Gobble, Gobble!

Happy Thanksgiving to all. I am very thankful for many things this year. Ok. Here they are:

I am thankful to be where I am and to be doing what I am doing.

I am thankful for the things that I have, even though I can probably carry all of my belongings in a backpack….

I am thankful that Iceland Air did not lose me.

I am thankful for a new beginning.

I am thankful for all of the wonderful Northern French people who welcomed me.

I am thankful for my loving family and my fabulous friends who send me love and packages from afar.

I am thankful for all of the other Dunkerque assistants. We are a good group.

I am thankful that I have not one, but two beds! That is a lot to be thankful for.

I am thankful that I have a job and I get paid to speak my native language.

I am thankful for a change of luck.

I had my 6eme and 5eme students make hand turkeys as a lesson. They loved it. I loved it. Here’s a good one. They were all good though. How can you resist the charm of a hand turkey? And does anyone actually know what that hang-y thing is called?

As much as I wish I were home right now, napping after a good turkey dinner, I am very happy to be where I am. I will make my own Thanksgiving and be thankful for all of the other times that I have celebrated with my family. Except all I want right now is some of my Dad’s deliciously good sausage/sage stuffing and some canned cranberry sauce. You know, the kind that looks like a can after you’ve taken it out? 

Send some leftovers please?

You remind me of hooooome

It is a little strange to me that even though I am so far away from home, I am able to find things here in France to connect me back to my home.  Not just the peanut butter and Nuthins. For example, one of the assistants here in Dunkerque is from Vancouver BC. Just a hop across the boarder!  But that’s not the amazing thing. Aside from the comfort of being able to talk to someone who has seen the San Juan Islands and who knows what a real mountain looks like and what its like to live somewhere that it is always green, I was surprised when he told me something. His family drives through Washington to go to Oregon (or anywhere in the States really) a few times a year. And every time they drive down the good ole I-5 corridor, his mom insists on taking a little side trip on I-405 and Bothell-Everett Highway to…..Country Village. Of all places to go. He has probably been to Country Village as many times as I have. For those of you who do not know what it is, here is a brief description. Your grandma would probably love it. Quilt shops, crafty, homemade soap and candles, pottery, wicker furniture, those wooden sculptures made with chain-saws=kitch. There is a big duck pond and you can feed the ducks and geese and other water fowl. There used to be a carousel that I loved to ride, then they moved it to another part. There is a little train that you can ride around on. Two English tea houses. A glass-blowing studio. And he has had to endure trip upon trip to Country Village, just like I did whenever relatives came to town. And all the way over here in France we can share a moment together when we talk about how you really only have to go once to know what its all about, but usually have to go many times and how its in country Village where Santa’s Sleigh arrives and “flies” down to light the official Bothell Christmas Tree. Amazing.

Then there is the “Bothell-ite” that I met. At my first “training day,” we were all walking to lunch and I overheard a friend of one of the Dunkerque assistants tell someone that she was from Seattle. Excited that someone was even from the same state, I asked her if I had heard her correctly.

Me: I’m from Seattle too!

Her: Seriously? Really?

Me: Well…………not really.            

(because no one actually says that they are from Bothell, no one knows it, and Grey’s Anatomy is the only reason the French have any idea what I’m talking about. )

Her: Me neither!

Me: Where are you actually from?

Her: Bothell…

Me: OMG!

At this point I was almost on the ground with shock and laughter. Come to find I know just about exactly where she lives, and although we went to different schools, we have many, many, many mutual friends. She went to High School with friends of mine from Jr. High who got married this summer. And of course I asked her if she had ever been to Spartas. Got the usual response: yes. And told her that it meant that she has met almost all of my family. Crazy.

            I could imagine having someone else from Washington state being in France at the same time as me (well, because I know for a fact that they are people from Washington here…) and I could imagine someone from the Seattle area and maybe Bothell being in France. But to have them be in my academie? And to meet them walking down the street?

            Dunkerque is blustery. And it reminds me of the great winds of Bellingham. I am grateful for double paned windows here. But as I sit here and listen to the howling wind shake my fairly new windows, I can’t help but think of home. My Bellingham window was put in somewhere around 1906. (If it was the original.) Paint chips peels off of the frame all the time and fell onto my bed. Most likely lead paint. The glass part of the window was not really attached to the frame anymore. So that every time the wind blew, it shook in its boots. There were many nights that I was afraid that I would wake up with broken window all over me. But she always held steady. When it rained and was windy, little bubbles of water blurped over the frame and into my room. And during the winter, even with towels securely placed over any cracks, a fairly thick sheet of ice crept up the inside of my window, making it feel like a winter wonderland. Thank you Jack Frost.

            Although its not exactly the same here, and I know that it will never be, I can still be comforted by these little things that remind me and pull images from the depths of my memory to the surface.

You spend 3 months of your life doing laundry

           

Today at the laundry mat I had the most interesting conversation in French thus far.  I have found “une laverie” down the street where I can get a Wi-Fi connection, so skipping over Mac Do’s today I washed my sheets and got quite a bit done. A man was there with his wife, doing the same and made a comment on my computer or my typing or something. (The French are generally very impressed by my fast typing. Thank you third grade.) I took my headphones out to explain to him how I got Internet there, but not at my house and he was very surprised. He told me how at his house he has one of those little USB Internet keys but I told him that this one program I have, Skype, doesn’t work with the Wi-Fi keys.  He didn’t know what Skype was so I explained it to him and told him how I use it to talk to my family, how cheap it was to call phones and how free it was to use computer to computer and it even had video! It was then that he realized that I was not French and asked me where I was from. I told him that yes, I was from the US and I was American.

            This man was in his 50’s or so and I had the honor of being the first American he’s ever met. “ A real American” he told his wife. He was very impressed with my French, told me that I spoke very well, which is an excellent boost to my confidence. I told him what I’m doing here and where I’m from and all of that jazz. And he was very interested. He asked what my opinion of France was and any differences that I noticed. If it was more expensive to live here or there and how and why? Then he asked my opinion on the social security reform and Obama and such and health care and we had a nice long conversation on that topic. He was shocked to hear how much my emergency room bill was AFTER insurance when I went last spring for what was probably food poisoning. Except that I was there for an hour, they did not give me any sure answers and I saw a doctor for a few minutes. Take out the insurance and I still owed over $700.

            We talked about where I’m from and like most St Polois or Dunkerquois, they think that their weather is soooo shocking to Americans. Then explain to him that I’m from the Northwest.  It’s rainy and windy and cold there too! We had a winter where it rained for more than 30 days! And the suicide rate in Seattle is the highest in the country. So no, your St Pol rain does not bother me. I am quite at home here. He said how him and his wife like to vacation in the summer in the south, and although it is nice down there and cold up here, there are no catastrophes in the North. I tried to explain the Ring of Fire and told him that we have earthquakes in our area. He was so shocked! “You’ve been in a earthquake before?” Well, yes, but not a big one.

            It was very nice to just sit and talk to someone in French about so many different things. And I felt like I was able to just talk for one of the first times. That I didn’t have to think a whole lot about what I said before I said it. And if I couldn’t think of a word in French, I was able to explain what it meant in French. Because it’s not like he would have been able to translate it from English. And it just seemed so easy for the first time. He was a very nice man, and it just cements my opinion on how wonderful the northern French people are. They are really very warm and welcoming to everyone!

            Just about two months in and I think I’m doing alright.

schooooool

A little about my students:

I had originally wanted to be placed in a primary school when I applied to the assistantship program. After having been placed in a collège, (age 10-15 or 6th-9th grade) I was a little bit disappointed. I had figured that in primary school, I would have to use a lot of French because the students would only know a little bit of English.  I knew that I could handle the basics, like colors and animals, etc. And i thought that in a collège, seeing how most of the students have had at least a few years of English, that they wouldn’t need any French, that we would be going over harder grammar things, etc.

What a disappointment. I have kids in 3eme who have all taken English for at least 3 years, with this year being their fourth, who do not understand a word of what I say. I briefly introduce myself: name, age, nationality, where I am from, hobbies, brothers and sisters, pets…and so on. And they barely understand when I tell them that I am from the United States of America. There are even students who have taken English for as long as I have taken French: 8 years. And those students don’t understand what I say either.

There is also the strangeness of the grammar that they have learned. They have all learned a British English grammar. So they talk differently, with different vocabulary. The one that gets me the most is when the teacher tells them to get out their « rubbers » or erasers. And I giggle. Because that does not mean eraser to me. Or to most Americans. Or the way that they have been taught to say « I’ve got. » For example « I’ve got two brothers and one sister. » But if they don’t have something they say « I haven’t (got). » Example: « I haven’t (got) a dog. » There are times when I say « I have a car. » And they don’t understand what I am saying until repeat myself with « I’ve got a car. » It is very frustrating to have to completely adapt my own style of speaking to British English so that these kids will understand me. I already speak sooooo slowly and enunciate like crazy. But they cannot make me British. There are again times when I say something and they don’t understand it until the teacher repeats it in their British English accent.

In each class there are one or two good students, students who actually care and are interested. I’ve noticed a big difference between students in the US and in France, especially concerning language. Since two additional languages are required in France, many times they are languages that students don’t want to take. They get a choice, but if they don’t want to learn any language, they are out of luck because they have to learn two! But in the US, a language is not obligatory (at least it wasn’t in my school.) however if I had plans of going on to a university, most require at least 3 or 4 years of a foreign language, so knowing that I wanted to continue my education, I took a language. Because language is not forced upon us, i feel like the students who take a language are taking it because they want to, because they have a passion and because they care!

I had some of my best and worst classes the past two days. Students that really understood what I was saying and then students who wrote a list of numbers 1 through 10 when I asked them to make a list of ten adjectives. Really? It makes me wonder if I am trying hard enough to let them understand me. I say at the beginning of each new class that it is VERY important that they let me know if they don’t understand and that they can do this by asking me to repeat slower or asking me “whats the French/English for…?” but sometimes they don’t even understand that. And I actually got mad at two students today for laughing, they were really only laughing because they didn’t understand but couldn’t tell me and didn’t understand me when I asked them what was funny and why they were laughing. And then I felt like a mean teacher.

lounging in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris

It has been a while since I have updated. I have had some difficulty finding internet access lately. I have a computer account at one of the schools, but things such as my blog and facebook and whatever else someone would want to do on the computer are blocked. So I’ve been trying to keep up by writing in a word document, which I always plan on posting later. But I’ve found it hard to do that, and obviously I haven’t done that. So we will start fresh from here.

About two and a half weeks ago, my two lovely friends Becca and Meghan arrived. It was late one Sunday morning, I had just gone to the street market and had made brunch with a friend when we set out to go downtown. I grabbed my phone and noticed that I had a voice-mail. My very first one in France! In essence: “Katieeeee…..we are here. At a bar. By the train station. It is 11am and we are drinking beer. The bartender let us call you. I think you can call us back on this number. He is very nice. Pleeeease come find us.” And that was the beginning of their stay here. We have gone to the beach, poked at jelly fish, explored WWII bunkers, played lots of Phase-10, made delicious food, relaxed, gone on adventures, slept a lot, watched movies, bought crazy wigs, shopped at Babou, went on a Parisian Halloween adventure, stayed in bed for almost a whole day, got shaky in the worst club ever, laughed so much, reenacted SNL skits, eaten a lot of chaussons aux pommes, and so on and so on. This weekend will be Becca’s last, she is leaving us to go home! We will return to Paris again, this time to see Andrew Bird in concert. 

It has been really nice to have them here. I had been here exactly a month when they got here, and in that month I had spent a lot of time alone with myself. I have always enjoyed time alone, to some extent. And going into this I knew that there would be a lot of time alone. But with my bag getting lost and my arrival not being what I expected it to be, I was starting to get very lonely. They came at the perfect time! And now that they have been here, I will be so very sad to see them go. They have made it feel like home for me.