More Stories!

So, faced with a choice between leaving my nice cozy apartment to do useful things (buy contact solution, return books to library, get photos off camera and on CD) and staying here to blog, the evil with less motion involved wins. Although I'm promising myself I'll leave after this, because the books are due today and French libraries still believe in fines. With that, two stories:

In my "Body Stretch" class (light strength training, lots of crunches) there was more melodic hilarity: "I Like To Move It Move It" came on, of Madagascar fame. Then when I had just recovered from the visions of lemurs dancing around, "Barbie Girl" started playing. I was instantly transported to the TA gym, dancing self-consciously away in a ring of 8th-grade girls. Seriously, I couldn't make this stuff up. Anyway, after class I asked the instructor where she gets the music, and she offered to make CDs for me if I bring her blank ones, which is really nice of her. It also means that anybody near me will be subjected to dance remixes of terrible, terrible pop songs, so be glad most of you are at least a continent away.

On Thursday, I decided to play "Two Truths and a Lie" in one of my classes to practice the present perfect (I have been..., I have never done...). Everyone thinks of two things that are true about themselves and one thing that is a lie, and everyone else has to guess which is the lie. It's a fun game, and it worked really well - the kids liked being told they could lie. Mine were the following:

1. I have swum naked in public in broad daylight.
2. I have never smoked a cigarette.
3. I have never visited the Gros Horloge (the second-most-famous landmark in Rouen, right after the cathedral)

Most of the kids thought that the first one was a lie, two thought the second was, and three thought the third was. Do you know which one it is? Post guesses in the comments (but don't give it away by saying why you know) and we'll see how you stack up against the tiny Europeans! (I expect most of you to get it right - it's only hard for people who don't know me.)

Adorable Children, Oatmeal Cookies, Peanut Butter, and Aerobics

As I predicted, the advent of Internet in my apartment heralded the advent of Lisa-never-posts-on-her-blog-anymore-itis as well. I do apologize, and I will try to get better (as the novelty of Internet wears off more and more - really, one can only check Lifehacker once a day).

So, a few vignettes, in no particular order. (I like vignette postings because I don't have to actually organize my thoughts or think of transition sentences or anything. If only you could write papers this way.)

A few weeks ago, a fellow assistant named Ben told me that one of his teachers has a daughter in my school who doesn't get to see the English assistant, and that she would really like to. So I found out her name and class and asked her English teacher if I could come in at least once. The teacher was really excited for me to come, so last week I did the question-and-answer session yet again, for a class of 15-year-olds. They were adorable - really enthusiastic, and even the ones who weren't very good asked lots of questions. After class, the girl who had requested my coming in came up and said, in English, "Ben said you were really nice and it was true!" Unfortunately by the time the idiotic grin had disappeared from my face and I could once again formulate a coherent sentence, she had left the room, but hopefully next time I see her I'll be able to thank her properly. That made my week.

Last Friday, I decided to have a "Soirée Princess Bride" at my house, so I invited a bunch of assistant friends (it ended up being mostly Americans, with Ben, who's English, as our token European) over to watch The Princess Bride and eat oatmeal cookies and drink milk. All I did Friday was bake cookies, clean the house, tidy my room, and rearrange the living room furniture, and now I totally understand the Pre-Party Panic that grips my mother before parties. What if there's not enough food? What if there's not enough to drink? What if the cookies don't turn out? What if nobody has fun? What if they think the movie's stupid? I will never make fun of her again. I understand. Fortunately, everything came out beautifully, even the oatmeal cookies with their European substitutions (real brown sugar and vanilla extract are impossible to find in this country), and my friend Christine brought fresh cow's milk that she buys directly from the farmer and we all had milk and cookies. And muscat, which is a really sweet, really alcoholic wine that I've become addicted to, and after serving it at a few gatherings at my house I'm now known for it. You're supposed to have it as an apéritif, but we tend to drink it whenever the fancy takes us.

My craving for peanut butter, which has been steadily growing in intensity ever since Christmas break, got to the point of no return today and I decided to go on a hunt. A lot of stores sell Skippy, but it'll be a cold day in hell before I think of that as peanut butter. So I went to a new store, near the market where I go every Sunday. It's huge - a real supermarket - so I was very hopeful. First I found the Skippy, right next to the Nutella and all the jams, but I decided to look further. In my methodical, aisle-by-aisle search (I'm not very good at finding things in American grocery stores, let alone French ones) I found chips, lentils, red beans, chickpeas, cereal... Lugging my basket (French stores don't believe in shopping carts) I rounded another corner and found Nirvana: the international foods aisle. It started out with Great Britain, with a helpful Union Jack above the shelves: McVitie's, liquorice allsorts, lemon curd, marmalade, and tea. Then Great Britain sort of merged with the US, and there were Oreos, various salsa/queso substances, and... DR PEPPER. Now, I rarely drink soda, but there in the aisle of the Intermarché it was a sight for sore eyes. I love Dr Pepper. So I picked myself up a can (99 centimes) and scanned the shelves again for peanut butter. There it was... in the British section? It was a brand I didn't know, but it had sugar rather than corn syrup like Skippy, so I figured I'd try something new. I continued down the aisle to the "Asia" section, where China, Japan, India, and various other generically-Eastern cuisines sat side-by-side, and sometimes mixed-up, since clearly they're mostly the same - no distinct cultures or languages or anything (French people have a good deal more unconscious racism than Americans do). I did find some curry powder that looked nice, though. Then it was time to lug everything back home and make myself a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich to eat with my Dr Pepper. Nothing has ever tasted so good.

Finally, a brief gym incident: during classes the instructor plays a constant high-speed mix of techno remixes of pop songs, a lot of which are in English and very familiar to me. Sometimes this helps, like when I can't do another crunch and "Shut Up and Drive" comes on, and sometimes it totally throws me off, like when I'm trying to remember the step routine and "I Kissed a Girl" comes on and I am compelled to sing along and then I fall off the step. Not so much with the multi-tasking. Today, during cardio dance (basically we just prance around, but I do break a sweat and it's fun) we were going over a particularly difficult skippy bit and an extremely-sped-up version of "Truly Madly Deeply", by Savage Garden, came on. Savage Garden was one of my very first CDs, so in addition to a burst of nostalgia for 7th grade, I had to mouth the words, and therefore messed up. Then I got back on track and managed to mostly ignore the song for a while. Then a new song came on, and it sounded incredibly familiar but I couldn't place it, so while I was trying to figure it out I just flailed about anyhow, occasionally on the beat, to the great amusement of all the French girls in the class, I'm sure. Finally some of the words came through: "I Touch Myself", by the Divinyls. Oh yes. At that point I pretty much went all out with the mouthing along, because why not?

And there you have it: snippets of my wonderful life. I'm on vacation next week, and the week after (woo!) so I'm going to Lyon for a few days, then Amsterdam for 6 days. If anyone has recommendations for either city, let me know!

That 10-year-old girl is wearing high heels and skinny jeans to school…

...but it's okay, because it's France.

Grève Générale

Living in France requires learning very quickly which strikes you can ignore and which you can’t. Every week, some union or other calls for a strike; there are posters stuck up on buildings and flyers handed out at the market but nothing interferes with my life at all. So I’d gotten out of the habit of actually reading any of the posters, since the dates on them would usually come and go without the slightest change to my daily routine.

Well, that came to a stop this morning, when our doorbell rang while I was in the shower, getting ready for my 10 am class. A friend of Olesya’s, a student at the lycée, came up to the apartment and explained that the students had blocked the door of the school and no one could get in, so no classes today! But before giving in too much to that old snow-day feeling (there is nothing quite like it in the world) I called my teacher to make sure. “Oh no, it’s not completely closed! You can sneak in the back way – just take Rue des Minimes instead.” Grumble grumble grumble. I told her cheerfully that of course I would be right over. (Note to self: when the signs say "Grève Générale", pay attention - that means the buses don't run either, and even our notoriously lazy and strike-averse school gets into it.)

As soon as I walked out my door (a good 7-minute walk from the school) I could hear the shouting. Part of me wanted to go to the front door of the school, just to see a real French strike, but the sensible part of me that didn’t want to get étripée (gutted) told me just to head up Rue des Minimes. Which I did, to find an older man and a few students, one of whom was mine, standing outside a locked door. “Can we get in this way?” I inquired in French, thus blowing my cover for the student who was there (hey, desperate times, desperate measures). “Yes, someone’s going to come open up for us.” Except that when the door did open, the older man entered and they shut the door in our faces. “But… but… I’m a teacher! I swear! I know I look 18 but really I’m 22 and I’m a teacher!” A few minutes later the door reopened to let someone out, whereupon they let the rest of us in. I still don’t understand, but hey, ours not to reason why, ours but to sigh and say “Welcome to France”.

I made my way to the photocopy room, where the shouting was even louder since it’s near the front entrance. I peered out the window to see a fairly large crowd of students milling about and shouting. There was no organization whatsoever, and the only coherent slogan I heard was “Tous ensemble” (all together). Some of the students were banging on the metal scaffolding near the entrance, just because it made a huge racket with very little point or purpose. So I printed out my lesson plan and went calmly off to the staff room, where everything was just as normal. Michèle and I headed off to class, where there were no students to be found. “Little buggers!” she said. “I saw some of them outside!” Five minutes later, there were still no students to be found, so we decided to head back to the staff room and have coffee. I asked why students were striking – I mean, it’s not like they get paid, or need health insurance, or anything – and the teachers informed me that they want more class hours.



More time spent in school. They’re striking because they want to spend more time (and they already spend 40 hours a week) at school.



Really, the French are beyond comprehension. I love them dearly, but the reasoning behind their whims escapes me, and always will.

I had two more classes, one where half the class showed up (we watched part of Obama’s Inauguration speech – I’m going to have it learned by heart if this continues) and one where none of my three students came, so I used the time to write this blog entry. I also got suckered into coming in on Saturday to make up the class that nobody came to today, so now I have to remember to wake up Saturday morning, after an evening at Emilia’s house where we may or may not play a new drinking game wherein every sentence you utter must contain at least one word in French and one in English. I promise to try to remember the best Franglais to report back here; I have a feeling it’s gonna be good.

Excuses, excuses

So there are a bunch of French grammar things that I've had trouble with for quite some time. (Translating that sentence, for one--the whole idea of "to have done/been doing something for a certain amount of time" is expressed completely differently in French. They use the present, even though the thing you've been doing started in the past. Wicked confusing.) I always just assumed that they were particularly tricky bits of grammar that I learned once, but not in all their intricacy, so I didn't have a perfect grasp of the details, and I've been asking various long-suffering French people for mini-lessons when I make an error in conversation. Well, I just discovered that I never really properly formally learned all these little grammatical joys, and it all goes back to the French department at my university totally screwing me over freshman year by forcing me to take a French class that was too easy, then making me skip a class so I wouldn't be bored two semesters in a row. In that class that I skipped, one learns the first half of "La grammaire à l'œuvre", a wonderful book whose second half I know practically by heart. I brought the book back to France after vacation, thinking I could use a brush-up, and lo and behold, every single construction I'm a bit shaky on is in the first half. That's my excuse, anyway, and I'm sticking to it. Now, off to study when the past participle agrees with the direct object!

One more sign (tout frais!)

• You say, as I just barely said, "They're called flats because they don't have any talons." ("talon" meaning "heel" in French) Yeah, that one made the English teachers I was talking to laugh for a good five minutes.
  

Signs you've been in France too long:

• You've developed an inability to complete even the shortest sentence, in French or in English, without at least two, and depressingly often all, of the following words: bah, quoi, or euh. (Bah oui! C'est la France, quoi.) 
• Paying 4€ per load for laundry seems quite reasonable.
• Life without bakeries every 10 meters is not only meaningless but impossible.
• These sentences make perfect sense and are perfectly grammatical: "I have a lot of envy to see that movie!"  "I have horror of students who chat during the entire class."  "I have du mal speaking English now."
• You've started to add up your purchases in your head in a store so you can give exact change at the till.
• You say "Chut!" instead of "Shhhh!" even when you're speaking English.

More to come, as I think of them...