What I've Learned from Living in France

• Middle school students are demons who really like the soothing sounds of Usher and disobeying authority figures.
• How to finally tell military time without first staring at the numbers for two minutes too long, like an idiot.

Yeah, I'll take it.

• The Provence region and the South of France are incredibly charming and the perfect location for my fantasy dream cottage and/or château. Fantasy vineyard optional.
• Fois gras is the best thing in the world.
• Frog legs are not.
• If you're not from New York, California, or Las Vegas, French people don't care where you're from.
• If you're a size 8 in the US, you're a size 39 in European shoes.
• 90% of the French population firmly believes Miami is in California. They will not believe you when you try to convince them otherwise.
• Marseille is actually French for "anticlimactic." 

Me in front of Château Chenonceau

• Which French monarchs built castles where
• How to craft a lesson plan LIKE A BOSS
• Jack Daniels is incredibly expensive, as if it were a fine brandy. Though equally disgusting to me, those of you who enjoy fine brandy may feel a little cheated at the cost of imported Jack.
• How to duck awkward, cross-cultural advances
• Trains are incredibly cheap for people with the "Under Age 25" card. Some stores even have under 25 discounts.
• How to walk in heels in snow

Wine tasting in the Loire Valley

• How to taste wine (Smell, swirl, smell again, and then taste first in the front of your mouth, swallow, the back of your mouth, swallow, and then in the back with your mouth slightly open to let the air hit it.)
• How to say tampon in French
• That I cannot survive without Mexican food. At all. For longer than 3 weeks. It was a pathetic show of endurance in the face of faux-hardship.
• All the words to "Celui," by Colonel Reyel:

Saying a Conflicted "Au Revoir" to France

         Saying goodbye to France has proved difficile. The country that seemed so intimidating and overwhelming when I first moved here seven months ago, the city full of seemingly impossible tasks like getting a French bank account and phone, has grown to become my second home, full of amazing restaurants and fun friends. Saying goodbye to my students was equally difficult, especially when they did cute things like bake me cake or make me cards which read "C'etait cool avec vous. Merci. Bye," in sincere and heart-felt franglais (If anglais = English, and francais = French, franglais = Spanglish, but for French. And that is as close as you will ever see me come to doing math).

View from the club-boat. Much less glamorous if you only knew that it was taken from the window in the women's restroom. But still.

         My teachers invited me to delicious lunches with eight courses, two of which were cheese. My friends and I celebrated in epic style by partying in péniches, or clubs on boats. (Dance moves were busted. Phones were lost. Good times were had by all.)  We indulged first in drunk-food-kebab the night of, and hang-over-kebab the day after.  There were picnics with Nutella-covered strawberries and chips with as-close-as-we-can-come-to-guacemole, since France has tragically never heard of cilantro. There are the two GIANT suitcases that weigh more than me, fully packed to the brim with scarves, coats, and 13 pairs of shoes, 9 of which I purchased while I was here because I just. Couldn't. Resist. There is my bare and naked looking apartment, stripped of photos, posters, and knick-knacks. 

         There is the sadness of leaving and the excitement of coming home, and the same strange melange of emotions I experienced upon leaving college. There is Mexican food soon to be had, but crepes soon to miss. There are old friends I'll now be able to see, and new friends I'll now have to Skype. I'm leaving someplace incredible to go to somewhere just as familiar and good.

         I just can't decide how I feel. 

Bisous, Lyon! I shall miss you.

          [Editor's Note: Don't worry! This blog will not cease to exist. In fact, so much happened that I never had time to write about, that it will be years before I run out of France-related things to post on here...]

Mardi Gras in France

The eerie Carnivale head above the tourism office in Nice. I have taken the word of other French people that Carnivale is not always that creepy. 

Real French Fact #13: Mardi Gras, while a French expression, is actually called Carnivale in France. We kept the right language but still somehow got it wrong. Equally wrong, the French don't flash each other for beads; instead, it's a lot like our Halloween, with everyone dressing up in full costume and having a parade. 

Related Personal Fact: I had no idea about any of  that. I learned about the traditions of French Carnivale by walking onto my high school campus and seeing a girl dressed up like a giant wedge of Laughing Cow Cheese. 

        She had a gigantic triangular tin foil body, with realistic label, and two empty circular cheese containers dangling from each ear as earrings. The ensemble was completed with a tin foil hat and some leggings that were patterned full of pizazz. 

        A little dazed and confused, it took me until I saw the flying pig and the slutty Little Red Riding Hood before I realized there was some holiday going on. Turns out there was a huge costume contest going on and I was walking through the back stage of it to get to my classroom. My class, flush with the excitement of the festival, was unruly, loud, and totally unwilling to work, which was not so fun. What was a lot more fun was finally giving up during the last 5 mins of class and taking pictures of them because they were so cute:

        While leaving campus, I saw another girl dressed as what she perceived to be an American gang member, complete with American flag bandanna, fake guns (which would get her straight-up expelled in an American high school), and the word "Blood" on one arm, and "Fuck" on the other. I think these were the most intimidating words she knew in English. A for effort!

The Joys of Teaching English

This post brought to you by Hipster Ariel.

          Not only do my students continue to name obscure American presidents while we play Jeopardy, having them write their own romantically-themed conversations continues to be my favorite lesson ever. There have been conversations ripe with homo-erotic sexual tension ("Loic, you make my heart beat"), a girlfriend walking in on her boyfriend with her mom ("Zees eeez disgoosteeng!"), and some cruel break ups:

          "Yes? Well I like these appetizers better than I like you."

          "Yes? Well I like your grandfather's balls!"

          Thus inciting my lecture on how we don't say "balls" in class, something I've had to repeat with a lot of my classes, as a matter of fact. Hopefully they can't tell that I'm trying not to laugh at the same time.

          But my favorite incident so far has been when I asked "How do we say 'pom-pom girls' in America?" with the correct answer being  "cheerleaders." First, one student hesitantly volunteered "Cougars? No.... wait. That's something else," before another shouted out "Bitches!!!!"

          I was tempted to give him half credit.

Interesting Things My Students Have Said This Week

Yes, I do have a few of these guys.

          But they're even worse in foreign language classes because they don't know how to say what they want to say. So they wait a full minute and a half trying to think of the right word for the middle of a sentence, and then, after all that time, finally settle on saying it was "good."

Here are a few of the highlights of the verbal commentary in my English classes:

• After perhaps over-explaining the assignment to some blank-eyed ten year old boys, one of them stops me with "It eez cool, Madame. we got zis." I think they heard it on TV.
• "How do you say fuck, but polite?" I told them this was impossible.
• First, the girl asked me how to say "how do you say." And then once she knew, she started over in English: "How do you say 'douche'?" It took me a second of stunned silence to remember that in French, douche is "shower."
• "Fillmore, Taft, Grant, Garfield, Coolidge, Washington." This was their answer after I asked them to list six American presidents. Seriously? Seriously? Fillmore?! Are you kidding? Did you, as American citizens, even know that Garfield was anything more than a fat cat cartoon? The facts are in: French kids know more about American history than we do, and we are pathetic. 
• "What is the difference between 'shut up,' 'shut the fuck up,' and 'be quiet?'" 

          Me: "Shut up is like tais-toi, be quiet is like soyez silent, and the other

          one... is the bad one."

          Neighboring kid, in French: "I told you that's what it was."

          Original kid, in English: "Shut the fuck up, Antoine."

Shrimp Girls, or Lessons in Love

Some delicious looking tarts from a patisserie in Aix-en-Provence last weekend

          I love the lesson I tried with my students today. Because Valentine's Day is approaching, the theme was relationships, and they soon learned how to dump someone, how to use a pick up line, and how to ask someone out in English. While covering the basics like the difference between "like" and "love," or a double date vs a blind date, we also ventured into more informal territory like the concept of a "butter face" (as in "Her body was fantastic, but her face..."). I recently learned the French equivalent of a butter face, which far surpasses the English version, because the French version rhymes: "Elle est comme un crevette; tout est bon, sauf la tête." (She's like a shrimp; everything is good, except the head.) Slowly but surely, their vocabulary was enriched with womanizer, heart-breaker, knock-out, bros before hos, make out, creeper, and many other gems that real American people say all the time. 

          But the best part? The best part was separating them into groups, and having them create a dialogue based on the new words. My favorite was between two guys, but you have to imagine every phrase spoken with a thick French accent to get the full effect:

          "Let us just be friends, loser."

          "Well, I 'ad an affair with your best friend."

          "SCUMBAG!"

          "Go away, butter face. I 'ave 'ad enough."

          "BUT YOU ERE MY BEBE DADDY!"

          These kids are natural actors. I appreciate their talent. 

       I decided that unfortunately, phrases like "friends with benefits" were too risqué for the classroom environment, no matter how much I wanted to equip my students with the ability to navigate any romantic or sexual situation, should they ever find themselves abroad. But I was reminded of the fact that they have no equivalent phrase in French, and may be less inclined to understand that one in particular. For example, "No Strings Attached," the comedy starring Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher, was rechristened this nugget of gold: 

Subtle, classy, to the point.

Another one of my personal favorites, for "Step Up, 3-D":

THE BATTLE.

I think they really cut to the essence of the thing, don't you?

French Stereotypes: Vrai ou Faux

      On the first day with a new group of students, it's always fun to discuss both American and French stereotypes, and whether they are vrai ou faux (true or false). The first stereotype that they think of for Americans, without fail, is always presented in the form of five or six students blurting out the word "FAT!" followed by "FAST FOOD!" Or, if it's a weak group of kids with poor English skills: "HOW DO YOU SAY 'FAT'?!" "HOW DO YOU SAY 'FAST FOOD'?!" Ouch. 

          Then, of course, we discuss the stereotypes we hold for French people. The picture I paint for them, mentally speaking, looks a little something like this:

So let's cover these bad boys one by one:

• Berets: False. Mostly. I've seen a few berets here, perhaps five or six. More than one would see elsewhere, but not everyone wears them all the time, as we would assume. The award for Best Beret definitely goes to a baby in Vieux Lyon, wearing a baby beret. I almost died of cute. 
• Striped shirts, red neck ties: False, and false. Where did this stereotype come from, anyway? 
• Never Shaving: False. French women do all shave their armpits and legs. Thank God.
• Mimes: False. Sorry to crush your conceptions of France, but I have yet to see a mime. Some statue-impersonators and some pretend-robots, but no face-painted, help-I'm-trapped-in-a-box mimes. Which is good, since those are sort of creepy.
• Baguettes: True. They are wildly popular, much more so than in America. After someone gets off work, they typically stop by a boulangerie, or bakery, for a fresh baguette to bring home for dinner that day. It's extremely common, and extremely French, to see people of all ages walking around with baguettes tucked under theirs arms, on the sidewalk and on the metro. 

• Smoking: True. Though a lot of laws have been passed within the last ten years to stop the worst offenders (you can't smoke within 20 feet of a hospital, etc), it is still popular. When I leave the high school after a day of work, I walk through a giant cloud of perpetual cigarette smoke from all of the blasé students hanging out outside. One of the biggest culture shock moments for me was at my middle school, when an 11-year-old boy asked a stranger for a cigarette outside of the school. I saw this man unhesitatingly whip out a cigarette, give it to the little boy, and light it. I was dumbfounded.
• Wine: True. I have tasted some amazing wine while I have been here. The cheapest wine you can buy at the super market for under two euros is better than many more expensive wines in the U.S. Not only is the quality of wine excellent, the people are obsessed with it as a culture. In French supermarkets, the wine aisle extends for four full aisles. It's broken down between Burgundy wines, Loire Valley wines, and all the different subsections. They have devoted nearly a 5th of their store to this. There is not an exact equivalent of a 7-11 in France, but when you find something close to it, half of it is for food, and the other half is for wine, and possibly one bottle of hard liquor. It is kind of awesome.  
• Good Fashion: True. As I mentioned in one of my last posts, my students wear fur coats. And designer bags. And stilettos, every day, just as most French women do. Belted vests, textured tights... no matter the gender or age, they are sleek and mature looking, and always, always well put-together. 
• Escargot and Frog Legs: False. I mean, they do eat them, every once and a while. But the stereotype is that they're commonly consumed, and sold everywhere, which is rarely the case. Only high quality restaurants tend to serve either, with frog legs being the rarer of the two. 

Frog legs, which were gross not so much because they were frogs, but because they were fried, and tasted like gross fried fish. I've been told they're supposed to taste like chicken when cooked properly. We have labelled this dubious experience a do-over.

Cause I'm a Grown Up Now

As a new teacher, I feel a strange amount of pride every time I accomplish the most mundane tasks at school. Having a key and closing up the classroom makes me feel so mature. I get a rush of "Look at me! I have a job! I can lock doors LIKE A BOSS" as I test the knob and walk away. "Classroom secure," I imagine reporting to my imaginary walkie talkie. Every time I make copies of a lesson plan, I celebrate my own smugness: "I know that A4 means single sheets of paper, and I'm going to select it and I want 35 copies, baby. Centered and single-sided. Watch me go!" Getting coffee from the special coffee vending machine is of course the best experience for feeling superior. Sipping my espresso casually in the teacher's lounge, stirring the sugar cube into it with the disposable plastic stick, my smugness exudes "I'm an adult, doing grown up things. I AM DRINKING GROWN UP EXPRESSO." I'm so drunk on the power of my maturity that I nearly burst.

All of these superfluous perks, however, vanish in the classroom, while I do my actual work. I fumble with my work sheets, struggle to make the students understand, to make them speak up, to quiet down, to speak up, and to quiet down again. I constantly try to act like I know what I'm doing and display confidence, but I'm really just flying by the seat of my pants. My opinion of my job really depends on how receptive the class is, and how much they seem intellectually stimulated by the lesson. If they are intrigued, then I have the best job ever that I want to do for the rest of my life, and I can't wait to guide them through the lesson like a motherfucking Beacon of Knowledge: 

If they're apathetic and bored and they think the lesson is dumb, I hate teaching and I never want to do it again and I want to crawl into my corner of shame for ever naively thinking that "Supersize Me" was promising fodder for discussion.

Man, these stiletto-clad, fashionista French high school girls can cast you such a withering glance, which amazes me with all the ways it can make you shrivel at once. With only the eyes, they manage to effectively communicate: "Not only are you beneath my notice, you unfabulous thing with your untailored jeans, but you presume to make me care about your words, and you will be sorely disappointed because I do not give a shit, and you can't make me." (Ok, the untailored jeans part might be me projecting, but I promise the rest is all there.) When this glare occurs, on the outside, I continue my lesson as competently as ever. On the inside I go "I know! I know! Who cares about fast food social experiments?! I'm sorry that I'm not as effortlessly trendy as you--I'm sorry! I'll wear heels tomorrow!" 

If only secret, internal, fashion-insecure me could meet and take notes from I'm-the-king-of-the-world, watch-me-drink-this-espresso-cause-I'm-an-adult-with-a-job me.