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A Breakthrough

Since my arrival in France, I have been treated like a second-class citizen at the local grocery store.  They must have sent a memo around to all the employees, warning them that an American with poor French skills and therefore very low self-esteem would be arriving shortly and everyone should treat her like a smelly bag of manure that happens to buy a lot of coffee and pasta sauce.  How else to account for the fact that every cashier greets every other customer with a cheerful, "Bonjour!" and ends each transaction with, "Merciaurevoirbonnefinjournéeàvous!"* but I'm only given an icy glare at best? 

However, today I had a breakthrough.  It started while waiting in the checkout line, when I realized that I was unconsciously listening to the conversation between two cashiers.  Normally, I can't just tune into conversations like that, but I was actually understanding them!  Amazing! Granted, it went something like:
"It's cold out.  I used to have a hat, but now I don't."
"Oh wow, that sucks.  You should get another one."
"I know, but I don't want to."
Then my cashier noticed some ice cream cones that someone had decided they didn't want and left to the side of her checkout lane.  She worked herself up into a tizzy about it, saying that someone always left things in her lane, and everyday it was the same, and she was so sick of it.  I suddenly realized she was directing all of this at me, as if I were her confidante.  So I just shook my head as if to say, tell me about it.  This was a good move.  She recognized me as her sympathizer, so as she scanned my items, she started talking about how maybe she should take up mediation, so I laughed as if to say, that's what we all need, isn't it?  She ate it up.  After paying, I wished her "Bonnes Vacances," my current go-to phrase of the season, and she smiled genuinely and said, "Merciaurevoirbonnefinjournéeàvous!"



*Thanksgoodbyehaveaniceday

Reminders to Self:

-  In order to make up for my bad memory and two hundred students, judge children based on their names.  Boys named Jules are always popular, Enzo's are too cool for school and Maxime's are nerds.  Leelou's are adorable, Léa's are smart and kids with unpronounceable names thankfully respond well to "Hey, you, over there."
-  Do not burst out laughing every time a kid shouts "punking pee" instead of "pumpkin pie."  Yes, it is hilarious and I will never be able to think about pumpkin pie the same way again, but after fifty times, it's not funny anymore.  Oh wait, yes it is.

-  "If You're Happy and You Know It" and "Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" are great songs for teaching but will immediately cause mass chaos when employed.  Reserve for the last five minutes of the lesson so I can slip out after and their teacher can figure out how to peel kids off the ceiling. 

- Do not ever, EVER attempt to teach "The 12 Days of Christmas" to non-English speakers.  It is not worth the ensuing horror.  Stick with "We Wish You A Merry Christmas."

-  Do not try to explain the difference between Saint Nicholas and Santa Claus.  It will only confuse the children more and cause them to question existence of both.  Easier to say that we celebrate Saint Nicholas Day in the U.S. and follow the teacher's lead and shout "à cause de décalage horaire!" when asked how Santa Claus visits both France and America during the same night, despite the fact that this is confusing to me because I thought décalage horaire meant jet lag which leaves me with the image of a very tired, confused Santa constantly resetting his watch as his sleigh flies through time zones.

-  Kids could care less about culture lessons.  When shown a painstakingly-crafted slideshow of Christmas in America, all they will want to know is how did they get the star on top of the big Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center?  In the future, predict such questions and research answers so we can move on and not get stuck arguing about it for fifteen minutes.

-  Remember that at any moment I may be called upon to do duties outside of my job description.  While being put in charge as a referee of a handball tournament may have really caught me off guard, I learned a valuable lesson:  Never again agree to be a referee of any sport that 1) I don't know the rules to, and 2) that might involve the players charging the referee and screaming in French about a wrongly-called foul.  I’m sorry that I accidentally shouted sortie when I meant trop haut.  I learned the rules five minutes ago.

-  Always wear the annoying rubber band bracelets that the children give me, even if they threaten to cut off my circulation.  Not doing so will prompt severe reprimands and give me a preview of jealous boyfriends to be.  “Why aren’t you wearing the bracelet I gave you?  I thought you said you weren’t going to take it off.  Next time I see you you better have it on.”

-  It would be best never to repeat any vocabulary I learned from reading Bridget Jones' Diary in French, as tempting as it would be to incorporate "frigid bitch" and "dildo" into conversations. 

Ever wonder what a class full of French kids singing “Jingle Bells” would sound like?

 

Frankly my dear, je m'en fous.

I speak French with all of the grace and delicacy of a bull in a china shop, plowing into shelves of fragile tenses, sending the subjunctive flying to the floor and smashing into a million pieces, while the past and imperfect teeter threateningly in their display case.  However, tenses like the simple past and pluperfect are so far from my mind that they're safely stored miles away in the back of the china shop warehouse, covered in dust from disuse.  But needless to say, most people go running as soon as I open my mouth.

This is why I like idioms.  Neatly packaged phrases I can whip out at the drop of a hat that make me sound like I'm fairly adept at French.  And there's one for every occasion!  A student is getting on my nerves?  "Arrête de me casser les pieds!"  (Stop breaking my feet!)  I make a fool of myself (a daily occurrence):  "J'ai fait des bêtises."  (I did some stupid.)  I might "do a greasy morning" by sleeping in until noon and wake up with a "woody mouth" after a night at the discothèque.  When I spend weekends in Bar-le-Duc, I'm "as bored as a dead rat."

And then there's the whole slew of phrases that every French teacher yells at his or her class every five minutes which goes something like this, always with the same inflection:  "Ça y EST!  C'est pas VRAI!  C'est pénIBLE! OH là là!  J'en ai MARRE de vous.  Arrêtez de faire des bêtises!"  (That's it!  Unbelievable!  It's painful!  Oh la la! [no translation needed]  I've had enough of you.  Stop doing the stupid!)  When asked, I will recite this refrain with gusto for entertainment purposes.  My favorite of these phrases right now is "C'est pénible."  It's painful.  According to all the teachers I've met, just about everything is painful.  You accidentally write in print and not cursive?  Painful.  You dropped your pencil case and the contents are now littered across the floor?  Painful.  You don't know the date today?  Painful.  You colored outside the lines?  Painful.

Although my French is improving at the pace of a lethargic snail, I checked out the translated copy of "Bridget Jones' Diary" from the library yesterday.  I'm already picking up on a lot of new slang.  French Bridget says, "Beurk!" a lot, which I'm pretty sure means "Nerds!" in Tina Fey-speak.  I'm learning.

Grand Saint Nicolas

Before they go to bed tonight, all of my students will carefully lay out their shoes, accompanied by a few carrot sticks, and sing a song inviting Saint Nicolas to come and leave them lots of candy and gingerbread while they sleep.  If they've been good, they'll wake up tomorrow to find their shoes overflowing with sweets, and if they've been bad, they'll find only a bundle of twigs, left by the evil butcher in the Saint Nicolas legend, Père Fouettard.  According to the story, Père Fouettard lured away three children and butchered them, salted them, and hid them away in a tub in his shop.  Saint Nicolas came to their rescue and restored them back to life, and Père Fouettard was doomed to follow Saint Nick around for the rest of time, probably so someone could keep an eye on him.  I mean, what a nutter.

Apparently, while the holiday is celebrated throughout many European countries, there are only a few regions in France that recognize it.  Fortunately, Saint Nicolas is the patron saint of Lorraine, so people here go crazy for this holiday, meaning that even Bar-le-Duc was a jivin' place this weekend.  A temporary Christmas market was set up (eat your heart out, Strasbourg) where I had my first vin chaud of the season.  When I went up to the booth to order it, the old man serving me asked, "Un petit?" and held up a glass the size of a dixie cup. 
     I looked at it with dismay.  "Uhh, non, un grand...." I said.  His eyes widened in surprise.
     "Well, at least she's honest!" laughed another woman in the booth.  He grabbed a more acceptably sized cup and filled it to the brim.
     "Merci," I muttered, and handed over my two euros.  Great, now the town will be abuzz that the American is an alcoholic.  I just wanted my vin chaud!

While Amelia and I walked over to the main road to watch the parade, we devised a point system for evening-- deduct one point for every student you see, and two points for every teacher.  However, within ten minutes we had abandoned the game because it was too hard to keep track.  I saw two teachers within a minute of each other, too many students to count, and my boss playing piccolo in the marching band, followed by one of my fellow choir members playing horn behind her.  They both stopped playing their instruments so they could wave at me.

The parade was a lot of fun, especially because it started snowing, and all of the Christmas lights that had been hanging in the streets unlit for the past two weeks were now festively shining.  There were a few floats and a lot of decorated tractors, but obviously the best part was when Saint Nicolas came past on his sleigh at the very end.  He threw out huge handfuls of candy as he passed, which actually hurt quite a bit as they collided with my face.  On the back of the sleigh crouched Père Fouettard, handing out thin tree branches to all of the boys, the logic being that boys are always naughty.  Now, whoever thought that giving naughty boys long, pointy sticks was a good idea should probably be butchered themselves.  I spent the rest of the night shielding my eyes from being poked out as boys whipped their branches around in delight.  Amusingly, anything stick-shaped is called a "baguette," so the parental chorus of the evening was, "Non, non!  Give me the baguette!"  Even more amusingly, baguette is also the translation for wand, so Harry Potter and Voldemort spend two and a half hours running around screaming about baguettes.  I wonder if French people also substitute the image of a baguette in place of wands while watching Harry Potter.   Or is that just me? 

The fireworks show at the end of the evening was nothing short of spectacular and I've really got to hand it to Bar-le-Duc.  The story of Saint Nicolas was told over speakers and all of the exciting parts were punctuated by fireworks, complete with an accompanying John Williams medley.  Amelia and I ooh-ed and ahh-ed and seemed to be the only ones reacting at all.  But really, it was epic!  It was like Christmas and New Year's rolled into one awesome holiday, complete with an evil butcher!

So tonight, I'll put out my shoes too and sing a song, just in case Saint Nicolas decides to pay me a visit.  But if I wake up in the morning and find my shoes empty, I'll know why because the song explains:  "If you don't come, my mother says it's because I'm all grown up."

Bar-le-Duc must be beautiful this time of year, with all that.... SNOW?!

I woke up on Thanksgiving morning to find my garret windows completely covered in snow, which gave the impression that my building had been buried in an avalanche.  As my "windows" are nothing more than skylights that can't be opened, there was no way to brush the snow off of them, just as there was no way to clean off the bird shit that had been encrusted  on one of my windows for the past month and a half.  Now, the blackened bird shit was particularly eye-catching against a backdrop of pure white.

I had thumbed my nose at the forecast for snow the night before, expecting it to be the typical French snowfall that sprinkles a light dusting of quickly-melting flurries.  But when I saw the snow thickly blanketed on the ground and still heavily coming down, I apologized to the French weather gods (les dieux de la météo) for poo-pooing their ability to bring a Midwestern snowstorm to Bar-le-Duc.  For all I know, they were trying to make me feel at home for Thanksgiving.  In which case, thanks, but you really didn't need to. 

Yet I walked to my bus stop in a blissful cloud of delight that usually accompanies the first snow of the season.  There's something about the crispness of the winter air that sharpens the senses, and I was very aware of seeing my surroundings, and of feeling the snowflakes melt as soon as they landed on my face and then run down my cheeks.  And even though I walked to the same bus stop every morning, this morning was the first time I smelled baguettes being baked in the boulangerie.  The warm, yeasty smell mixed with the clean, fresh scent of snow made me want to curl up in front of a fire with a mug of hot chocolate and devour every single baguette in that boulangerie as if my life depended on it.   A moment later, I passed a boy carrying a huge snowball down the street in his mittened hands.  He didn’t seem to have any intention to throw it, but instead just clutched it to his chest as if it was his teddy bear.   Precious, tangible proof of the first snow.

I arrived at the bus stop and twenty minutes later I realized that the bus was never going to come.  My bus stop compatriots stormed off one-by-one, muttering curses under their breath, and started walking to their destinations.  I held out hope a little longer, because my destination was a twenty minute uphill walk away, half of which was an old, stone stairway that I imagined would be nothing short of deadly in the snow.  However, I finally came to terms with my destiny, and began the long ascent.  On the way I passed myriad tiny French cars stuck in the snow, wheels spinning in hopeless pursuit of the crest of hill, and I realized I was at least in a better position than those drivers, who would soon have to get out and push. 

Eventually, I stumbled into school in time for my first lesson of the day.  Fortunately, my day was easy because all of my lessons were the same:  I had the kids write “I am thankful for…” and underneath draw a picture, which I then helped them translate into English.  (Thanks for the idea, Brooke!)  Here are a few of my favorites.  You can click on the picture to enlarge it:

 Notice the four salads and head of lettuce in the picture.  The artist informed me that they were my vegetarian dishes.

 Thomas is thankful for school, for me, and for.... E.T.?

 This student is also thankful for me and drew me looking very sassy in a jaunty little dress.  I hope that's how I come off to all my students.

 This student is thankful for all the members of his family, including his grandparents... depicted by the coffin. 

After class, I dashed off to Nancy to spend the rest of Thanksgiving with Claire, where we feasted on lentil soup, salad and applesauce.  On Saturday, we went to Pont A Musson where some lovely assistants had offered to host a real Thanksgiving dinner.  We ate all the traditional dishes, including my two favorites—sweet potato casserole with marshmallows, and baked macaroni and cheese!  As is also traditional, we ate ourselves sick, took a walk for digestion’s sake, and then ate ourselves sick with dessert, which included a real homemade pumpkin pie (no canned pumpkin in France!)  The evening ended with us watching a Friends’ Thanksgiving episode, followed by Love Actually.  Couldn’t have asked for anything better.