Scenes from Laval

Since the weather has finally started to get nice around here we've started going on long walks on Sunday afternoons. Last week we walked to the forest I had gone to on bike the previous week and this week we went walking in the opposite direction along the river. We didn't get very far because a lot of the paths were flooded by water and practically impassable.

Saint Malo

This past weekend we went up to "the beach" for a day. We took the train about an hour and a half north to the town of Saint Malo in Brittany. It wasn't exactly warm enough for the beach yet, but I think we all have cabin fever and just wanted to pretend that it was Spring already.

Saint Malo is near Mont Saint Michel and and is similar in that when the tide is out you can walk out on the sand to the nearby islands. Not trusting that I wouldn't slip on a rock/we wouldn't make it back before the tides changed, we contented ourselves with walking to a litte island with a fort on it that ended up being closed. It was a windy day (see photo below) but we had a great time climbing the rocks and walking along the ramparts of the old (fortified) part of town.

So even though all we did was walk around the beach and the ramparts we managed to work up an appetite(it doesn't take much with us).

Brittany is crepe and cider country so there was no doubt we would be eating crepes. We had the most delicious crepes in a charming creperie with a really friendly owner. The crepes were certainly the highlight of the day.

the color purple

You know how sometimes if you say a word enough times it starts to sound funny and you begin to doubt that it's even a word? It has happened to me a few times before and it happened again this morning.

After we formed a huge circle around the class and played "The Farmer in the Dell" (I was the nurse, thank you very much), we reviewed the colors we had learned last week. The teacher found that their pronunciation of "purple" was slightly off and so he decided he would have me say it and have them repeat it one by one. All 29 of them.

Now, we do this one-by-one repeating thing all the time, but something about it was different today. You try listening to 29 French children try to pronounce/butcher the word "purple" and tell me if it doesn't start sounding funny to you.

This next bit has nothing to do with school, but I figured I'd mention it. This morning I woke up and was a little bit confused and apparently very hungry. I woke up in the middle of a dream in which I was standing at the counter at the bakery across the street and counting my change so that I could buy a pain au chocolat. I was really looking forward to eating the yummy chocolate filled croissant but then I woke up and realized that it was all just a dream. Needless to say, my usually uninspiring bowl of oatmeal was especially boring this morning.

Repas Anglophone

In theory we are supposed to have a theme meal every month at the foyer where I live. I don't think we've had one since October, but someone decided that March would be the month for the English themed meal. Being the only American here, I automatically get grouped with the English girls, so instead of being an "English" meal it was an "Anglophone" meal.

We decided on a pretty basic menu because no matter what we suggested we knew we wouldn't change the opinion of the Frenchies that English food is bad and that American cuisine consists solely of hamburgers. It was also a bit of a challenge to find things that could be produced in mass (for 40 people) and still taste good.

The Menu
Starter: Caesar salad
Main dish: Roasted chicken (roast beef being too stereotypically English) with roasted potatoes and Yorkshire pudding
Dessert: Apple Crumble with creme Anglaise and Rice Krispies Treats (my idea!!)

On the day of the meal we had to go down to the kitchen at 8AM(!!) to help the chef make our meal. Since the biggest meal of the day in the cafeteria is lunch (people who work in the neighborhood come here to eat) they were really busy preparing for that and so we donned our aprons and hair nets (not kidding) and were quickly put to work. I cut up baguettes into tiny pieces to make croutons. No fewer than 3 of the chefs warned me not to chop my fingers off with the huge knife. Jo peeled potatoes, Jenny worked on the Yorkshire pudding and then Jo and I were made to peel 4kg of apples for the crumble. The chef demonstrated a "quick, simple" way to peel and core the apples. He basically peeled the whole thing in one shot without stopping and didn't understand why we were laughing. we explained that he made it look really easy but that we wouldn't be able to do it. He said "don't you guys ever cook?" More laughter.

After we finally finished peeling the apples he cooked them and I helped him lay the crumble dough on top of the apples. The dough was delicious and we couldn't stop eating it when he wasn't looking. I'm pretty sure we violated a lot of kitchen rules that day, as ate everything that we were preparing. After the crumble was put in the oven to bake, we tackled the salad. Following the chef's orders we sorted the joli pieces of lettuce into the salad bowls and discarded the pieces that were pas joli. The chefs had all finished their work and left us to finish our salad as they ate lunch. Luckily they had left us the bowl with the leftover dough to use as a garbage bin for the ugly pieces of lettuce that we weren't suitable for the salad. When they weren't looking we took out all the dough and ate it as we prepared our salad. It sounds gross but it was really yummy.

We finished almost everything by 11AM and only had to come back at 6 to make the salad dressing and the Rice Krispies treats.

To make an already long story short, the dinner went well and the Frenchies liked the Rice Krispies treats! When they first heard the ingredients they were pretty weirded out ("you want to make a dessert using cereal? and with marshmallows? are the marshmallow inside the rice krispies?"). I explained to no fewer than 10 people how to make them and I can't tell you how happy I was when the chef said to me "C'est pas mauvais!" (it's not bad!)

Kids will be Kids

While my spoken French is (I hope) improving everyday, I've started to wonder how well my written French is nearly two years out of college. I sometimes wonder how I could've written 10 page papers in French. But then I also wonder how I wrote 10 pages of anything!I've started reading more in French so as to curb the brain cell loss. I even contemplated starting a journal in French. That idea didn't last too long.

Apparently I have nothing to worry about. My best class - the really smart and sweet ones who have in the past pretended to be stuck to their chairs just so that they could stay in my class longer - MARVELLED at my ability to write in French yesterday.

We are working on the parts of the body(as we have been for over a month now). The kids were all given a picture of a monster that they had to describe in their notebooks (i.e. "The monster has three eyes"). I then asked a few kids to come to the board. So as to not give away the spelling of the English words I wanted them to write on the board I wrote the body parts in French. As I was writing the words for nose, mouth, toes (le nez, la bouche, les orteilles) on the board all of a sudden all the kids started making noise behind me. One girl said "Wow Laura, you write really well in French!" and I turned around and was like "Thanks...but these are simple words..." As I turned back to continue writing on the board I heard one of the girls say to the girl next to her "Yeah, but she's English, you wouldn't expect it.." She then started telling me all these French expressions and asking if I knew what they meant. When I didn't she - and her classmates- would all chime in to explain it to me (even with little gestures when necessary!)

The kids don't fully understand who I am/what I do/what language I speak. Some examples:

Sometimes in the middle of talking to me in French the kids will ask me (in French) if I speak French. It makes me really wish I knew how to say "duh" in French.

One time (with my 7 year olds) in the middle of the class a kid said "oh, you speak English?" These are also the kids who think that their teacher went all the way to the United States to pick me out for them. The other day in class (also in the middle of the lesson) a girl randomly said "you can tell that you're not French, when you speak you have an accent sometimes." It's funny how the kids have a way of bringing you crashing right back down to earth whenever you think you're doing well with their language. The whole encounter was actually it was funnier in French so I'll put that part in for my francophile friends:

student: ça se voit que tu n'es pas française.
me: comment ça?
student: ça se voit quand tu parles. tu as un accent.
me: (laughing a little) ça s'entend plutôt, non?

The teacher in the back of the room got a kick out of that one.

Today I saw one of my students in the street with a kid I didn't know. I said bonjour to them and they said it back. Before I had even passed them the kid I didn't know turned to my student and said "Do you know her?" and my student turned to look at me and hesitated a second before saying "yeah....she's...the English student" and I said to him "assistant, not student!!"

Of course I can't forget the time that a student was showing me his marker box that was written in both English and French. He would cover up the French part and have me read the English part and then tell him what it meant in French. He would then compare what I said to what was written in French and was surprised every time that it was the same thing. I was never fully sure if he was testing my knowledge of English or of French.

How could I have written this much without mentioning 50 Cent? He comes up at least once a week: Laura, est-ce que tu connais 50 Cent? (do you know 50 Cent?) I'm never sure if they're asking me if I know 50 Cent personally or if they are just wondering if I've heard of him. Anyhow, I'm really sick of hearing about 50 Cent. One time a girl came up to me at the end of class with a picture that she had been begging her teacher all through classto show me . As she approached me with the picture I said to myself "I'll bet anything in the world she's going to show me a picture of 50 Cent." And guess what??? It was a picture of 50 Cent! It was a cut-out from a magazine and on the reverse side of the page was none other than Harry Potter. So, yes, in France 50 Cent is a role model for children!

Finally, I'll leave you with a few lovely mental images. If ever on a random Tuesday morning you think of me and wonder what I'm doing all the way over in France here are some possibilities:

-Forgetting the melody of "If you're happy and you know it" in front of a class of 30 students. It actually happened. It most certainly didn't help that their over-eager teacher was in the back of the room singing "If you're happy and you know it" to the melody from "She'll be coming 'round the mountain."
-Dancing the hokey-pokey in front of a group of 8 year olds.
-Trying to get some "too cool for school" kids to be enthusiastic about singing "if you're happy and you know it" and then calling a kid out for faking all the words.
-Standing in a circle holding hands with students and singing along to "The farmer in the dell" (or rather, learning the lyrics as I go along) with the aforementioned over-eager teacher who sings like a 7 year old girl despite the fact that he's a 50+ year old man.
-Trying to contain my laughter as I have my kids repeat the phrase "Run, Forrest, Run!"

Here's a picture of my babies, the 7 year olds. It's quite normal for kids to be out of their seats. It often happens to me that I just say to a kid "Why are you standing?" and the kid will just turn around and go back to his seat without even responding.

The Best of Both Worlds

Yesterday morning Tessa (my bike riding partner) and I went for a ride in the woods. We had to walk our bikes up this huge muddy hill in order to get to the paved bike paths and we kind of felt like amateurs in our jeans when there was a group of about 5 people in full bike riding regalia trying to go up at the same time as us. As we were leading the way into the forest I couldn't help but think that it looked a lot like the jungle in "Lost" (minus all the green foliage) and I wondered if there would actually be a bike path at the top of this hill. With lots of pain in my lungs we finally made it to the path. One way led down and was quite tempting. The other way was steep and led to an even higher path. Still in much pain, I walked my bike up the (perfectly bikeable) path and made it to the higher one. Then we rode through the woods and it was a lot of fun. We found horse stables and there was some sort of teenage horse jumping competition going on. We watched for a bit and then followed some roads out of the woods eventually making our way back to town. We had NO idea where we were going but that was what made it even more fun.

Since it was Sunday EVERYTHING in town was closed and it was really nice to enjoy the outdoors. We were certainly not the only people riding around on bike but we were the ones least dressed for the occasion. As we went through the woods trying to perfect our hands-free biking techniques Tessa joked that she was teaching me the way to enjoy a Sunday in the countryside. I said "come to New York where you can shop all day on Sundays and you'll see which is better." I think this time in Laval is actually changing the New Yorker in me that needs everything to be open all the time. Could I actually be mellowing out?

Back in town we ended up in a neighborhood that I recognized because one of the teachers I work with lives there. We biked past her house and her daughters were in the yard so we stopped to say hello. Sometimes it just feels like Mr. Rogers' neighborhood around here!

After bike riding I got a delicious, fresh-out-of-the-oven baguette and I ate it with Philadelphia cream cheese that another assistant was nice enough to bring me from England! Warm baguette + cream cheese = the best of both worlds