A Tough Day at the Office

Another school trip. This time it was an outing to play a little "Swin Golf." Sometimes my job can be so taxing .

School Trip

Today I accompanied one of my classes on a school trip. In the morning we went to a "medieval times" sort of place and in the afternoon we went to a town with Roman ruins.

I went with the teacher who makes me feel the most uncomfortable of all the teachers I work with. I've mentioned this teacher before, he sings in a really high pitch and thinks he knows English better than I do. In fact, just last week we had a bit of a tiff over the importance of capitalizing the first letter of the months. He always pretends like he's going to let me lead the class but in less than 5 minutes is giving orders from the back of the room or standing behind me and writing the words I'm having the kids repeat. He's actually a nice guy and has invited me to eat at his house a couple of times. His wife is really nice and told us we could stop by if we ever needed anything. But still, he's not my favorite colleague. It also doesn't help that he has taken to calling me Sarah lately (the name of last year's assistant).

Anyhow, the trip was fun even though I spent most of the time at the medieval place comforting a student who was hysterically crying because she was scared of animals and there were horses and donkeys in the show. I felt so bad for the poor girl and was pretty sure that I would have to end up carrying her, but in the end she got over it and actually was able to go near the horses! In the afternoon at the Roman ruins the children were literally sitting and leaning (and sometimes climbing) on the ruins. This didn't seem to phase their teacher and I had a hard time communicating -in French and to 8 year olds- the importance of NOT stepping on archeological ruins! The most troubled child that I work with (and believe me there are plenty) decided he would throw one of his fits at the ruins because he didn't like that the teacher had pulled him off one of the walls. After this he decided he would not do any work (the kids had to draw what they saw) and that he would run away from the teacher and all around the ruins yelling "Je suis libre." ("I'm free"). When I wasn't trying to catch him I was busy trying to suppress my laughter. This child is really cute but really troubled - he often tips his desk over and has threatened to jump out the window. I've also seen him with ink all over his face after trying to eat his pen. The teacher refers to that time of the year as the time when "Donovan used to drink his ink."
Despite all the terrible things that he does and the fact that he is really not well, I kind of like the kid. He wanted to sit next to me in the bus and so I let him and he told me stories about his chérie:
On n'est plus ensemble, elle sortait avec un autre depuis le début....j'ai fait tout pour la récuperer. Je lui ai même fait un licorne (We're not together anymore, she was going out with someone else the whole time...I did everything I could to win her back. I even drew her a unicorn).

This kid is 8 years old and his chérie is 6 but I somehow managed to not laugh in his face.

In the afternoon I was left alone with all 27 monsters (and yes, after they were fed they became monsters) for a few minutes while the teacher went to get the bus. Between telling the kids to stop running around the thermal baths and keeping crazy Donovan out of the sarcohphagus I had my hands full. I won't lie, I seriously wanted to hit a lot of those kids. At one point I couldn't take it anymore and yelled "SIT DOWN." The mimicked me but they understood and in case they didn't, I said it in French too. As soon as I got them all to sit down the teacher came in to find them all seated (almost) calmly. I wish he could've walked in when they were running and being little jerks.

It was a long day, here are the photos to prove it. The flowers I have in my hand are from the kids who picked them in the Roman ruins. Aren't I a lucky girl? And, yes, the children - despite my best efforts- are sitting on the Roman ruins.

Weekend in Laval

Saturday night I went to dinner with 3 of the guys from the foyer. Most people go home on the weekends but 2 of them had stayed here to revise for their exams. The 3rd guy was a new guy who had shown interest in being part of our little group here at the foyer, so we invited him along. The guy seemed nice enough at first, but then there were little things he would say that would just annoy me. At dinner he decided he wanted to practice his English with me. I had no choice but to agree, so the following (painful) exchange occurred -please read the boy's lines with the heaviest French accent you can conjure up:

Boy: euuuuh where euhhhh have euuuuuhhhh you euuuuuuh travel?
Me: umm, I went to Prague, Belgium..
Boy (interrupts): euuh I euhhhh travel euhhh with euhhh my euuuuh school euhh to Majorque euhh in euhhh 20-02
Me: two thousand two
Boy: euhh yes euhh it was beautiful euhhh there were comment dit-on des chemins qui descendent vers la plage?
Me: paths leading down to the beach...oh wow sounds beautiful. (switching back to French) So, what's everyone ordering?

If that was painful for you to read, please imagine how much fun it was for me to live. His volume when speaking in English was at least a few decibels higher than in French and people were staring at us and I am not at all exaggerating with the "euhhhs" between every word. Every. single. word.

After dinner we hiked up to a beautiful park that overlooks most of Laval and we went to Laval's museum. It was Museum Night throughout France I think so it was free to go in. At the park we played on the little kids' toys and had a blast. There were a few little kids there and they were not happy that we were there. One kid who couldn't have been more than 5 years old said to us "mais arrêtez! vous allez le casser!!" (stop, you're going to break it!) Here are some pictures from the park (these were taken at nearly 10 at night)













Today after a 12 mile bike ride Tessa and I stopped for our mid-afternoon post-bikeriding snack. I settled on a chocolate chip cookie. It went down like this:
Me: un cookie pepites au chocolat (one chocolate chip cookie)
Girl: d'accord (ok) at least 30 seconds passed and as I started to wonder out loud how it could take that long to put a cookie in a bag and I turned to see the girl confusedly coming towards me holding up a cookie
Girl: euhhh is 2 for 1
Me: pourquoi pas? je prends deux (why not? I'll take 2 then)

The poor girl was embarassed because she hadn't realized that I spoke French- to be fair when I ordered a "cookie pepites au chocolat" there were about 1.5 English words and 1.5 French words in that sentence and the rest of the time she just heard me speaking in English to Tessa. As she was ringing up the cookies she said "vous parlez bien le francais, alors!" ("you guys speak French well"). Poor thing! As we left the store we commented on how this was one of those rare times where the French were being sweet about us being Anglophones and just genuinely wanted to practice their English with us. We were also quite proud of her knowing the phrase "2 for 1." The warm sentiment quickly passed and as we walked home we (rather immaturely) imitated the French in our funniest French accents:

euhh, you....want....cookie? I share cookie with you!

Lost In Translation

In the summer of 2006 I visited France for the first time. I took a two week intensive French course with my sister and two cousins in Besançon (eastern France). The rest of our time was spent exploring Paris (love at first sight, but anyone who knows me can tell you that). One of the sights we visited was the Cité des Sciences at the Parc de la Villette. Lonely Planet said it was a must-see and, being a 17 year old naïve traveler, who was I to argue? At this museum there was a planetarium to which we excitedly purchased admission. We sat down in our seats and got ready for the show.
When the show began my first thought was "oh crap, it's in French!" I'm not really sure what I was expecting, but I guess I just imagined it would be just liked it was at the Hayden Planetarium back home, my only frame of reference for planetariums. In retrospect it seems silly that I would be surprised that the show was in French but something that happened to me this week makes me realize how far I've come with my studies in French.

On Wednesday night a bunch of us from the foyer went to see a play put on by an amateur group because one of our friends was in it. I really enjoyed it but a funny thing happened during the play. At some point about 15 minutes into the whole thing I realized that I had not been phased by the fact that it was in French. I was just following the story and paying as much attention as I would have were it in English. There was no extra effort on my part to understand what was being said. After the play had ended everyone was talking about it and they turned to me and said "how was it? Did you have trouble understanding everything?" There were of course some thing that I had not understood, but I just used my imagination to fill in the blanks.

Ever since most of the English girls left it's often been just me and the Frenchies at dinner/hanging around the foyer and I am completely unphased by the fact that these conversations are always in French. What's even nicer is that some of my (French) friends told me that when I speak it's just as if any French person were speaking to them and that they don't change the way they speak just so that I can understand. I thought that was really sweet of them to say. When I watch French TV or movies it's almost like when I watch stuff in English. Obviously there will always be some things that I don't understand, but I think I've come a long way from the naïve girl in the planetarium quand même!

In other news....

A few weeks ago in Spain, Vicky and I stumbled upon a fairly recent episode of "Lost" dubbed into Spanish. I cannot stress how much we love that show and how happy we were to see it on Spanish TV. The episode focused on the Korean couple's flashbacks so many of the exchanges were in Korean with Spanish subtitles. Vicky, being Korean-American, had no trouble understanding the Koreans speaking. I read the Spanish subtitles with ease. Then when they would flash back to the island the people would be speaking in Spanish to each other. Everytime this happened either Vicky or myself would comment about how we weren't expecting them to speak in Spanish. We were too used to hearing them in English for the Spanish to be natural but when they had spoken in Korean and it was subtitled in Spanish this was more familiar/less surprising to us.
Vicky's one of the few people (if not the only person) who can identify with the issues of growing up speaking one language with your parents, speaking/learning English at school and then learning French. It gets a little confusing after a while - as evidenced by the fact that I recently gave some poor Dominican tourists in Paris directions in a stunning/unintelligible (?) combination of Spanish and French!

Fun!

We (a group from the foyer) are taking a trip down to the Bassin d'Arcachon (near Bordeaux) at the end of this month and we managed to get some association to lend us a mini-bus for free in exchange for us going to wash them on two Saturdays. So this morning we had to wake up nice and early to go wash minibuses.

It was a cloudy day so it wasn't really fun to be playing with water, but we still had a fun time. There were only 5 of us including Tessa and myself. We had to move the minibuses from one side of the lot to the area where we were washing 3 of them at a time. Of course I couldn't help them move the buses because I can't drive stick and they were all stick. Tessa got to help them even though this made one of the Frenchies "nervous." Just as I was thinking to myself how much I'd like to be able to drive stick Tessa yelled "Laura, I have an idea!!" She walked over to me and said that she should teach me how to drive when the boys weren't looking! I, of course, was quite fond of this idea.

So, we both got in an already cleaned minibus and she drove it to the other side of the lot to pick up another one. As she drove she explained to me how and when to shift gears and let me try. Now, I once tried to learn how to drive stick with my Dad and the car stalled at least 3 times before we even made it to the end of the street because I wasn't comfortable with releasing the clutch and accelerating quickly. But this time it was much better and I managed to move without the car shutting off (ok, so maybe it shut off once). I was really happy but since we were in a very narrow space surrounded by vans so I didn't want to push it too much.

Later on in the day when we were a little bored of washing cars and of being bossed around by one of the boys we decided to take one of the vans on a little test run around the lot. This time I was able to shift from first to second (and eventually third) gear without stalling the car! There were several hilarious cases of Laura pressing the brake instead of the accelerator, but nothing/no one was hurt. I even practiced going in reverse and backing up the van into a tight space to be washed. I did such a good job and it was SO MUCH FUN! Later on when the car was ready to go back I got to drive it and I even parallel parked it between two other vans! All with a stick shift minibus!

Can you tell that I had a good time?

Due to a minor dispute over us excessively beeping the horns on the vans, the Frenchie who had driven us there decided that we were going to walk home. Since he refused to get in the car until we got out we kind of had no choice but to walk home. It was only 3 kilometers (just under 2 miles) anyway and we're used to walking a lot these days. Luckily one of the other Frenchies came to our rescue and picked us up but not before we had walked 20 minutes and had the chance to take some fun pictures:

Coucou, je suis là!

After two weeks of vacation I'm back in Laval!

Quick vacation re-cap:
Prague, Belgium, Amsterdam, Pays Basque (Spain/France). More details to follow.

It was nice to get back to Laval (it is home for the time being) after being gone for what seemed like forever. Most of the assistants had 7 month contracts that ended when vacation began so now in Laval there are only 3 of us assistants left (out of the original 16). It's really weird to come back to the foyer and not have the English girls here. Only Tessa and the Australian assistant are still in Laval. Since Tessa doesn't live at the foyer and we hardly ever see the Australian girl, it's like I'm the only one left. Last night we had a dinner in someone's apartment and I was the only assistant there with all the Frenchies. It was nice but a little odd. Plus, all the Frenchies really miss the English girls and are constantly going on about how sad it is that they're gone. It is sadder without the English girls than I thought it would be, but Tessa and I have lots of things planned to keep us busy.

Getting back to work has not been easy at all. I just don't really feel like it. I hope it passes. The little kids were really happy to see me on Tuesday and I gave them the Starbust candies that were sent from home (thanks family & Davin) and this officially sealed the deal as Laura being the COOLEST PERSON EVER for these little kids. They were so happy to have candy that came all the way from the United States. Some kids are even going to paste the wrappers into their English notebooks!

Goodbye...we'll miss you!

Just before vacation we had a little soiree to say goodbye to the Alannah, Jenny & Jo who had finished their contracts and were soon heading back to England. The Frenchies had approached me a few days earlier asking me if I could help them practice the lyrics to "I'll be Missing you" or "One" and I (thankfully) convinced them that trying to sing in English was not the best idea as it would be really tough for them and would inevitably lead to laughter on our part. They settled on a French song and toyed with the idea of creating tee-shirts. I didn't hear anything else about it until the night of the party.

All of the English girls (myself included) were asked to step into the other room as they had prepared a surprise for us. Here's a picture of us waiting in suspense:

When we came out all the Frenchies were wearing matching shirts each with their name on it. They gave us shirts with our names too. It was really sweet of them. After we each did bisous with each of and every one of them to say thank you they said that they wanted to take a picture of just the assistants in our shirts together. So we posed for the picture. Yohan, our fearless leader, said to me "Laura put your camera down for the picture." I should have known that something was up then. We posed for the picture and they told us to step closer. We stepped closer. "Ready? 1-2-3 AHHHHHH" Instead of taking our picture they sprayed us with water guns. I think the following picture captures the moment best: