Thank You!

When I returned from New York I had this big box waiting for me on my desk. The famous package I had heard so much about in New York ("did you get our package yet??") had arrived in Laval while I was gone!

It was a great thing to come back to and it contained a whole load of goodies such as Christmas Peeps (who even knew those existed?), Hershey's kisses, fun notes from Jill, Liz and Michelle, and some pictures from home.

The lone Hershey kiss you see in the picture is the only remaining evidence that they were ever in the package. I can't even claim to have shared them. I let the English girls try them and they said all sorts of not-nice things about Hershey's chocolate: "it tastes like parmesan cheese!" "it tastes of sick" "Hershey's sounds like an STD." So I had no choice but to eat the kisses all by myself!

Thanks for the fun package girls!

Adventures in Teaching

I taught all of my classes the alphabet yesterday. Every grade did the alphabet but it was tailored differently to each level. For example, with the older kids we used the alphabet to then play Hangman and with the little kids we only learned half the alphabet and then they colored in the letters of the alphabet. Every grade found the the alphabet song hilarious -the only thing stopping me from telling the older kids that they most certainly could not do any better than the kids on the CD was my inability to construct that sentence in French. The little kids -7 year olds, my "babies"- were more amused by one child's decision to stand up and dance to the alphabet song in some sort of Moroccan-looking belly dance complete with intricate hand/arm gestures. It was all I could do to stop myself from laughing. It might help to mention that this kid, Gerard, is my favorite kid and as much as I know it's wrong, I have a hard time telling him to behave (which I should do often as he's a bit of a problem child). My second favorite kid, Corentin, decided this dancing thing was a good source of attention and then got up and tried dancing too. I think it's worth restating at this point that I had two children (essentially) belly-dancing to the ALPHABET song and I could not laugh in front of them! Before I could have any more copycatting belly-dancers in the classroom I quickly put an end to the dancing. The babies took surprisingly well to the new information, and they also remembered what we had learned before the vacation - they can all still count to ten in English! I was so proud of them!
Not surprisingly, the babies were more cooperative than the older kids who were really testing me yesterday. I had to move a few of their seats around to get them to stop talking. At one point I declared that there would be silence in the class as they copied down the words to the song. That just made it worse and I found myself saying "shhhh" and "Silence!" every 30 seconds or so. They had pissed me off so much that I decided to give the good kids some candy canes from home and not give the candy to the bad kids. I know that this wasn't exactly the right thing to do, but I didn't care at this point. The bad kids had no shame and flat out begged for candy even after several encounters such as this one:

Kid: Laura, can I please have a candy? I didn't get one.
Laura: Do you think your behavior merits it?
Kid: (looking guilty)No, it doesn't.

It's just frustrating with this class because I know we could have a lot of fun if only they'd stop talking. Sometimes I stand there and just wait for silence and by the time one kid tells another kid to stop talking because "Laura is waiting" then the second kid responds to the first kid who then starts talking to someone else and it's just a vicious cycle. I also have a major problem child in this class who is really good when he behaves (which is never) but really bad when he doesn't (which is all the time). In the beginning of the class he started acting up and I stood next to his desk and said in a relatively nice tone "Kevin, I'm warning you now, the first time you misbehave you are going back to class, there will not be a second ......" and as I stood there repeating "second...second..." struggling to remember the word in French Kevin looked up at me and said "warning?" and I said "Yes, so you understand, no second warning, ok?" The poor kid is always in trouble, he knows the drill by now. Kind of undermines your sense of authority when the kid you are threatening has to help you to formulate the threat in his language. But in the end I suppose it worked because it was one of the few weeks when I didn't have to send Kevin out of the classroom.

In other news, all of the assistants were swapping "can you believe this happened to me at school today?" stories at dinner and amidst the tales of uncooperative teachers/administrators/students and misspelled/misused English words in official texts "thirty, fourty, fifity" this gem of a story stood out:

A teacher quoting Shakespeare to his primary school class in front of the English assistant said "To be or not to be? What is the question?" Tessa, the English assistant in question, did not have the heart to correct him.

I've had a pretty bad case of jet-lag that has been keeping me up until about 4 in the morning most nights this past week, so I was able to fall asleep at a relatively early time (1AM) last night and looked forward to sleeping in. Unfortunately around 9AM I was woken up by some work in the hallway that eventually gravitated into my room. Once the work was done I was able to sleep till 12:45PM! Then it was time to get up, have lunch and do some lesson planning. I learned the French word for mop (and quickly proceeded to forget it) as I borrowed a mop and vacuum cleaner from downstairs. I had to take a DVD that wasn't working back to the video place and things didn't go exactly as I planned:

Laura: Hello, monsieur, this DVD doesn't work.
Mean Video Store Employee(MVSE): It worked a week ago when I watched it.
Laura: Right, but I tried it last night and it doesn't work.
MVSE: What do you mean "it doesn't work?"
Laura: I mean, I hear the sound but there's no picture.
MVSE: Well, it must be a problem with your machine because I tried it last week and it works.
Laura: Well, see, I had to watch another DVD last night since this one didn't work and my machine works fine.
MVSE proceeds to put the DVD into his machine and... it works!
Laura: See, I couldn't get past the main menu. And like I said, my DVD player works. Do you have another copy?
MVSE: No and there's nothing wrong with the DVD...
Laura: The problem is that I'd like to try to watch it again at home but it's due back now and I don't want to have to pay an extra day for it since I never got to see it.
MVSE: Well, I can let you have it for one more day just this time, but not again.

Once again a complete lack of customer service in France. Why is this still surprising to me? Did I really expect that he would just be nice and accomodating? And just for the record I'd like to report that I brought the DVD back home and it STILL doesn't work. I even rented another one just to make sure it wasn't my machine. The other DVD works, the evil one that only works in the store still won't play!

So now I have 2 DVDs to watch at home and of course tonight was the night everyone felt like going out to the movies, so I went along. Fortunately, they were showing George Clooney's "Goodnight and Good luck" in VO (version orginale aka, ENGLISH!!!) and although I wasn't particulary interested in this movie back at home I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see an American movie in English for once. I actually really liked the movie too. When we walked out of the movie theater and Jenny heard French people speaking she said "ooh I forgot we were in France!"

On a completely unrelated note, the national sales (soldes) started today. It's a month-long sales period and things in the stores are as much as 50 to 70% off! I think I'm going to hit up some stores tomorrow morning before teaching the little darlings in the afternoon.

A month worth of updates - oh la la!

I'm not exactly sure if anyone's reading this, but I did get an email from a friend who was disappointed to see that my blog had gone into "reruns" and since so many things have happened in the month or so since my last post, I figured now would be a good time to update the blog.

December got off to an impossibly good start with Davin visiting Paris for my birthday. After he left I wasn't too sad because I knew I'd see him in NYC in two weeks and there were still tons of fun things to look forward to in Laval before Christmas. There was ice skating, a Christmas show at one of my schools, Christmas dinner at the foyer, the Christmas market, etc. Best of all there was the knowledge that I was going to get to go home for 2 whole weeks and see my family, my friends and my city. It was just a really good month and it flew by.

The ice skating in Laval's temporary ice skating rink left much to be desired since they only used the Zamboni machine thing once a day and we went skating later in the day. We didn't even last half an hour, but it was fun anyway.
The Christmas dinner at the foyer went on for ages...we finally got up and left around midnight (it had started at 7PM). We didn't have traditional French Christmas food but we did exchange gifts. Us English assistants decided to rebel against the "rule" that you had to dress up and we got ourselves cow-themed shirts and Santa outfits. We thought we were the funniest thing to ever happen to the foyer Christmas dinner, but I'm pretty sure the French just thought that we hadn't understand the dress-up rule. Either way, it was a good time.

When it was finally time to go home I had to lug my suitcases to Paris and stay at my friend Cassi's apartment so that I could make it to the airport in time for my 9:30AM flight the next morning. It was not a pretty process. By the time I got back to NYC I told my parents that I never wanted to see a suitcase again. The thought of having to go back to France 2 weeks later and once again lug my suitcases across Paris was not in the least bit appealing. You'd think I'd just pack less...but no.

Anyhow, I was thrilled to be home and eat my mom's food and see my family and my dog. I made just about everyone I came in contact with massage my sore-from carrying suitcases- arms and I slept all the time for the first few days (as if my life in France was so difficult that I needed the rest). Jet lag played fun tricks on me for the better part of the first week home and I was usually fast asleep by 9PM on the couch every night. It didn't help that there was a transit strike for the first time in 25 years in NYC and that I was more or less stranded at home for the 3 days it lasted.

So Christmas came and went and so did New Years and in between I spent lots of time with my family and with Davin, less time with my friends, and a fair amount of the time sleeping. I took lots of pictures of NY so that I could show them to people in Laval and I stocked up on all the stuff I thought I'd need to get through the next 6 months in France.

As much fun as it was to be home, I couldn't help feeling that I hadn't accomplished everything that I wanted to. Maybe I had just built it up too much in my head. Maybe it's because I spent too much time sleeping. Who knows? Either way, it was nice being home. Living here in France has made me realize that living in NYC isn't so bad and that I really like my life there. In college (I love how I say that and it sounds like so long ago) I used to always want to go abroad to work - preferrably to Paris, but I didn't really care where. I didn't want to live abroad forever but just a few years to get it out of my system. It turns out that it's not as easy to pack up and leave home as I thought it would be. I'm glad I'm doing this because it's letting me do something I've wanted to do for a while - live in France - but it's also helping me figure out what I want to do after this stint as an English teacher is over.

A bit deep for a travel blog....moving on.

The return to France was not as smooth as I would have liked it to be. When all was said and done it was a 17 hour journey from my house in Queens to Laval. The plane (on which i blissfully slept almost the entire way) was delayed almost an hour in arriving to Paris. This caused me to miss my train back to Laval. I then had to wait 3 hours for the next train which was just as well since i also had to lug my suitcases across Paris again because the bus I wanted to take from the aiport to the train station was ON STRIKE. Bad month for Laura and strikes, but at least I wasn't surprised about the one in France. Strikes are more the rule than the exception here in France.

It was nice to be back in my room and to be rid of the suitcases and it was really nice to catch up with the English girls. I brought them Dunkin Donuts from back home and they liked the jelly ones the best. I didn't have much jet lag coming back this way. I also didn't have much desire to go back to teaching the kiddies. But I got over it and went back to 2 of my 3 schools this week. It wasn't so bad after all mainly because I discovered that KIDS LOVE HANGMAN. And you know what? I love Hangman too. All my classes will be playing Hangman for the rest of the year.

Other highlights of the week: I joined the gym (although now that I've actually gone to the gym I'd hesitate to use the world "highlight") and I joined the movie rental place! I figured out a way to make French DVDs play on my computer and there are so many movies I want to see so I am quite excited about this.

When I joined the gym the guy who was showing me around had to go teach a class and he left me with these words: "Contary to what most people think, French people don't hate Americans." I was kind of taken aback at the randomness of this comment but appreciated the sentiment. Unfortunately, there was a less kind Frenchy waiting in the wings to ruin the moment. He had overheard what the other guy said about Americans and said to me "Oh, you're American? Too bad" and I said "Why's that?" and he just kept shaking his head and saying "Too bad. What a pity. No luck." but not explaining why. Then he told me "I know an American, she's nice" (as if she were the lone exception). I kept waiting for him to laugh or smile or for some indication that he was kidding but it never came. I took out my notepad and started writing something down in an attempt to ignore his presence and I think he got the hint. More than being annoyed or insulted by this one man's ignorance, I was just kind of annoyed at the fact that this whole "You're American/I'm French and I either hate/don't hate your country" thing always has to come up. It's all part of the experience though so it's ok.

Bonne Année 2006 à tous! aka "Happy New Year 2006" (they always specify the year here).