Partner in Crime, and Other Updates

Oh dearie me so much to catch up on!

First, and most exciting, Franglophone Fou (well, he's really more of an anglophone at the moment, but that's going to change rapidly) is coming to join me in the joyous insanity of being an English assistant in France! Franglophone Fou, aka Logan, managed to nab the last English assistant spot in the region, in Le Havre. It's less than an hour away from Rouen by train, and he has free housing there; we both got really really lucky. So I've spent the last few weeks translating oodles of e-mails from French to English and English to French, summarizing visa requirements, and generally smoothing the path for him, since I've done it all twice now and I speak French. The translating has been really fun - it's pretty straightforward stuff, but it's still satisfying when a certain phrase clicks just right in one of the languages.

Second, my chest x-ray and medical visit both went swimmingly (this time it was a woman who didn't pull up my shirt and didn't lecture me about having scoliosis, so definitely an improvement from last year) except that they didn't have the little sticker to put in my passport, so I have to go back to collect that tomorrow. This year, instead of having to go to the oh-so-intimidating Préfecture to get our titres de séjour, they've streamlined the process and all we need is the sticker! So as of tomorrow I will be all set with the immigration office, and the only paperwork I'll have left will be for Sécurité Sociale.

Third, we have Internet now! Well, we've actually had it for about a week and a half, which may or may not be why there have been no blog posts for a while... I am a very easily distractible person, and part of me (related to the part that still thinks I'll eventually read every book in the world) likes to catch up daily on every single web page I read regularly. This, obviously, poses a problem, but it's getting better.

Fourth, I've started teaching for real, and this year I got the idea (from one of our training days) to say that my classroom is a little tiny part of the USA, so when the students walk in, they speak English and everybody's happy! It worked the first few classes, so we shall see how it goes as they become more comfortable with me and less intimidated, and therefore chat more. The students are much the same as last year - some are amazingly motivated and adorable, and some quite simply hate English (one boy actually said, when the teacher asked if he had heard where I come from in the US, "Non, mais on s'en fout, quoi" (No, I didn't, but I don't give a shit anyway). What a lovely way to start class!). I did run into two of my best students from last year out and about in Rouen; both of them approached me, remembered my name, and chatted for a bit in English! It's those students that make it all worthwhile.

Fifth, I finally cleaned up my room, so I can now share before and after photos. The night I arrived:



I know, I know, the horror, the horror. It didn't stay like that for long, but then I just shoved everything into my closet or onto my shelves or my desk, and things stayed there for waaaaaaaaay longer than I'd like to admit. But then life got much prettier when I finally just girded my loins and dealt with it, with these happy results:



Hooray for clean rooms! Living here will (I fervently hope) make it easier for me to get rid of things back home that I haven't used in ages, because I can live quite happily on everything I have here. Except I do miss my sewing machine... and my lap desk... and my comforter cover... Okay, I will never be a minimalist, and I'm at peace with that.

Sixth and finally, I went on my biggest market trip so far this year, having a few recipes in mind. First, a roasted vegetable and goat cheese sandwich for lunch, which turned out beautifully if I do say so myself:


I cut part of an onion and half a zucchini into slabs, drizzled them with olive oil, and chucked them into the oven for a bit (a red pepper joined them later). Then I took my plain fresh goat cheese (not the kind with a rind) and added lemon zest, oregano, and thyme. Put that all together, along with some salad greens, on good fresh bread and you have happiness in the palm of (or in this case, all over) your hand. Yumyumyum.

I also bought persimmons, which my Russian roommate from last year introduced me to. The nice man at the stall asked me when I wanted to eat them and picked out a nice range of ripeness so they won't all go bad at once, a service that is very common at the market and incredibly useful. One looked like it was about to burst from juicy sweetness, so I ate that one today and it was very good. Once you get your mind wrapped around eating something that looks like a tomato but tastes sweeter than any other fruit I know of, persimmons are delicious.

On the way home, I screwed my courage to the sticking point and went into the poissonnerie whose oysters and mussels and clams always look so good and yet so scary. I tend to become a vegetarian when I cook for myself, only because cooking meat frightens me deeply, so I'm trying to conquer that fear. My recipe is for bronzed sea bass with lemon-shallot butter (from The Pioneer Woman, who is hilarious and wonderful and has really good recipes). I couldn't find "sea bass" in my online dictionary, but the Pioneer Woman, always helpful, said that halibut or salmon would work too. Armed with the French translations of those varieties (flétan and saumon, for those of you who care), I stepped into the briny world of lobsters, scallops, and more whole fish staring at me than I've ever seen in one place. There were even flounder! Being all flat! The only fish they had available as a filet was something called "cabillaud", but it was white and looked innocuous enough, so I bought a small chunk and headed home, my reusable pink shopping bag full to bursting with fresh delectables. After making my delicious delicious sandwich, I decided to look up what kind of fish I'd actually bought. "Cabillaud", I typed into my trusty French-English dictionary. "Cod", it told me. Oh. Good to know. Here's hoping cod works with my recipe...

Wow, this is kind of turning into a cooking blog. Sorry about that. I just really enjoy having enough time to plan meals and shop for them at the market - I feel all grown-up and French!

Comment dit-on "jury-rig" en français?

I have arrived! Got here with absolutely no problems, despite the complexity of my means of transport (bus, plane, plane, bus, walk through Paris with gigantic bags, train, car) and the escalator at the Rouen train station was working! (In the past, the likelihood of the escalator’s working was inversely proportional to the size of my bags.) Anne, my professeur référent, invited my American flatmate Lauryn and me to dinner, which was lovely, and then I went back to my apartment and slept for 12 hours.

Speaking of the apartment… it’s just downstairs from the one last year, and since it’s not right under the roof, it’s much bigger and nicer (carpeted bedrooms!). It’s still free, and we have another American flatmate, Megan. So it’s all USA, all the time, instead of the mini UN last time.

Friday was the welcome day for all the assistants, and this year 11 of us renewed, which is an unprecedented number (thank you stock market crash) so they read our names to the whole auditorium! After hearing about all the paperwork, which was just as confusing the second time around, a few of us went out for drinks and I had my first demi-pêche in months. Oh, how I have missed demi-pêches… After that, I went back home and fixed my curtains so they don’t drag on the ground, and now my room looks mildly more civilized, at least.

Saturday, Lauryn and I tried to start the phone/Internet process, but will have to wait for some paperwork. It shouldn’t take as long this year, but I’m still betting it’ll be November before we get us some sweet Internet love. Also, the McDonald’s no longer has wifi, due to construction, and my old favorite Internet café has doubled its prices, so until I figure out a new routine, don’t count on regular anything. Hooray France!

After the phone disappointment, our other flatmate, Megan, called to invite us to lunch with her teacher, the teacher’s boyfriend, the teacher’s two sisters, and assorted other teachers and significant others. We went to a lovely little restaurant called Le bistroquet, where I had a salade de mer. It had lettuce, tomatoes, smoked herring, smoked salmon, and this really delicious seaweed that wasn’t too briny. The three of us tried to keep up with the rapid, slangy French conversation, but really only talked when one of the Frenchies took pity on us and asked us a direct question. There were lots of grammar jokes, so my little nerdy self felt right at home.

Saturday night, I finally decided to tackle the closet problem: no rod (seriously, French people care so much about their clothes that I fail to understand why NONE OF MY CLOSETS EVER HAVE RODS IN THEM). I had bought some cheap rods that were meant for curtains (all I could find, in three different stores), some fishing line, and some screws, and my closet already has adjustable shelves, so I had a plan. First, though I had to take the sliding doors off the closet to be able to get at everything. No problem, right? I’ll just yank. Except that they weighed a ton, and I had to figure out the mechanism so I’d be able to put them back on. So I pushed and pulled and slid and finally got one out, staggered across my room with it to put it out of the way, and turned my attention to the other one. Same process, except this time something fell off the top. And the bottom. Uh-oh. By careful inspection of the other side of the door, I managed to shove everything back into place, but the bottom piece (the part with the wheel that rolls along the track – rather essential to a sliding door’s function) kept falling out. Well, I’ll deal with that later, I thought, and turned back to the closet to tackle the straightforward task of getting the shelves out. They were just resting on three brackets, the brackets hooked onto vertical tracks to allow adjustment, so I simply lift the shelves out, pop out the brackets, and replace the brackets and shelves where I want them, right? Well, no. Nothing is ever that easy in France. First, the shelves were particle board, and I swear each one weighed as much as a small cow. Second, the shelves were cut to the full width of the closet, despite the slight jamb on one side, so much angling and tipping and near-dropping of shelves and grunting was required. Finally I got them out, set them aside, and adjusted the brackets. My plan was to put one shelf as low as it would go, then attach the rods to the bottom of the other and place it high enough above the first to be able to hang clothes. Next problem: how to attach the rods. Here is where the title of the post really starts to mean something; I present to you my wardrobe.

The magic floating closet rod! Oh wait, the only magic here is the magic of modern synthetics.

Yes, those are screws with nylon fishing line tied in (bowline) knots around them and threaded through the rods. I’m officially changing my name to MacGyver tomorrow. If this doesn’t work, I have other plans, but everything has stayed up for over 24 hours now, and everything that needs to hang is hung, so I’m calling this project good.

Except wait… weren’t there doors on the closet? Oh right, there they are, patiently leaning against the wall waiting for me to restore them to their rightful place. I taped up the mechanism on the bottom that kept falling down, which worked a treat, and cajoled/shoved/begged/pushed the doors back into place. And almost tipped over backwards doing so, as they’re floor-to-ceiling doors and we have 8-foot ceilings. Then I untaped the doohickey and lo and behold they slid! French closets 0, Lisa 2 (see last year’s entry).

Sunday was market day, as always, so I took my flatmates and off we went. Everything is just as I remember, down to the locations of the stalls and the fresh chèvre with cracked pepper on top (France, I love you so much). I got zucchinis and onions and chèvre and a demi-baguette and cider-apple bread and will now proceed to eat myself silly. Oh, how I have missed France.

And the insanity continues...

I'm going back! To Rouen! To my same school! To my same free apartment! Ouaaaaaaiiiiiiiiis !

Will the second year of teaching mostly ungrateful French 15-year-olds English grammar and vocabulary be as entertaining as the last? Will I get Internet in less than 3 months this time? Will I overstuff myself on cheese and baguettes and pains aux raisins? (Okay, I already know the answer to that one.) Will I become completely unable to speak English? Will I actually come back permanently to the US and get a real job afterwards? Stay tuned to find out!

Things I Love About France, or PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME LEAVE I WON'T GO I WON'T GO I WON'T GO

I've got two days of nearly complete unexpected free time, because my regular teachers on Mondays and Tuesdays are in the US with a group of students ("We can't smoke in the US? What do you mean? And they don't do bisous? What kind of godforsaken place are they taking us to?") and my favorite teacher, the one I was going to do a lot of make-up classes with, is sick. So today I decided to get a sandwich and sit out by the Seine for a bit to enjoy the springtime weather. And now, while the so-American-it-hurts oatmeal-raisin cookies I'm making for a Hispano-Franco-Germano-American dinner party tonight cool, I'll type up some of the things that have made me happy lately.

• Old men playing pétanque in the gardens of the Hôtel de Ville every sunny afternoon; you can tell they've been coming to the same place at the same time with the same friends and the same beer for decades, and will continue until either their last breath or until they can't properly throw the pétanque ball, whichever comes first.
• Young men playing pétanque in the gardens of the Hôtel de Ville every sunny afternoon who will grow up to become the old men; let the circle be unbroken.
• The trip-trap, trip-trap of high heels clicking on the street, setting up a unique French-city rhythm (extra points if the street is cobblestone and the women remain unfazed).
• French couples cuddling in parks, by the Seine, on benches, because they're young and French and in love and really, does it offend anyone all that much?
• Chèvre paninis eaten by the Seine on a sunny day, washed down not with a Coke, but with a Coca (I swear, it tastes different if you call it a Coca).
• Inventing French words that make enough sense to make French people laugh, like "Let me combobulate myself" in English. Most recently, I was following a teacher "louchement" - sketchily, creepily - and we laughed for a good five minutes. Louchement should totally be a word.
• The fact that one of my French friends has a scar on his forehead from a pétanque ball that bounced wrong when he was 8. Seriously. How much more French can you get?
• Trees! Blossoming! Everywhere! Forsythia, magnolia, and a bunch of others I can't identify so I just call them purty.
• Awesome European friends, some of whom are close enough that I now have couches to crash on in France, Germany, England, Spain, and Italy, among others.

Fête Internationale !

So, I just got back from an international party at the Italian, Spanish, German, Chinese, and Columbian girls' apartment (où je me suis un tout petit peu bourrée la gueule, mais bon c'est une histoire pour un autre jour, ou pour jamais) where there were two Italians, two Spaniards, two Germans, two Chinese girls, one Belgian, one English guy, five Mexicans, and me. And as I was walking home, I realized that I can't remember the last time I spoke to a truly monolingual person. Sure, there are people here whose second language isn't very good, but even those are few and far between. And people who speak three languages nearly fluently are actually quite common. It's just such a change from the US, where speaking even a few words of another language is so rare.

And I sense that this could go on, but really my half-drunk musings are only interesting to me, so I'm cutting myself off. Only three more weeks of teaching, and only 7 more weeks in France! They'll have to drag me away kicking and screaming - I don't want to leave. Especially now that I've started to make French friends.

Vampires!

They attacked me! Oh no!





And by "vampires" I of course mean the lovely people at the Etablissement français du sang (French Blood Organization), and by "attacked" I mean that I went there voluntarily to give blood. I would like to say that it's because I'm selfless and a good person and all that, but I think really I was just curious about what kinds of snacks they would serve afterwards (I was not disappointed).

I had called up before vacation to find out if I could still donate, being a foreigner and all, and the woman barely listened to me before asking if I wanted to come in and donate that day. I couldn't then, but I set up an appointment for today. So on Monday night I made myself a hamburger - I even found Worcestershire sauce! - and last night I had lentils, in an attempt to get my hematocrit up to normal-people levels (although in France it only has to be 12 for women, and I think in the US it has to be 12.6). Then I looked up the questionnaire online to make sure I knew what they'd be asking me (you'd think that the word for malaria would be "malarie", but no, it's "paludisme"), drank my weight in water, and set off for the collection center.

They of course had no record of me in their system, so everyone thought I was a first-time donor, but luckily I had my American Red Cross donor card, so I showed them that and they were reassured that I wasn't going to faint on them or anything. The doctor who did the mini-physical loves English, so he was really excited to see me and conducted most of the exam in really good English, aside from a few medical terms he didn't know. He also asked if he could have my e-mail so he could practice his English with me, so I gave it to him and we'll see if he follows up. My hematocrit was 12.4, so that was good, and everything else was fine. On to the ickiest part!

All the women working in the blood-drawing area were wearing white coats with skirts, tights, and boots. Welcome to France. The procedure was mostly the same, except that to my great delight they used alcohol instead of iodine to clean my arm, so I don't have a gigantic sticky brown stain to deal with. Also, they didn't bother to cover the needle with a gauze pad - apparently the French have a stronger constitution than we weak Americans and can stand to look at a needle poking into their arm. I even watched as it went in, so I felt quite brave. I was also given water to drink while donating, which I swear helps it go faster, and we had chairs instead of those stupid bed-like things the Red Cross is now using in the US that make me get a wicked head rush when I'm finished. So the donation went without a hitch, they filled all their little sample tubes, and I got to go through the door marked "Restauration".

There was a whole little kitchen, with a stove and microwave and everything, and the nice woman working there asked what I would like to drink - they had hot drinks, fruit juice, iced tea, mineral water, and even Coke (although I don't know about the wisdom of serving a diuretic to people who've just lost a pint of fluid). So I got pineapple juice, and then she asked if I wanted some apple tart with it. Which of course I did. So she brings all this out on a little tray, with real dishes, and then I notice the little basket of Petits Ecoliers and madeleines and apricot-filled cookies sitting on the table right next to the basket of individually-wrapped portions of Président cheese and butter. The apple tart was delicious, as were the two other kinds of cookies I tried. France definitely wins in the snack department.

Then it was back to the bus and back home to eat more lentils and drink my weight in water again. This is the best I've ever felt after a donation, and I don't know if it was just because I really paid attention to drinking water, or because I could sit up during it (seriously, Red Cross, get a clue), or because of the apple tart, but I'm seriously considering going back in two months, right before I leave, because why not? Maybe they'll have something chocolate next time...

Whirlwind Tour

Okay, so I'm back from Lyon safe and sound (and probably about eight pounds fatter - we ate a truly inconceivable amount of food). And I would post about it now, except that I'm leaving for AMSTERDAM in about 6 hours. Woo! There will be posts about Lyonnais food and museums and Roman ruins (never let three girls loose on sparsely-fenced ruins with cameras) later, but now I'm going to go unpack and repack and try to remember my towel this time.