Twas the Night before Christmas vacation

SPEAK GOOD ENGLISH

         If you think you’re fluent in English, I’ve got some news for you: teaching grammar will humble you real fast. Since I started teaching private lessons, I’ve been discovering all sorts of fun questions that I don’t even come close to having answers to. Such as, “how come we can only abbreviate the word “have” when it is an auxiliary verb ?”

hmmm…just let me google search that one real quick…

EUPHEMI$M$

         My student Patricia says that French people excel at creating things (art, poetry etc) but they’re not blessed in the field of marketing. While America, on the other hand, is awesome at selling just about anything.

I don’t know that this is entirely true. America's strength in advertisement is undeniable. But Paris is the number one tourist destination in the world, so clearly they’re selling something right.

Then I remembered that my class of business students keeps referring to “American chemical food.” It took me a while to figure out what they were talking about. “Oh, additives! We don’t eat chemical food, we eat additives.” 

How are you going to get people to eat something called “chemical food”? Come on, folks. And these were business students! It’s true, they’re going nowhere in marketing if they don’t learn up on some euphemisms.

        Patricia likes blanket statements more than your average bear, but maybe she’s on to something. Maybe Paris’ tourist popularity is more about the quality of their product than their ability to market it? I don’t know that I buy into it, it’s an idea I’ll have to chew on for a bit.

JOLLY OLD SAINT CHRISTMAS DAD?

         Today in class we played holiday bingo. The vocabulary words that come with the American Christmas tradition are weirdly specific, so I have some flash cards to introduce the words they might not know. "Elf, Reindeer, Carolers, Wrapping paper, chimney." I do not expect them to know these words. "Then we have easy ones like snow, present, christmas tree, Santa Claus..." 

WHO?

"SAN-ta Claaws," I enunciate. 

This is greeted by blank stares. FOR REAL? You know the jolly dude in the red suit, big bearded fella? hangs out with elves?

Ooooh, you mean Père Noël. We thought you called him... Christmas Dad or something.

Um. No. Sometimes he's called "Father Christmas", but that's like how you can call Michael Jackson "The King of Pop." His name is Santa. 

Amelia, proud soldier against the War on Christmas.

If all goes well, I'll be back in the Minnie-apple in 24 hours! Can't wait!

Snow, Snow, go away! Come after Saturday so I can volare!

OÙ EST LE BRAWNY MAN WHEN YOU NEED HIM?

France doesn't believe in paper towels. This bums me out. I get that it's more ecologically friendly to not have them around, but what do you do if, theoretically, you spill an entire cup of coffee on a chair and all over the floor of the teacher's lounge?

Search frantically for anything remotely absorbant. Printer paper? hmm, no. Clothes I'm wearing?...no,no, bad idea. The bathroom only has an air dryer. Toilet paper? Well, it's a sorry substitute, but it's what we've got. 

This leaves little flecks of tissue on the chair cushion but the floor looks pretty good. 
Back away slowly, no one will know it was you. Except the principal who just walked in the lounge and saw what you were doing... 
Excuse me? Did I put water on that? Uh, no, ma'am. I was more focused on the drying than the wetting. I will get right on that.

The students in my next class comment that something smells like coffee.


I SING, YOU SING, WE ALL SING FOR GIPSY KINGS

         The Friday after Thanksgiving, coming back from the Eiffel Tower with Claire on the 6, a man with a microphone and a guitar starts serenading the train. This is normal. Usually they sing a couple songs, pass around a hat for spare change, then hop off and move to the next car. Most passengers ignore the performers entirely and pretend like this isn’t happening.

         Today our singer is a Spanish speaker and he’s performing Gypsy King songs. He’s pretty talented and people in the packed train start to toe-tap along. When he starts to sing “Volare,” a British man on the train knows the words (kind of) and starts singing too. At first, people stiffen up at this break from the social norm, but little by little, more people join in and it turns into an all out sing-along. Gipsy Kings unite us all.

if you don’t know this song, you need to discover it now:

AHH! The weather folks are predicting heavy snow for Saturday when I'm supposed to be flying out! Apparently Charles de Gaulle is not equipt with the necessary snowplows, please everyone cross their fingers for me! If it could just wait until after my flight takes off that would be golden.

LOST IN TRANSLATIONING

valet

The longer I live in France, the more I see how we borrow from each other's languages and how we do it wrong. For example, in French, “valet” is not a person who parks your car at an expensive restaurant. A “valet” is either a manservant to a king in the olden days, a Jack (as in cards), or a handy piece of furniture that holds up your suit (one of these came with my studio, actually). 

The French don’t ever use this word for someone that parks your car. We just made it up.

         On the other hand, when the French borrow an English word, they love to add “-ing” to the end of it. The present continuous (i.e. I am eat-ing, you are talk-ing) is a tense that doesn’t really exist in French, and they seem generally confused about how to use it. So they use it all the time. You wash your hair with a bottle of “le shampooing” and you leave your car in “le parking.” Not a parking ramp, not a parking lot, just “le parking.”

         I got spam in my e-mail this morning advertising for a “family shooting.” This sounds like domestic violence, but it’s accompanied by an image like this:

Is this like a “before” picture? 

Nope. What they were trying to say was “family photo shoot.”

Or maybe what they meant was this:

VDM

FML (aka “vie de merde”) moment of the day:

        On the train into Guyancourt this morning, we're lining up on the stairs to get out at the St-Quentin-en-Yvelines stop. The train stops short and I face-plant into the butt of the man on the step in front me. Pardon me, sir.


TABOO SQUARED

         While playing taboo with a group of students today, a boy draws the card “Baby.” For those of you unfamiliar with this game, you get a word and you have to make your team guess it without saying any of the forbidden (or “taboo”) words listed on the card. 

For example:

Great linguistical exercise. 
So, this boy goes,“If you make love without a condom you’ll have this.” 
He knows the words "condom" and "make love"?!? 

And so does the rest of his group.
“BABY!” They get it on the first try.

The weather outside is (relatively) frightful.

A PLEASANT WALK

Paris got about 4 inches of snow yesterday and is all up in arms about it. My first reaction, being born and raised in Minnesota, is that they are a bunch of pansies. But in all fairness, this sort of snowfall never happens here and they don’t have the systems in place to deal with it. It’s been over 24 hours and the sidewalks are still treacherous because no one shovels or salts. Walking from the metro, I almost wiped out 3 times.

This morning the train arrives on time, 7:30am, at the Gare St. Quentin-en-Yvelines. I make it out to the bus stop with plenty of time to catch what should be the next bus. All along the stretch of bus shelters outside the train station, people are bundled in their jackets and hats, looking around longingly for any sign of a bus, preferably their bus. All in vain. There are no buses today. Yeah, none. Despite roads that have clearly been plowed, it appears that the transit officials have decided it is too unsafe for buses. Or that they can make use of a day off. Either way, no one’s coming. One by one the waiting people realize the situation and walk away from their respective shelters towards whatever alternative they've selected: walking to work, phoning someone for a ride, going back home to bed.

The other man waiting at my bus stop happens to be a fellow teacher from my high school. I’ve seen him before at the cantine, but I forget his name. It’s Ruddy. He knows the bus route by heart so he proposes we walk it. I’m not sure my frenchie boots are up for this, but I figure what the heck? 
The streets and sidewalks are in terrible shape. Everytime I get into a rhythm, I make a bad step and almost fall to my doom.

Ruddy is the électrotech teacher. I don’t understand all of what this involves, but it’s essentially mechanics and electricity. In France, this is a normal high school subject. Because of liability concerns, I’m sure that electricity class will never exist in American high school. Isn’t someone bound to get zapped?

Ruddy’s a foreigner too, from Guadeloupe. I know very little about Guadeloupe, but I almost feel like we’re compatriots because we come from the Northwestern hemisphere. That doesn’t happen much over here.

We talk about being immigrants in France. About racism here and how people react to us differently, me being a white girl and him a black man. We talk about education and what it means to people from different backgrounds. Whether it’s a strength or a weakness to work hard young. Have you lost your childhood or gained character? We talk about what the Créole language means to Guadeloupe’s identity. How I learned French and how he’d like to learn English. I don’t even notice that we’ve been trudging through snow for 45 minutes until we arrive at the school. My socks are wet and I have a total of 7 students for the whole day, but I don’t care.

some more backtracking…

DAY DE DINDE

         I based all of my lessons on Thursday, November 25th around Thanksgiving. I started each class by asking what they had heard about it and they knew surprisingly little. All of them knew that it was about “dinde” (French for turkey). Maybe it had something to do with pilgrims? They didn’t really remember. 
This meant I had a lot of explaining to do.

         First of all, we call “dinde” turkey. This confused them. “Turkey? Like the country?” Yes, actually, spelled the same but unrelated. “Maybe turkeys come from Turkey?” Uh, maybe.

         Then there’s cranberry sauce, cranberry’s don’t exist in France. It’s only just starting to show up as a flavor of juice. Mashed potatoes, now that they know. Sweet Potatoes, not too hard. Green beans, yes. But green bean casserole, that they did not get. Like potatoes au gratin? Why? Why would you do that to green beans?

Ummmm…why not?

jucy lucy

         I think “why not?” is the reasoning behind a lot of American cuisine. Deep fried turkey? Why not?  Cheese in the middle of the burger? Why not? (that’s a Jucy Lucy, a popular Minneapolis burger, for those of you not from the area)

         After explaining traditional foods and customs, I selected one student to go up to the board and draw while the rest of the class looked at an image and described it to him in English. Some were simple like a turkey next to a pumpkin, some were significantly more complicated.

         I have a class of seniors that can be pretty sassy. One kid in particular is a bit of a know-it-all. He’s pretty sure he’s already fluent in English (trust me, he’s got a lot to learn) and he’s always trying to challenge me on things. He volunteered to go up and be our artist. This is the picture I used:

The class struggled a little bit and Know-It-All was acting like he was too cool for this activity. They managed to get across that it’s a boy running from a turkey. He’s got glasses. And a hat, but not on his head. The drawing was kind of coming together. One of the girls goes “he’s got an axe in his right hand.” Know-It-All was like “yeah. yeah, yeah, okay, axe in his right hand,” and starts drawing a weird cylindrical shape. Several members of the class repeated “an axe!” and he was like “yeah, I know, AXE, I know.” But he just went into more detail on his cylinder. After a while it became clear that what he was drawing was this:

He was a little embarrassed, but we all had a good laugh.

Boule de neige!!

         Huge snowstorm in Paris today! As I was walking over to the Grand Explorer’s park to take some snowy photos, I saw a couple of guys having a snowball fight. As I got closer, I realized that they weren't teenagers, but average adult men in their 40s. One of the guys turned to me all excited and cried "boule de NEIGE!!" (snowball!!) with a big childish grin on his face. I couldn’t help but smile with him.

now for a little back tracking...

BIENVENUE CLAIRE!

         Claire came to Paris! When she got into town she was pooped, so we camped out in my apartment for the day and downloaded the last 2 months of our lives (making a quick outing for a baguette and two pain au chocolat).

         Tuesday, I had to work the whole day, but in the evening we went out to an awesome French restaurant in the financial district called “La Bourse ou La Vie.” Rochelle introduced me to this restaurant in October and I’d been waiting for an excuse to go back.

photo courtesy of Mlle Claire Fieber

         After packing ourselves full of steak au poivre, fries and wine, we went out to a bar to meet my student/friend Antoine and his friends.

         Claire memorized two French sentences before her trip: “Je ne parle pas français” (I don’t speak French) and “Parlez-vous anglais?” (Do you speak English?). These are the essentials. Later on she picked up “I don’t understand” and “Where are the toilets?”
        Antoine’s English is limited and one of the friends who came didn’t speak English at all. This made communication within our party pretty difficult. The non-english speaking friend would get frusturated with all the English and Claire would cycle through her handful of French phrases “uhh yeah, I don’t speak French… umm, where are the toilets?” We managed to enjoy ourselves all the same.

         Wednesday we decided to get in a bunch of sight-seeing, since we still hadn’t done any yet. We started by going to Versailles to see the chateau. For some reason, they’ve put a modern Japanese art exhibit through the rooms of the castle. I would like to know whose idea this was and give them a good shaking. The statues are interesting and cool, but they are terrifically out of place in a 17^th century castle. This is not a case of being “stronger than the sum of their parts.” If anything, they were mutually detracting from the appeal of the other. For example, leading up to the entry of the infamous Hall of Mirrors:

It's hard to tell from this photo, but trust me when I say that the level of detail on this girls boobs was unnecessary.

that's all for now. later y’all!

Last Call for Fall

…YOU GONNA EAT THAT?

         The week I got back to Paris was Chris’s last week. There was no way he’d be able to cram 6 months of accumulated belongings into his suitcase, so he invited me over on Thursday to collect his Parisian hand-me-downs. I am a compulsive gleaner. Like a human raccoon. I will wash and wear the clothes I discover in the lost & found, I will eat your leftovers, I will ride the bike that has been rusting in your garage. I really can’t help myself. It's hard for me to see things go to waste. People tend to look down on this, but it seems silly to waste things out of principle, to act like things are unusable because somebody else used to own them. Whatever. Chris didn’t mind giving me his leftovers and I certainly appreciated taking them. 

I came away with bags of loot, including (but not limited to):

- a big ol’ orchid (I got a lot of looks carrying this on the metro)

- top notch olive oil, balsamic vinegar, mustard. I’m in condiment heaven.

- all the fixings for miso soup (I tackled this one for the first time on Thursday night and I’m not sure I made it right, but it was still deeeelish. Miso soup with a baguette…too weird? I’m just enjoying the fruits of globalization)

- an awesome photography book called Paris, Mon Amour. It’s a collection of old photos taken in Paris. I realize that it's a circular sort of pleasure to look at pictures of Paris while I’m in Paris and to get caught up in the romantic image of Paris while living in the reality of it. But I love it. When I'm fed up with crowds and I’ve seen one too many dog turds, it reminds me why I came.

         To top it all off, Chris let me use his washing machine to get caught up on laundry. I’ve got a mountain of karma to pay back.

VIVE LE CHEAP WINE

         While my laundry was in the machine, we went down to a brasserie nearby to get some drinks and dinner. It turned out that this particular Thursday was a kind of unofficial national holiday. Every year on the third Thursday of November, France celebrates the début of Beaujolais Nouveau. This is a kind of wine that’s only fermented for a couple weeks after the grapes are harvested and then they put it up for sale. Most French people will tell you this wine is mediocre and that it leads to a killer headache. It's even served chilled, despite being a red, to mask the taste a little. But, as it is the first drinkable wine of this year's harvest, everyone agrees that it is cause for celebration. Bars and brasseries all over Paris were having specials. There appeared to be a lot of day drinking, including at my high school where they had set up a spread of the wine and some meat in the teachers lunchroom. Despite all of my co-workers’ warnings, I ordered a glass of Beaujolais Nouveau at dinner. I actually thought it was decent, but that just shows how little I know.

         Along with the wine, I ordered my first French cheeseburger. I was quite impressed. My only disappointment was that they served it with American cheese. As in the Kraft stuff that comes individually wrapped. Why would you even allow that stuff to cross the border?

LE SENIOR DISCOUNT?

         Speaking of cheese, on Saturday, November 20^th (yeah, I’m behind, get over it) there was a big farmer’s market on Rue de Reuilly. Chris and I went as a kind of last hoorah for the farmer’s market season. It’s crazy to me that we were out doing this 2 weeks ago, now it’s full blown winter here.

         Chris got a sausage at a “sanglier” stand. I had conveniently just learned what this word meant in a conversation with my student, Antoine, when he was telling me about hunting in Corsica. Sanglier is wild boar. Chris let me try a bite and it was good, but, in typical Amelia fashion, I decided to peruse the whole market before making a lunch decision. At the end we came back, but it was too late and they had already turned off the grill.

         While we were meandering around and trying to decide what samples to taste, an old woman ran into me from behind. Despite having bumped into me, she looked at me enfuriated and erupted in a long French tirade about how “some people” are “poorly raised.” Well, excuse me, for inconveniently existing where you wanted to walk. We just pretended she wasn’t there and she muttered hatefully for a while but eventually moved on to harass some poor young man at a cheese stand. Bonkers. We tried to keep a distance from her, but it seemed like everytime we turned around she was there. Chris suggested that maybe she was trying to pick our pockets. He was kidding, but I think that would be a brilliant strategy for theft. Being an old woman would mean that no one ever suspects you. You can bump into people and feel up their pockets and they’ll just write it off as you being old. If anyone catches on, you can get really indignant and rant about how they’re poorly raised. It's poor form for them to talk back to you as you are their elder. This is my back-up plan for old age, if the retirement funds for my generation are gone by the time I’m eligible for them. 

RECONNAISSANCE MISSION

         Sunday, Chris’s boss at the International Herald Tribune hosted a going away dinner for him. The food was ridiculously good. I learned that a “kir royale” is a kir with champagne in lieu of white wine. The meal was multiple courses, the main dish being ostrich. I, along with half of the other guests, thought that it was just a high-quality cut of beef until she offered us “more ostrich.” Umm, excuse me? It was delicious and lean though. Ostrich is red meat, who knew?

         She and her husband are both Americans, but they are ex-pats through and through. They've lived in France for 20 years or something now. They have a house outside of Paris and 3 kids who were born and raised in France. Two of the kids are in high school and it was cool to hang out with French high schoolers who speak fluent English. I used this opportunity to interrogate them about some things. They explained the system to me a little more (trust me, it’s complicated). And they talked about the requirements for the BAC and how their language teachers fall short. It was like getting a secret window into the French high schooler mentality. Back at school the next Tuesday I felt like I was "in the know."

         Monday morning Chris flew back to the United States and…Claire landed here! I will recount our Parisian adventures together next time!

Oh, something I forgot to mention about London before: did you know that the word "pants" in England means "underwear"? They call pants "trousers." Jeez, that's a recipe for a embarrassing confusion.

à la prochaine!

Cheers England!

FROZEN FAIR

         Monday, Emma and I wandered around Hyde Park. It was a gorgeous day and it’s a beautiful space. They were setting up a temporary amusement park for a Christmas Carnival there. I thought this was silly and then when I got back to Paris, they have pretty much the same thing set up on the Champs-Elysées. To me, ferris wheels have nothing to do with Christmas. This is probably because I grew up in Minnesota and trying to have an outdoor Ferris Wheel for x-mas there would not only cause a lot of frostbite, it would surely be too cold for the rides to even operate.

AMERICAN GRIFFIN 

         We all know that America’s mascot is a bald eagle. It turns out that England has some animal representatives as well. They are a lion and …a unicorn. I didn’t realize that mythical creatures were in play and, considering this new information, I think that America should get a redo. At the very least we should be able to upgrade to a griffin.

         While I envy their choice of animals, I do not envy their choice of facial expression. The American Eagle is usually looking very proud or like it’s about to snag some prey. This seems about right for our country. England’s Lion and Unicorn look like they just tasted something terrible and are about to vomit.

For example, on the gates of Buckingham Palace:

CHEERS ENGLAND

         For our final outing, we went to the British Museum. There are not many British things in the British museum, mostly there are things from other places that British people have collected. I suppose this is probably true of most museums. Emma and I explored the impressive Egypt section for a while, then we went directly to the America section. There we learned that Minnesota is in the West. This was news to us. I guess some Americans might make the same mistake. West, Midwest, it’s all fly-over land anyways, right?

         Emma and I said “see you later” and made some plans for going to Belgium when she comes to visit in January. I recently realized that Belgium is the source of numerous things that I greatly appreciate. Among them are: French fries, waffles and good beer. Belgium seems to get generally overlooked and I want to go see what they’re up to. Emma was entirely on board with this. To top it off, on the train back to Paris, the conductor came on the overhead speakers to wish us a good trip and he sounded exactly like Hercule Poirot (the Belgian detective from Agatha Christie novels)! I took this as a sign.

CRUNCH BAN

         You should not be able to have crunchy foods on trains or planes or other modes of public transportation. They should put a picture of a bag of chips on that sign they post outside of the security check at airports. I’m thinking something like this:

Minus the salt. I have no issues with salt outside of its association with chips and other crunchy foods. Seriously, being forced to listen to people chew that stuff could easily lead to violence just as much as any safety razor can.

BLARING BAD MUSIC BAN

         After that, they should outlaw playing music so loud that your headphones are basically crappy speakers and everyone around you can hear the tinny treble of that hypnotic electro dance-pop you’re listening to. The people listening to loud music on public transit are always listening to crap. On the 6am train down to the suburbs, a dizzying dance beat pulses in my neighbors earbuds at top volume. On the afternoon bus back to the train station, the 15-year-old in the backseat is blaring generic hiphop that I can make out as a string of jaw-dropping swears. I’m always a little tempted to turn around and say “do you know what those words mean, young man?!” But I bite my tongue and suppress my inner grandma.

         I can deal with the coughs, I can deal with the sniffs and I can deal with the phlegmy bodily sounds that show up regularly. As much as it makes my skin crawl, I’m sure their colds annoy them as much (or even more) than they annoy me. But the crunching and the headphones, that I can’t let go.

No dogs, No smoking, No boxcutters, no liquids over 3 oz, no crunchy snack foods, no blaring headphones.

Let’s work together people.

Them tricksy brits

LONDON BRIDGE IS OUT OF TOWN, MY FAIR LADY

         We walked across the Tower Bridge, but didn’t bother to cross the London Bridge because I’ve already been across the one in Lake Havasu, Arizona. So, been there, done that. From my Arizona London Bridge experience, I already knew that that the original bridge was bought for a couple million dollars by some rich American guy, and then shipped over and reassembled piece by piece in a small city in western Arizona. What I did not know was that the Brits funded their brand new bridge with the money from the sale of the old one. Cunning blokes. I’ve got to give them props for taking advantage of American vanity.

         Another British trick: the Tower of London is not a tower! It’s a historic fortified castle encircled by a lovely sunken lawn that used to be a moat. These guys are so sneaky!

London Bridge #1 in Lake Havasu, Arizona

I’M A VINDA-LOSER

         After that, we met up with Adam (Emma’s boo) and Richard (Emma’s partner in crime) to go get some Indian food on Brick Lane. I had already eaten Fish & Chips at the pub and had eaten awesome homemade bangers & mash that Adam prepared us for lunch. Indian seemed like the logical next step in my exploration of London’s cuisine. 
        Brick Lane is a street that’s crammed with Indian Restaurants on both sides. This means you get to bargain with them about how much you’ll spend on your meal. I suck at bartering, so we elected Richard as our leader and he was able to get us 30% off the menu with 2 free drinks a piece. Not too shabby! All of the menu items are named differently than the Indian restaurants in the United States, so I was pretty lost. I remembered liking the Vindaloo at home, so I tried to get that, but the waiter shook his head and vetoed my order. He said it was too hot. I was a little offended, but I decided to heed his warning and ordered a slightly milder dish. By the end my eyes were watering and my whole head was overheating. France is making me soft. I’m no champion of spicy foods, but I bought Hot Chili sauce here and was extremely disappointed. French cuisine does a lot of things right, but they wouldn’t know spicy if it smacked them in the tastebuds.

REMEMBRANCE

         Sunday it was drizzling and dreary outside, and looking much more like the London that I had been expecting to see. We went to see Westminster Abbey and Big Ben. There was a huge veteran’s parade happening in honor of Remembrance Day and there were hundreds of men and women marching in uniform. Most were around my grandparents’ age (so probably WWII vets). It was moving to see so many people out there in the rain marching or being pushed in wheelchairs. I felt proud that our countries have been together on so many things.

         We started to get really cold so we decided to go into the National Gallery to escape the wind and rain. It was funny entering into such a famous place so casually. We sat on a bench and stared at Botticelli’s Venus and Mars while we regained the feeling in our toes.

PUDDIN’, PAH-STIES AND SUNDAY ROAST

         When we’d had our fill of art, we went to a pub to get a hot drink and play Apples to Apples. The pub was teeming with drunk vets slapping each other on the back and exchanging stories. We got tea and I ordered pudding with sticky toffee. Call me a American, but when I hear pudding, I think JELL-O pudding. Much to my surprise, British pudding has nothing in common with the Cosby stuff. Except for maybe sugar. Those Brits are so tricky! The pudding here was a chocolatey cake with a toffee sauce.

what I thought I was getting:             

                 

And what I got:

Different from what I was expecting, but a pleasant surprise.

         On the way home we stopped at a train station so that I could buy a pastie (pronounced with a short “a” sound like “apple,” not “pay-stie” like those stickers exotic dancers wear). This pastie is like a giant turnover filled with meat. Scrumptious.

         When we got back, Emma and I skyped with Tom Anderson. His sound didn’t work so he just typed to us and mimed things. This was ridiculous, but then again, so are most of our conversations.

         Adam’s parents have a weekly Sunday roast dinner with his whole family. Emma usually goes and so I was invited along and got to try some more homemade british food. It was really tasty and comforting to be surrounded by a family, even though it made me miss my own. After dinner, Adam’s grandpa drove us back in a British car! On the left side of the road! It was whacky.

The next and final installment of the london saga will be up tomorrow.

à demain!

Blimey! she's still writing about London!

PETER AND THE OPERATOR

         As part of the “Remembrance Day” festivities, they had a performance of Peter and the Wolf going on in front of the altar. If you are not familiar with this composition (or if you are and have just forgotten), it is a musical children’s story that is traditionally told with a full orchestra. Each animal is represented by a different instrument (flute = bird, oboe = duck, cat = clarinet, and so on and so forth). 

         At St. Paul’s, a woman narrated the story while a man playing the organ interpreted all of the different sounds for each animal. This woman’s reading voice was about as enthusiastic as the recorded operator that tells you that if you’d like to make a call to please hang up and try again. I was trying not to openly mock her. Yet again, the kiddies did not appear to mind. The organ bit was cool though. They’re surprisingly versatile instruments, they have all sorts of tricks up their sleeves.

IT'S HIGH TIME WE HAD TEA TIME EVERYWHERE 

         We had to climb a mountain of dizzying steps to get out onto the Stone Gallery. It was brisk, but the sky was atypically clear for England. We were able to linger comfortably out there while Emma got me acquainted with London’s skyline. I took some mediocre photos and then we carefully worked our way back down the winding steps and got “proper” tea.

Note that the tea didn’t even make it in this picture. That’s the funny thing about “proper” tea, it’s not really about the tea. Don’t get me wrong, the Darjeeling is great, but the scone and condiments steal the show. Clotted cream is everything that butter wishes it could be.

Emma, I have a mission for you: you must find out their secrets so that we can do this when we get back home. I’ve got to move on, I’m getting too hungry just thinking about this.

SIR EMMA

For the record: Emma is becoming British. She’s picked up a handful of British words (i.e. flat, lift, and describing things as “properly” this or that). Occasionally sentences slip out with a British intonation or a semi-british accent. She was horrified when I pointed this out. Emma, if you’re reading this (which clearly I’m assuming that you are because I’ve already written to you directly…), don’t worry, when you get home it should only take one “ladies dinner” to scrub all that refinement right outta you.

URBAN JUNGLE     

         After tea, we walked around downtown and waded through the crowds while commiserating about how miserable it is navigating through the throngs of people that come with a major city. In Paris, I usually get frustrated because people don’t abide by “road rules.” In London, there is an added degree of difficulty because they drive on the left, so road rules are technically reversed. Except that there are oodles of foreigners. With the road rules all confused, people resort to jungle rules. It is pure chaos.

         When a walk light turns green, the pedestrians on either side cross wherever they gauge they’ll have the best chance of making it over with all of their body parts. This creates two walls of people rushing directly at each other, not unlike the frontlines of battle. And I thought Paris was barbaric!

Still more on London to come! I know, I know, how am I not done with that yet? Well, I'm trying to pace myself these days so that I can have shorter, more regular entries instead of monstruous ones once every 2 weeks. Hopefully this week will be boring so that I can get caught up.

à bientôt tout le monde!

a tid more about england

TUBED

         After the pub we took the tube back to Emma and Adam’s place. It never occurred to me that “the tube” could be a logical name for public transportation. I thought it was just called that because british people have funny names for things (i.e. apples and pears = stairs, bangers = sausages). It turns out it’s called the tube because the whole set up is as cylindrical as it can be. It reminded me a little of the Magic School Bus where they end up inside of Arnold’s body and travel through his intestines.

HOT COCOA’S FOR SUCKERS

         When we got back, Emma gave me some mulled wine spices that she had bought as a surprise gift. I love mulled wine! I don’t get why it’s not a bigger deal in the United States, especially in Minnesota. It makes you feel a whole lot better about winter. In Europe, as soon as it starts getting chilly outside the hot wine stands show up right where you need them most, in the streets and at the outdoor sporting events. Minnesota needs to get on this. Especially now that the Twins have an outdoor stadium. Who wants ice cold beer when you already can’t feel your fingers?

THE LITTLE THINGS

         On Saturday Emma and I took a run and then she let me take a hot shower for as long as I wanted. Long hot showers are a guilty pleasure of mine in the Twin Cities, especially in the winter. Living in that climate, I feel like it’s the only way to bring my core temperature back up. Utilities in France are expensive, so I take speed showers, using least amount of water possible. To make this especially uncomfortable, my washroom stays around 40 degrees at all times. This means that long hot showers have become quite the luxury. At Emma’s, I was tempted to never come out. All of you who have the luxury of a long hot shower, please take this moment to appreciate it.

OFF-BRAND PIETY

         After my luxurious shower, we went downtown to take a look at St.Paul’s Cathedral. St.Paul’s is like an off-brand cathedral. Being located in England, it is Anglican, but it looks ever so Catholic. And it’s named after a saint. These religions are supposedly different. One of the many things about religion that I will probably never get.

         Outside they had set up a whole host of temporary amusement rides. They were the exact ones you find at the Minnesota State fair and they looked terrifically out of place squished up next to a 400 year old cathedral. The kiddies did not appear to mind. Entrance to the cathedral was free because of “Rembrance Weekend.” It was even free to go up into the Whispering Gallery (a balcony that wraps around the interior of the dome) and to the Stone Gallery (an outdoor balcony that wraps around the exterior of the dome).

SHHHHHHH

         The Whispering Gallery got it’s name because apparently the acoustics allow you to clearly hear someone whispering all the way from the other side. We were unable to test this as there were about a hundred tourists swarming up there, speaking in numerous languages and taking flash photos that they weren’t supposed to take. We were, however, able to witness the guards use these acoustics to their advantage. They would loudly demand that someone stop taking photos and the scattered sound made it seem like they were right next to you even if they were across the way. This worked out well for them because, regardless of who they were actually talking to, they always got about a half dozen people sheepishly tucking away their cameras all around the gallery. 

so much more to be continued...

p.s. I'll be home in 19 days!

travel travel travel: franglais scrabble and mushy peas

         Life here is about to get really busy, so I just wanted to write a little update about last Wednesday-Friday. I'll post more about the weekend and this week as soon as I get time.

KICKING BACK IN CHAUNY

         It turns out that France’s memory is better than the US’s. That must come with being several hundred years older. As evidence of this, Armistice Day continues to be a national holiday here. This means I didn’t have to work last Thursday, so I took a little vacation up to Chauny, the small town where Elizabeth is living. Up until last week, I still hadn’t made it outside of the city and immediate suburbs. I had somehow forgotten about French countryside. For as much as people talk up Paris as a beautiful place, there's something about the fields and small towns outside the city. I could probably be content just riding around and looking at the country through a train window for the next 5 months.

         When I got in, Elizabeth and I went to a café for a late lunch. I was hungry so I splurged and got a full meal: a delectable pastry with a mushroom cream sauce as an appetizer, followed by a croque-monsieur (traditional French sandwich that is like a grilled cheese + ham) with a side salad, and 20cl of red wine. 20cl of wine should be about 1.5 glasses. Each time I’ve ordered this, I’ve gotten significantly more. It comes in a little carafe and I think they’re supposed to measure it out, but most people just fill it up. That’s what happened here, so Elizabeth and I shared so that I could avoid getting daytime sloshed. When we went up to pay at the end, my whole meal cost 10€. At first I thought they had forgotten to charge me for something, but then I realized that, no, this was just the difference in costs between Chauny and Paris. This realization was bittersweet.

         We were both exhausted for no real reason. The weather was rainy and bleak, so we used that as an excuse to take it easy indoors. Elizabeth has a free washer and dryer in her place, so she had suggested that I could do some laundry while I was there. I filled my entire travel backpack with dirty clothes. It was obscene. She was a very good sport.

          Outside of laundry we managed to get in lots of R & R. We woke up late on Thursday morning to the sound of horns from an Armistice Day parade outside. We enjoyed a late breakfast and settled into a game of scrabble. Her roommate had made (yes, made) a scrabble board with the French version of the letters. This meant that there were a million e’s and the k’s were worth 10 points! We played with a mix of languages, using whatever was most convenient. It is far too easy to rack up points when you’re making English words with the French letter values. Even more so when you’re allowing words like “swum” and “stepkids.” 

CHEERS

         Friday I hopped a train to London to visit Ms. Emma Bohmann. She met me at the St. Pancreas station (for the record: Emma and I both realize it’s St. Pancras and no we’re not going to start saying it “right”). I am a food oriented tourist. My first priority when visiting a new place is to try all the local specialties. England has a longstanding reputation for terrible food, but I was still determined to taste as much traditional English cuisine as possible. Our first order of business was to go to a pub to get a pint and some fish & chips. This came with “mushy peas.” These are big in England. They are what they sound like, peas that are mushed up a little. It surprised me to see anything advertised with the adjective “mushy.” It surprised me even more that they were good.

Here are my photos from the trip!

the stories are to be continued…

So far Novembre is full of educational experiences

PANTHÉON DU JOUR

         On Tuesday, Elizabeth Christian came into Paris to hang out for the day. She’s teaching in a town only an hour or so out, which made a daytrip was easy. When she got in we didn’t have a game plan, but we did know that we wanted a hearty meal. I’m still clueless about restaurants in my neighborhood, so we bummed around and ended up at a German restaurant over in the 5e. They had a tasty lunch special for 15€ that included a huge entrée, beer and a coffee. We were beyond full by the end. Success! In France, usually a meal special includes a coffee at the end. This is great, because by the end of the meal I’m fighting off a food coma and the espresso is a necessity.

         When we left the restaurant, we realized that we were right by the Parisian Panthéon. Yes, it turns out Paris has one too! No, it is nothing like Rome’s. We decided to go in since neither of us had ever been. Bonus: We got in for free with our education passes!

         This building had a lot of weird stuff going on. It used to be a cathedral, so it’s in the shape of one, but they’ve been battling to make it secular over the years. The walls are covered in paintings that are religious, but don’t make a ton of sense. There are saints mingling with dragons. There’s also a bunch of dedications to famous French authors. In order to show how much they value science over religion, they put a giant pendulum in the middle that has something to do with the rotation of the earth. Elizabeth noted that the pendulum looks like a modern art installation. The building draws an interesting parallel to France as a country. It’s historically religious and there are marks of religion all over it, but it desperately wants to present itself as separate from that. It sells this idea so hard that it ends up being unconvincing.

        

$$$        

         On Wednesday I met with another woman interested in taking English lessons from me. Once she can speak English, she wants to sell her real estate office and go into business for herself renting to foreigners. She’s hoping to do this in the next year so she wants to do 3-4 hours of English a week with me.  It’s a big project because I basically have to build her up from the bottom (she’s got a real low level of English at the moment). It will require hard work to get her where she wants to be, but this changes my financial situation in a big way. I am still trying to move to a different apartment though. Nothing has happened yet with that, but I’ll keep you all in the loop.

        

YOU LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERYDAY

         Thursday was our first day back at school after the Toussaint Vacation. As much as I like being able to sleep in, I missed hanging out with French high schoolers and talking about our respective cultures. They are full of surprises. For example, we were making a list of icons for France and America. We had the Statue of Liberty, Marilyn Monroe, McDonald’s. A girl said “Will Smith.” And I said “really!? You put Will Smith next to Marilyn Monroe?” And they were like “Yeah, the Fresh Prince!”

         Well, how about that? French high schoolers watch The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

         This seemed kind of random to me as an American icon. But then I thought about it, and realized that if you get in a room of people my age and start saying “In West Philadelphia, born and raised…” 95% of people will respond by singing the entire rest of the song.

for those of you who aren’t familiar with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBe0VCso0qs&feature=related

         So, I had to give them that one. They also asked if we really have fraternity parties and prom. Do we ever. They were amazed when I described how both of these things exist in full form. I believe I saw a jaw drop when I told them that I myself had worn a corsage. Vocab words for the day were “keg” and “kegger.”

        

         Another notable vocab word that presented itself in a different class that day was: “crackberry.”

         When talking about differences between Lycée de Villaroy and the high school that I went to, it came up that we had a bunch of vending machines. Vending machines selling food/drinks are illegal in high schools in France. I believe things were moving that way in the USA the last time I checked. Lycée de Villaroy does, however, have condom vending machines by the bathrooms. This does not happen in the USA as far as I’m aware.

         Another interesting discovery was that they don’t recognize Attention Deficit Disorder here. We were actually talking about S.U.V.s and one of my students had also heard the abbreviation A.D.D. mentioned and asked what it stood for. At first I assumed that the same thing exists here and just goes by a different name, so I explained about it with words they would know. After a lot of talking in circles, it became clear that they simply aren’t familiar with that here. I find that really interesting. When I was in highschool, probably 10% of the class was on ADD/ADHD meds. Some of my good friends still are. I researched online a little after the class and found that it exists here in some form (TDAH), but it looks like treatment for it is uncommon. Hmm.

Brune/Blonde        

         Friday night, Marina and I went to an art exhibit called Brune/Blonde. It was about women’s hair in cinema throughout the years. We had gotten free passes along with our movie tickets a couple weeks ago. I doubt that either of us would have sought out this exhibit otherwise. It had potential to be interesting, and it wasn’t dull. They covered how the concept of beauty in Hollywood has evolved over the years.

         The underlying message seemed to be that Hollywood had projected an unfair image of beauty in celebrating platinum blonds. And that, of course, is America’s fault because France, the fashion capital, has nothing to do with images of beauty… They talked about American racism and how it limited the images of beauty that showed up in pop culture. I got a riled up because I saw that as blatant hypocrisy. I’ve been getting annoyed with how often it seems that the French don’t see their own problems, but are really quick to address ours. For the record, racism is a very real problem here. Maybe I was being overly sensitive though, Marina didn’t think they were being offensive. I was also irritated because, while they seem to be saying that America neglected the brunettes, the exhibit only gave them a half-assed nod. There were a handful of Elizabeth Taylor shots, but they barely even showed her hair. It was like they just put them there in some sort of attempt at equality. They probably should have called it Brune/Blonde. Okay, I’m done with my fit now.

BREAKING THE CURSE OF THE COUSCOUS

         Marina had been craving couscous since she got to Paris. She had made numerous plans with numerous people to go get some and they had somehow all managed to fall through at the last minute. We started calling it The Curse of the Couscous. We actually went to the Brune/Blonde exhibit because her original plans to go eat couscous with a friend had fallen through.

         After the exhibit, we decided to try our luck and go to Chez Bebert, a restaurant in our neighborhood that specializes in Arabic food. We realized that this was tempting the fates, as it was the very same place that she and her friend had been planning on going to before the Curse struck and her friend had to cancel. It sits on a highly-trafficked corner, the food is great and the prices are reasonable. So, we were NOT alone there on a Friday night. We managed to get a seat without a wait because we arrived early (7:30pm is early for Paris). But, they sat us right up next to another couple and, as we sat there, they packed more and more people around us. To demonstrate: a girl in the party immediately to our left knocked over my orangina with her butt as she tried to squeeze between our table and hers to grab her seat.

         The close quarters could have been really awkward, but we actually ended up becoming best friends with the couple to our right, Titi and Virginie. Titi saw Marina taking a photo of our meals (they were photo worthy) and he offered in broken English to take a picture of us together. Marina shocked him by responding with her fluent French and we ended up chatting with them for the rest of our meal. The meals, by the way, were so good that I’ve been reliving them in my memory ever since. Marina ordered chicken couscous that came with a mountain of veggies and condiments and the first actually spicy pepper that I’ve tasted since being in Paris. Fun fact: hot sauce in Paris is usually indistinguishable from ketchup. I ordered a duck and fig tagine that came with seasoned couscous, apricots and raisins. It was heavenly.

         Titi and Virginie had bought a bottle of Algerian rosé wine and Virginie wasn’t pulling her weight, so Titi insisted that Marina and I take a couple glasses to finish up the bottle. We talked with them about Paris and how the dense population is stressful, how people can be so rude and cold. It was refreshing to hear that some French people struggle with the same big city issues in Paris. They recommended towns in Normandy that we should travel to and told us about the hazards/joys of traveling via scooter in France. Titi made us giggle with his ridiculous Celine Dion impressions. At the end of our meal, instead of a Parisian coffee, we ordered mint tea that was exactly how they made it when Pearl and I were in Morocco. It had the real mint leaves in there and I don’t even want to know how much sugar. That evening was really something else.

IT’S RAINING CATS AND FROGS

         Saturday, I went for a run along the quai. The way down to the river was stressful as always, dodging clueless or inconsiderate pedestrians. Parisian people, as a rule, will not move out of your way. It doesn’t matter if you’re a runner, it doesn’t matter if they see you from a mile away, it doesn’t matter if there’s tons of sidewalk for them to move to. I end up getting cut off and pushed into the streets a lot, even when it’s not that crowded. If someone accommodates me, I assume they’re a tourist.

         This time, a couple minutes after I got down to the Seine, the sky opened up and it started pouring rain. Everyone ran for cover under bridges and awnings and I was left with the whole quai to myself. I have never seen it that unpopulated in the middle of the day on a Saturday. It was great.

QUELQUES GENRES DES CLIQUES

         In the afternoon, I went to lunch and a photo exhibit with Chris. It’s photography month in Paris and there are photography exhibits all over town. We went to see a Raymond Depardon exhibit at the National Library of Paris (which is a catastrophe of a building, by the way). The set up for the exhibit was unlike anything I’d seen before. They just had one big white room with huge, color prints lined up side by side all the way around. The photos were of scenes from all over France. Not the sorts of scenes you might expect. There weren’t many gorgeous landscapes or romantic looking streets. It was more about finding the beauty in daily life: grocery stores, apartments buildings, a garage, things you don’t normally take the time to examine. There were no captions. You had to really take some time on each photo to get a feel for what region it was taken in and what Depardon’s focus was. It’s great going to exhibits like that with someone who has expertise in the subject, they can point out all the details that you would otherwise miss. Chris knows a lot about photography and was able to explain about the level of difficulty involved with the type of camera that Depardon used. It was the old-school kind that sits on a tripod, where the photographer has to stick their head under a sheet during the exposure. The kind that makes me think of graying portraits of great great-grandsomeones who had to sit very still for a long time. If you’re interested in checking out the exhibit, there’s a 5 minute slideshow of it online.

http://www.bnf.fr/fr/evenements_et_culture/expositions_videos/a.video_france_depardon.html

         The colors aren’t as vibrant as the real prints, but that gives you an idea of the subject matter.

         After that we saw The Social Network, which I enjoyed a lot. Facebook exists in full-form in France. But it was interesting seeing the American college lifestyle again after being here for a while. I’m realizing that a lot of what I thought was a product of youth might be limited to American youth. It made me think of how much of that partying and college culture does or does not exist here. My high schoolers are fascinated by it. They love Gossip Girl and they’ve already adopted facebook 100%, I wonder if they will eventually adopt some version of the American party scene as well. Maybe they already have. I will have to investigate this further and report back.

This week is going to be full of travels. Armistice is still a national holiday here so we don't work on Thursday. I'm going to visit Elizabeth in Chauny for Wednesday-Thursday and then Friday I'm going to London to visit Emma. I'm real excited.