I visited them one after the other and also because the city names have a little alliteration…

London

Hopping on a plane and meeting up with Caroline in London just sounded too fun and jet set to pass up! So glad she had the idea and included me in it. Though two-ish days proved to definitely not be enough to see and do everything, I think we did all right… we definitely SAW all we could even if we didn’t get the chance to necessarily DO it. There was a museum workers strike (guess the French aren’t the only Europeans good at striking) just on the day we wanted to do museums, which was a bummer because they looked pretty cool (as far as museums go) and were all free! But we saw the sights, from a bus AND from a boat: Big Ben (turns out, no so big), Westminster Abbey, Tower of London, Parliament, Tower Bridge, Shakespeare’s Globe, plus everything that an American would expect to see in London and thus delight in seeing: the double-decker buses, red telephone booths, palace guards with funny hats, black cabs, Top Shop (I missed out on Abbey Road though, whoops). See what I did manage to see here in my pictures.

However, after spending so many months surrounded by the French, London did not meet my hopeful expectation to bask in the capital of everything Anglophone. On my first tube ride (the London Underground whose branding you’ll definitely recognize, really genius for its consistency and versatility), I heard so many languages, including French (dammit) and all kinds of others for which I have no capacity to identify. Very international. And of the ones that did speak English, their accent kind of annoyed me… maybe I’m over the whole British-accents-are-awesome thing? At least I got a good fill of English-speaking television. Gilmore Girls, Friends, The Hills, but the icing had to be Ferris Bueller. London did definitely fulfill its stereotypes as far as weather goes. We got to experience the perfectly London-y clouds and rain.

I also found myself really loving the architecture and just walking around on the pavement (NOT sidewalk) and enjoying it. It’s kind of a “duh” moment, but I could really see how American cities like Boston, New York and even D.C. were influenced by “Old” England. The buildings actually varied, not like France’s one town, one look rule, and I like how they are prim and decorated, but not overly so. Usually, I evaluate cities I visit by whether or not I could or would live in them. For example, cities like Washington D.C., San Francisco and Boston all get “yeses,” whereas New York, Paris and Atlanta are more like “nos.” Obviously, two days are not enough to completely evaluate a city or its people, but London’s leaning towards a “yes.” I at least know I’d like to go back! Hopefully with someone else whose company is as lovely and enjoyable as Miss Caroline!

Lyon

I continued the SJA Class of 2005 Reunion by seeing Laura Rachal both before and after the London trip. She was so sweet to open up her apartment to not only me to catch my flight, but also three of my fellow Besançon assistants so we could tour Lyon, her current home. Her tour guiding skills and tips were fantastic and so above and beyond, if you read this, Laura, MERCI!

Lyon is either France’s second or third biggest city; they still seem to be arguing with Marseille about who gets the silver behind Paris (extra points for the timely Olympics reference?). But who cares, really? The buildings are so colorful! I know I’ve already complained about Besançon ’s monochromatic color scheme for awhile (or at least since November), but I never notice how much a difference it makes until I’m in a city with an actual color palette not involving 15 shades of gray. A small Lyon-Besançon connection? The Lumière Brothers, the inventors of movies, were born in my town and later made their cinematic success in Lyon. Another famous son of Besançon? Victor Hugo. So basically Besançon’s significance is birthing people who promptly left to make their successes elsewhere. Didn’t make it to the Lumière Brothers museum (not really my week for museums) but it worked out great that everything we did was free (except for eating and buying aviators at H&M). Mostly walking and sightseeing and searching for ice cream, all for which Lyon is a pretty good town. Including a National Tresure-esque walk through the traboules, passageways leftover from Lyon’s silk trading past. Pictures? Of course.

Other than the company, the food, and the colorful buildings, the best thing about Lyon was definitely the weather. I know the city and Laura Rachal didn’t actually bring the temperature up to a wonderful 15°C (about 60°F… basically perfect) or coax the sky into a gorgeously clear and perfect blue for most of the day, but I’ll always be very appreciative to them for it.

Adventure #11: Val d’Isère (SKIING!)

Even though it seems that Christmas vacation JUST happened (probably because it did) we had two weeks off in the middle of February for winter vacay. First on the agenda was seven days of skiing in the French Alps. I had NEVER skied before and I didn’t pick it up as quickly as I would have liked. I ended up taking six days of lessons and though I now feel comfortable on skis, I don’t exactly feel confident on them. For those of you familiar with skiing lingo I only skied greens and have progressed from snowplow into parallel, but I chicken out about going too fast to make parallel really work for me, but maybe with a bit more practice I can claim this as a new hobby? Either way, it was fun to try something active and new. In a marketing class with Dr. Karam at LSU we read a commencement speech (I so wish I could remember the speaker or at what college they spoke… it’s filed back in BR) that talked about the importance of being a “constant novice” and how to always be learning and living outside your comfort zone. I tried to remember that while I was falling through fences and struggling to take off my skis while perfect lines of 3 year olds were trailing past, like little ducklings behind their instructors.

My lessons were mostly in French but I totally lucked out because I was the only one in my class for four days. Pretty much got private lessons at a group rate, which was nice, since Val d’Isère is a bit expensive to begin with, mostly frequented by British holidaymakers. The weather worked in our favor, the mountains were beautiful, and the cold was manageable for the most part. Though one morning at the top of the mountain the ends of my braids were frozen white in the -20˚C weather (-4˚F… I know, right? COLD).

I went with three other assistants, one of whom found us the apartment and drove us down there (THANKS BEN!). It was a different sort of vacation, staying in one place, not feeling the pressure to have to see all these sights and museums and things, we could just hang out and goof off… fun times. Click here for visuals.

The Actual Job Thing.

I’m taking my first sick day today. This weekend I started getting a little sinusy… it’s been a long time coming but I want to make sure I’m healed for the winter break. Guess how much my prescriptions cost? 10 days of pills, 1 pack of effervescents, and a nasal spray. Easily over $50 back home, right? Well in France it’s 0.65€, that’s SIXTY-FIVE CENTS, in the US that’d be just under ONE DOLLAR. Merci, MGEN! I didn’t even need the medicine after that, the price alone made me feel instantly better! So now that I feel OK, I’ve started feeling guilty about missing school, so I’ll combat the feeling by writing about it and then watching some Project Runway and knitting.

So you’ve heard of Teach for America? Judging by my school you could say I’m Teaching for France. Ecole Élémentaire Champagne is in Planoise, a Besançon suburb mostly populated by low-income apartment buildings and not sporting the best reputation. At first I worried that this could be another challenge on top of the language barrier, but as it turns out kids are kids, no matter their backgrounds. Sure, there are some I could slap across the face with very little regret but others are just so sweet and adorable I just want to squeeze them. I try to remind myself that the nasty kids may not have the greatest home lives. Also, the area makes for a pretty diverse student body. You’ve got your regular French bien sûr, but there are also plenty whose families recently immigrated from North Africa or Eastern Europe. They provide bonus cultural experiences like learning how they celebrate their Muslim holidays or seeing how they dress differently.

In general, it’s not my ideal job (mostly because I have yet to figure out what is). I find it tiring and nerve-racking sometimes because I have so little experience but still have been given the responsibility of English language learning for an entire school. Not to mention getting lightheaded from singing “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” about 20 times a day. My best advice to any future assistants: pack a water bottle, stickers, and any book illustrated by Eric Carle.I find the younger classes are the most difficult. The first and second grade (CP & CE1) love songs and books and things and because of their level you can’t do much else. Games and worksheets are a little too above their heads. At the moment, Brown Bear, Brown Bear is going over HUGE. I made up motions to go along with each animal… I guess there’s a chance they could learn some colors and animals words, but if not, who cares? They LOVE it, especially Yellow Duck and Purple Cat. The older kids actually get interested in culture stuff and I’ve derailed a few classes to talk about the differences in American elementary schools, or Barrack Obama (by the way, if anyone in France asks, I totally voted for him). Otherwise, I just do the basics: colors, numbers, days of the week, months, ages, birthdays, etc. Throw in a little Thanksgiving, Mardi Gras, and “American Football” and you’ve got yourself lesson plans for a whole year! We also play a lot of bingo but I had to cut them off from Simon Says, they were getting way too addicted. Anything they can win a sticker from is a gold mine. Even the older kids in CM2 (10-11 years old) get serious over who gets a piece of my “autocollant” collection. It’s nice to have that easy of a power hold. Just wait until I bust out the fake dollars…