Oh So Pretty

Follow-up to my last post about forward European men…

I recently taught a group of eighteen secondes (who would be sophomores in the US system) one of my favorite lessons, where we go over all of the vocab for how to describe the location of things in a picture (at the top, in the middle, on the right, in the foreground, above, below, etc) and then they break up into groups and describe their picture to another team, who then does their best to draw the picture without having seen it.  It’s always spirited and students resort to French to say the equivalent of things like, “Are you stupid or what?  I said a small dog!” or “That doesn’t look anything what I’m describing.  You’re a terrible artist.”  Taken out of context, the phrases that come out seem crazy… but I assure you that in the heat of the moment, it seems like a big freakin’ deal that the other team drew the giraffe facing the right instead of the left.  I intervene as quickly as possible to remind them that we’re describing things “In English! In English!” so that it doesn’t get too out of control.  One side note: I wish I had more lessons/activities like this, as it seems like they’re more likely remember vocab if they are able to use the words in some sort of activity.  A similarly successful lesson has been to introduce common phrases used when you’re talking on the telephone and then having students write their own conversations to act out.  I’ve had groups present everything from practical conversations where they make a reservation at a restaurant and ask questions about “the chef’s special” to ridiculous conversations between spies planning the details for Sarkozy’s assassination…

But anyway, where was I?  Oh yes.  Secondes.  After all of this fun and excitement, the bell rang and students filed out of class.  As usual, I was met with a flurry of “Goodbye miss!” and “Have a good day, miss!” exclamations as they ran out the door.  The last student was taking his time putting all of his school supplies back in his backpack and when everyone else had left, he looked up at me and said, “You’re so pretty.”  I smiled and said thanks and he walked out, clearly pleased that he’d been able to get his point across.  With some of my BTS classes, I might worry a little bit more about this crossing the line, but in this instance it was just so innocent and cute.  He clearly didn’t expect any response on my end, but merely wanted to tell me what was on his mind.  Needless to say, I felt like Maria from West Side Story for the rest of the day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7BQRGXFLJs

Je peux t'appeler?

I was walking home from school a couple of days ago and there was a car in a driveway on the same side of the street.  Nothing new… he was about to turn right and there was a gap in traffic, so I waited for a minute for him to turn.  50m further down the road I saw the same car on the opposite side of the road, pulled off in a little parking area.  He was trying to catch my eye and I figured that he was offering to give me a lift so I gave the universal “no-thank-you-head-shake” and kept walking ahead.  I thought that was that, but then he pulled out into traffic and pulled off the road AGAIN, this time on the same side of the road where I was walking so I had to go right by the car.  This time no choice but to confront him.  Before he could start to propose n’importe quoi, I stammered out a “Je suis presque arrivée, merci!” (I’m almost there, thanks!).  The rest of the conversation went down like this:

Man: “T’es italienne?”  (You’re Italian?) Shoot.  There goes my confidence in my French :p

Me : « Non, en fait, je suis americaine » (Nope, I’m American)

Man : « Je peux t’appeler ? » (Can I call you sometime ?)

Hesitation on my part… what do I say?!

Man: “ You are with a boy?” [sic]

Me: “Oui! Bon après-midi!” (Yes! Have a good afternoon !)

Little white lie never hurt anybody, right?  After that, I walked briskly away and walked past my driveway, waiting to turn until he had driven away and was around the corner where he Now judging from his accent, French wasn’t his first language either… but he clearly lives/works here, given his confidence with the language and the fact that he was driving a car.  I just keep trying to put myself in my place and figure out what kind of backwards thinking would make you think that kind of behavior is semi-normal.  It’s not the same since I’m a girl, but I think that if any of my guy friends are driving on a country highway in the states and see someone walking on the side of the street, they’re highly unlikely to pull over and ask if she want a ride.  And even less likely to pull over three times, especially after the “no thanks” head shake.  And to then ask if it’s ok to call sometime?!

Yeah, no chance I’m ever gonna understand this kind of behavior.  Can’t say I wasn’t warned that European men would be forward!  

Mont Ventoux... quand il porte pas son chapeau!

Le Mont Ventoux

Mont Ventoux is the name of the mountain located near where I live, and is known for its participation in the Tour de France during the summer.  It’s right at the very end of the Alps- you can see where they go from there!  Unfortunately, they close the very top during the ‘winter’ (for you Wisconsinites, winter here is nothing like what we’re used to… zero snow, zero ice, lack of cold… at the base of the mountain anyway) due to snow and ice at the top of the mountain.  Usually it re-opens in mmid-April, and I’m hoping to make it to the top before I leave France!  My French petit ami, Michel, (who is 70 and already married and hence not actually my boyfriend) decided to take me up just as far as we could go, and even tried to illegally open up the gate so that we could continue to the top since it looked like the road was clear, but wasn’t successful.  Isn’t it gorgeous?!  One really cute saying is that when there are clouds and you can’t see the top of the mountain, the locals say that Mont Ventoux is “wearing its hat” (il porte son chapeau) :)  

Me at the 'top'- first snowball in France :)

Michel trying to jimmy the gate for me

ABCs... Association France-Etats Unis, Berlingots, and Chez Serge!

You know how in middle school the popular kid got to invite all of his/her friends to the coolest birthday party ever?  You know how awesome of a feeling that is?  Me neither ;) haha Ok but seriously, let me give you a little bit of background here.  My host family is part of the France-Etats Unis Association, which normally does events with students at the IAU (Institutes for American Universities) in Avignon.  However, the Avignon center has had low enrollment in the past several years and just recently closed permanently.  No American students at the IAU meant that the association had to recruit Americans from elsewhere… and since I was handy, they turned to me and let me invite other American friends (and Spanish friends who live in Carpentras!)  :)  Hannah and Brooke and Becca all came up from Marseille and Caitlin and Laura took the bus from Orange, and Maria met us at the bus stop. 

We started off the day with a trip to Confiserie du Mont Ventoux, where one of the nicest candymakers ever showed us how they make the traditional candy of Carpentras, the berlingot.  The candy is made of mostly sugar, which is heated up to something ridiculous like 400 degrees Celsius in a big stir-fry pan.  When it’s hot enough, it’s poured onto a metal table, where the color and flavor is added.  The traditional flavor is mint, but many other fruity flavors exist too.   The material at this point was how I imagine plasma might be… the man poured the liquid onto the table, where it became solid enough to fold and pick up, but it was still so hot that once it had been set back down on the table, it flowed like a liquid.  Crazy!  Once it had been worked enough to be sufficiently cooled, he took a small ball and went over to a hook, where he rapidly pulled the candy using a hook.  It’s difficult to describe, but it was almost like really flexible twizzlers.  Treating the material like rope and working it quickly like this turned it white!  He then took the small ball of white material back to the table and snaked it over the rest of the sugary solution, making the stripes which identify the berlingot.  One all of the stripes had been added, the whole ball went into a machine, which pulled the candy and cut it, finalizing the process! 

1. Pouring out the liquid

2. Working the... liquid?

3. Working it til white

4. Adding the stripes

5. One BIG berlingot

6. Feed it in the machine...

Mmm- tasty!  This one's mint :)

After our candy-making (and eating!) experience, we headed to Chez Serge, where we ate a delicious lunch.  All of this was to celebrate the signing of the first treaty between the United States and France, way back on February 6 of 1776.  Merci d’être venus!

The crew in front of Chez Serge!

Raindrops on Bridges and White Roman Ruins...

Santons and Guinness and Bright Afternoons… these are a few my favorite things! 

Not necessarily in that order :)

Arles is a city in southern France not too far from where I live (I mentioned in a post this fall that the soccer team in this area is Arles-Avignon) and is famous for several things: its Roman architecture, its traditional ‘style,’ and as I found out from a Wikipedia search, it’s also where Van Gogh painted some of his most famous paintings, including two of my favorites: the Yellow Room and the Night Café. 

Some of the Roman structures remaining include an ampitheater and the Alyscamps:

Roman ampitheater

Alyscamps

Joelle and Steve and I took Caitlin and Laura to explore, and it just so happened that there was also a big santons exhibit in the Cloitre.  Here are some of my favorite displays! 

Tarascon castle

We headed from there to Beaucaire and Tarascon.  Beaucaire had an enormous statue of a bull and a sweet marina to greet us- we took turns picking out which boat we’d like to own in the future.  From atop the hill in Beaucaire, we were able to see the Tarascon castle- pretty neah, huh?  We also found a Drac in the town square, but my camera wasn’t the one we took a picture with, so I’ll add that when I can steal it from someone else.  Both Tarascon and Beaucaire have their own mythical beasts, which remind me a little bit of the hodag in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. 

Tarascon Tarasque

Beaucaire Drac

Rhinelander Hodag

That takes care of the white Roman ruins, santons, and bright afternoon part… Raindrops on bridges and Guinness took place in Toulouse the following weekend.

French and Occitan

Dino :)

After a somewhat bittersweet goodbye to the IAU (Institute of American Universities- a school in Avignon where American students studied French) as it closed, I headed off to meet Caitlin, Laura, and Gavin in Toulouse.  Toulouse is in southwestern France, and like Provence, speaks a language in addition to French called Occitan.  The city’s called La Ville Rose (The Pink City) but unfortunately, due to the weather conditions, it was more like the Gray City for us.  However, I still really enjoyed our time there!  I’m including several of our pictures below :)  Caitlin and I checked out a Natural History Museum, which was really sweet and even had DINOSAURS!!  Love it.  We also hit up an art museum and took advantage of the opportunity to take some fun pics ;)  One of our other highlights was our night out at an Irish Bar, where highlights included but were not limited to Guinness pints, Heineken pictures, and glowstick glasses!  Caitlin and I went exploring early on the morning that we left and also found a cool little park over by the University, which is the second-largest in France. 

Au revoir from Toulouse!

More to come as I catch up on the fun! xoxo

Life as an Assistante

I seem to write a lot of my posts about my life in France outside of the Jean-Henri Fabre campus, but in theory, teaching is the reason that I live here… so as I’m getting ready to head back to teaching after a 3 ½ week vacation, I’ve decided that it’d be a good idea to let you know some of my current thoughts about being a Teaching Assistant.  To boil things down, I have four main observations:

1) I never really know what my day is going to be like when I leave in the morning.

My schedule has been “set” since the start of November, but I’m fairly certain that I can count on a single hand, actually make that a single finger, (and that might not even be true…) the number of times that my four-week rotation has ended up being the same in real life as it is on paper.  I’ve been told not to come to class for reasons including strikes, illness, exams, field trips, and gym class, just to name a few.  It’s also not just that classes are cancelled, but that hours where I alternate on “even” and “odd” weeks (or in my most hectic hour, “even” and “odd A” and “odd B”, meaning that I’m with even, odd A, even, odd B, even odd A, etc which has resulted in one class that I met for the SECOND time on February 17) regularly will flipflop based on the needs of the teachers for the respective classes, meaning that I sometimes plan to work with one class but am told somewhere between 2 hours and 2 minutes in advance that I’ll be working with the other class.  In other situations, I do end up working with the class that I had planned to work with, but am given 2 students in 10-minute intervals instead of 12 students in 30-minute intervals or the opposite of 8 students for the entire hour rather than individual students in 15-minute intervals, which as I’m sure you can imagine, greatly influences the way that I have to interact with students.  One other perfect example of this happened last week, when I came in to school and was told “You don’t have class this week.”  I knew I was going to have an extra week off at some point because of the ‘bac blanc’ exams which are practice exams for the end of the year, but had originally been told it was this week.  Fully six months into a seven-month position, I still don’t feel at ease with many of my classes and I know by now to anticipate that I may have to change at the drop of a hat. 

2) Sometimes the teachers are helpful, and sometimes they’re not.

I should clarify this statement by saying that all of the teachers I work with are nice.  For the most part, they’ve been kind and welcoming and I feel that the majority of them appreciate that I’m here.  However, I work with 6 different teachers in the 18 different classes I see and they all have different ideas about how having a teaching assistant in the classroom should work.  Since there isn’t necessarily a “right” or a “wrong” way to have me in the class and since there is little/no central organization or training to give them ideas of how to best use me, I don’t blame them in the least for each having differing opinions.  My interactions with students vary from staying in the classroom and working alongside the teacher as a support system and an “American English” dictionary (After introducing vocab, I’ll be asked “How would you say this in the US?”)  to working with students one-by-one in ten-minute intervals as they practice for an eventual oral exam which will require the presentation of a document to working with 1/6, 1/4, 1/2, or even the entire class (varying between 8 and 18 students) for either half an hour or the entire hour.  What is frustrating is that I find there are four options: 1) The teacher has a specific idea about what he/she wants me to do with the students and conveys it to me ahead of time and gives me time to prepare, 2) The teacher has a specific idea about what he/she wants me to do with the students and tells me what to do in the 5-10 minutes before the class, giving me no time to prepare, 3) The teacher has thoughts about what would be best for me to do with the students but doesn’t tell me what that is or 4)  The teacher trusts that I can come up with something useful and somehow relevant and gives me full reign over planning and teaching.  I tend to appreciate options 1 and 4 most, for obvious reasons, and am particularly frustrated with options 2 and 3. 

3) Sometimes the students want to learn, and sometimes they don’t.

In my perfect world, all of the students have an adequate level of English speaking ability and come to class excited and ready to learn about whatever topic I’ve prepared.  Wait, we’re not in my perfect world?  Shoot.  That explains things.  Realistically, I think that the students that are apathetic act the way that they do because either they already speak well enough to understand what’s going on and feel that the activity is below them (which happens, but rarely) or because they don’t speak well at all and rather than risking making mistakes in front of their classmates, they choose to goof off and not pay attention.  (Which by the way, means that they don’t learn anything and hence don’t improve their skills and then end up acting out in future lessons because they don’t understand… and the cycle continues!)  I have a high level of respect for the students that genuinely want to improve, regardless of their current level.  I think that sometimes it may also be a “Generation Gap” experience even though I’m hardly older than most of the students.  Things that I think will be interesting aren’t that fascinating to them, and vice-versa.  Maybe “Culture Gap” would be a more appropriate term, as there are things from the US that I think are trivial and they find absolutely fascinating (see earlier posts for their obsession with “pom-pom girls” for example!) 

4) Substitute teachers don’t exist.

I’ve saved the best for last because this is such a shocking concept for me.  But it’s so normal in France that every time I have a discussion with a French (or Belgian) person about it, they act like I’m silly to think that it’s so crazy, and don’t want to discuss it the way that I do.  In my experience in the United States, my teachers were rarely if ever absent (especially in elementary and middle school, which seems ludicrous in hindsight since so many of the kids are carrying around colds or the flu!) and if they were absent, there was ALWAYS a substitute teacher.  I’ve never worked as a sub nor have my parents so I’m not directly linked, but my understanding is that there’s a long list of people in the school district that have registered to be substitute teachers and that if someone’s ill, even the morning before class, they can call in and then the subs on the list will be called until someone is able to come in.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe in the state of Wisconsin anyone with a college degree can be a sub- so I could register when I’m back in the states if I wanted to?  Anyway, this all sounds like gibberish to French people.  If a teacher is gone, class is cancelled and that’s that.  (Except at the elementary school level, where Hannah tells me that the children from this teacher’s class are divided into equal groups and added to another class, where they’ll be given some sort of busy work.)  The French don’t even consider getting a sub (remplacant) unless the teacher’s going to be gone for at least two weeks.  Every single person I’ve talked to about this subject has had some story about either him/herself or a sibling/friend/neighbor who didn’t have class at all for a week or didn’t have French for three months or only had two days of gym class the entire year.  Combined with the two weeks of vacation every six weeks and the regularity of strikes, I understand much better now why some of the students in my classes haven’t had a lot of experience speaking English!  Apparently there’s been talk about updating the system and having some sort of organized substitute teacher reserve, but the lack of teachers in France has kept the project on hold.  I’d love to hear your experiences with substitute teachers (or the lack thereof…).  Am I the only one that thinks this is really really crazy? 

Enough reflections for the moment.  I’m sure I’ll write more about my teaching experience as more ideas come to mind :) xoxo

New, Nouveau, New!

I was surprised by how excited I was to come back to France and to be back in my home in Carpentras.  By the time I landed in Marseille, I was so anxious to see the Patris family and to be done living out of a backpack!  I think that being sick at the end of my trip helped to make me look forward to being back even more than I would have otherwise.

This was my first ever Nouvel An (New Year) Celebration in France and I’m very curious to know if it was typical.  When I celebrate New Year’s in Wisconsin with friends, we’ve generally gotten together earlier in the evening, had some sort of potluck where everyone brings some snack foods, played games and hung out for hours, watched the recording of the New  York Ball Drop at midnight, and then crashed on the floor shortly thereafter.  As we’re all now above the legal drinking age, we’ve added various liquor and alcoholic drinks and champagne at midnight to the mix, but the remainder of the details remaining more or less the same.  We sleep in late, make some pancakes in the morning, and people leave at various points throughout the morning and early afternoon. 

My French celebration started out more or less the same, with people coming and bringing various prepared food/drink items.  However, rather than just snack foods, we sat down and ate a large (delicious!) dinner together.  After that, we hung out, had some drinks, and when midnight struck, broke out the confetti, streamers, and noisemakers.  Normal, right?  So then we continued to have fun, hang out, whatnot… and headed to bed by 2 or 3 am, right? 

Wrong.  2am, 3am, and 4am came… and I thought for sure that we were going to take at least a short nap before getting up again, but at around 4:30am several of boys seemed to catch a second wind, and started taking shots!  So much for rest, I suppose.  We started a game of Taboo (in French) around 5am.  It was ‘Extreme Taboo’ or something and involved not only the ‘typical’ Taboo (where you have to get your teammates to guess a word by describing it but have a list of related words you are forbidden to use) but also options where you were limited to 15 words in 2 minutes and where you had to use a little doll to act out the words you were trying to describe.  You’d be surprised at how much more difficult it is to do in French!  Everyone was nice to me and flipped over the hourglass twice- meaning I had twice as much time to attempt to get my teammates to figure out what I was saying :)  I think I was fairly successful- it was a good test of my French!  We continued playing until around 10am and then people started cleaning up and mostly left by around noon.  I headed home but didn’t feel like it was a good idea to nap since I was afraid I’d throw off my clock… but finally gave in around 5pm, at which point I’d been up for over 32 hours straight!  Here I went four years at UW without pulling a single all-nighter and then pulled two in the same week without really even planning it.  Oops?  One highlight of my night:  one of the guys said to me (in French), “You don’t really sound like a French French person…” to which I replied that I wasn’t French at all, but American ;) 

Another fun celebration early in the New Year was in Marseille, when I took the train down to celebrate Miss Becca's 23^rd birthday.  It was really nice to see a lot of the Marseille gang again, many of whom I hadn’t seen since our training session in October, and also to meet some of Katharine’s French collocs.  My trip started out a little bit sketchy, when I was stuck on the train next to an Algerian man that wouldn’t stop talking at me and then when I got lost near Vieux Port in the dark shortly after arriving… but things went uphill from there.  Katharine taught us a new game that’s a cousin of beer pong called “beer flower” which is I think more amusing to watch than to play.  To give you some idea, each player has a cup partially filled with beer and is trying to bounce the ping pong ball into the full cup in the middle of the table.  When a player succeeds, everyone has to chug their beer asap and then play flip cup… the last player to successfully flip their cup has to drink the full cup from the middle, so people frantically rush to finish their drink and flip their cup as quickly as they possibly can.  People are talking and laughing and then you look over and all of a sudden, everyone’s silent as they scramble to finish their drink.  I hope Becca had a good time because I know all of the rest of us did :) 

Other notable New Year activities… I’ve had the opportunity to check out a lot of new (sorry, I know that’s getting old- I’m done now!) places with locals who’ve shown me around.  (Further posts with more details on their way...)  One of the teachers at the school decided to take me around the region by car on our day off (there are no English classes on Wednesdays) which was much more quick and convenient than me traipsing around on foot or figuring out the bus schedule.  Since this area’s rural, there aren’t that many buses that would have gotten me to the places that I got to see.  Some of the pictures are below:

Pierrelongue- the church stands above the whole rest of the city

Brantes

Croix du Calvaire in Malaucene 

Something else that was really interesting for me was the French Soldes aka Sales which happen twice a year, once in Jan/Feb and once in July/Aug.  Unlike American stores that have sales whenever they jolly well feel like it (JC Penney, anyone?), all French stores have sales at the same time.  It makes for some awesome shopping!  I went to Avignon with two students (who are in seconde and terminale, the equivalent of sophomore and senior in the US system) to check out the scene and ended up finding some awesome French Chucks as well as a nice skirt and several new dresses.  I did my best to stay away after that, as I knew I could have been easily tempted to spend my entire (read: not very big) French paycheck on new stuff :) 

Anyway, I’ll wrap this up for now- more stories to come from the start of 2011!