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.