Month: November 2009

My host mother tells me this expression almost every night, little did I know that I would one day actually have an AMAZING dream.

They say that when you dream in a language, it means that that language officially makes part of your subconscious and that your brain is beginning to systematically think in that language. Well, ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in my life I had a dream in French. I remember the first time I had a dream in English, though I have spoken the language since childhood I’d never actually dreamt in English until a few years back. I was terrified. I woke up freaked out because to me it meant I was betraying my mother tongue.

But dreaming in French, WOW. For someone who is craving the fluency of the language as much as I am, that is good news. Of course, the actual dream was unimportant: a simple conversation with my host mom and host brother during breakfast. The important thing is that it was in French, and I didn’t notice it until I was telling my host sister about the conversation and she brought the fact that it was in French to my attention. “Ça y est!,” replied my host mom when we told her the amazing event. So there you go, three months into my French life and I’m dreaming in French. Happy happy happy.

So last Sunday I had my first Sortie Scout, I officially exerted my function as Cheftaine for a whole 22 French louvettes from 9h to 16h of my Sunday. Never mind that fact that yes, I had to wake up early on a Sunday; and yes, I had to cook 1 kg. of pasta the previous day; and yes, I had to wear a uniform that reminds me of my elementary school days with the skirt above my belly bottom. Regardless, it was an amazing day.

The sortie is always composed of mass, lunch, a game, and snacks. So we walked to a park after mass and we cooked with a fire that WE made, well, not me really, then we played an amazing game where the girls learned the values of teamwork through various challenges. It was so amazing to see these 8-11 year olds assembling wood, cutting tomatoes, teaching each other what need to be done to win. The little louvette looks up to the big louvette and the big louvettes all jumped on top of me asking me questions of all sorts. It was a cheerful day; it was worth getting up for.

I must now study for my exam tomorrow, yes, believe it or not, I have an exam. God help me.

A la prochaine!

That I am not. I love my mac, I like the fact that technology makes life easier and it even tries to undo some of the environmental the previous technology did, but I am not into programming or anything of that sort. I am, however, the English practicum teacher of the only school in France designed to make geniuses out of tech lovers: Epitech.

Due to my need for a job, I am now working for Epitech Strasbourg. It is not a hard job, I just sit and speak English with 5-6 students each hour. The trick is finding what to talk about with people who love everything that I don’t. I don’t like maths, physics, sciences…I like letters, politics, and even SOME econ (the basics). Yet I HAVE to find topics that I know about and that will compel each guy, since there is only ONE girl in the entire class, to speak to me in english. Because let me explain something to you, most French speakers do not like English, and most of them are therefore bad at it. I suppose it’s because the French have always disliked the British and therefore reject the language. Unfortunately, it is the English language that dominates and not the French, despite their extensive colonizing, and so any French student who wants to be someone HAS to learn English. Just like I did. Forget that fact that they will NEVER master the pronunciation of the H and R correctly; most educated French just do not like the language as a whole.

So I have to be creative, think outside the box, and LIKE technology so that these guys, who will probably be very rich and powerful someday, speak to me. Wish me luck.

Last Friday, we went to the Tomi Ungerer Museum. The man is a legend in the field of publicity and drawing, he is also very attractive. He is a native of Strasbourg, though he owes his fame to life in New York, so the museum here is pretty well known. If you ask the French who he is, they will probably tell you that he draws children’s books and worked on some major publicity campaigns in New York. That is what I was told and that is what I was expecting when we went there with Malou. That is NOT, however, what I found. The man is talented, his drawing were simply amazing. However, he might be the most morbid artist I have seen in my life. Out of 20 pictures from his children’s books, 15 included someone dying and blood. Yes, they were beautifully drawn, but I would never buy my children that book.

Most importantly, there is an underground floor in the museum with his erotic drawings, NOT NICE. I have never seen woman depicted so degradingly in my life. I am not even going to bother describing one, look it up. The point is that when I asked Malou why a town as conservative as Strasbourg is so proud of him, she said that these ‘erotic’ images are very much a part of French pride. Really? I am not a feminist, but if I see him, I will feel a tad angry with him for depicting women purely as sex objects. On the bright side, the architecture of the museum, like most of Europe, was beautiful. It was a house some 200 years old with a very modern interior, everything white and chic. I can’t say I regret going, but he is NOT going on my favorites.

Last week I experienced the ultimate demonstration of a UNITED Europe. As the first official break of the school year, we are given a week off to celebrate “la Toussaint”, the day when all saints are celebrated/remembered. I decided I wanted to visit a country I had never visited that bordered the Mediterranean; I am just craving the ocean by now. So I went to Barcelona. The first amazing thing about the journey was the price of the ticket: it costs less to travel to Barcelona than it does on average to go from Strasbourg to Paris.

Next was the airport itself, actually built half in France and half in Switzerland. Yes, an actual building on two countries, I was shocked. Last was my arrival in Spain. Once I landed, I was getting mentally prepared to argue with the immigration officer about the fact that my visa IS Schengen, even if it says FRANCE. It just so happens that the French decided to change their rules and not notify authorities. The point is, I did not even notice where immigration was because there were no officers in sight. That is integration right there.

Barcelona itself was just amazing; I liked it so much more than Paris. Not just because people are more ehm…humble? But because the architecture is astonishing, it’s like you are walking in Gaudi’s head all the time. You just walk and walk and walk and you don’t realize that you have walked the entire city until your feet go numb. The food is so cheap, well, cheaper than in France anyhow, and it’s so GOOD. The meats, the seafood…everything. The shops are also a tiny bit cheaper, but my favorite stores like Zara and Mango, which are Spanish, were considerably cheaper. It was the best possible choice for the break.

I had to cut my trip short to go to Paris for a UK visa appointment. I did not have to show my passport there either. The nice part about this trip is that I got to see a side of Paris that is NOT advertised: the banlieues. Well, it was not quite the banlieue, but it was on the northern part of the Seine and I was VERY scared. This made me realize that Paris is in fact, not such a safe city. Beyond the tourist areas there is a whole world of poor minorities struggling to survive. That is not what you think of when you think of Paris. It’s not like New York for instance, you KNOW New York has everything: poor, rich, white, black, blue, anything and everything. You know that there is the Bronx and 5^th Avenue. Well, there are MANY areas like that in Paris as well. So I have yet to visit a French area that dominates over Strasbourg. Which is good, very, very good.

Now we are in ‘la reprise,’ which just means the break is over and ALL must go to normal. I’m supposed to plunge myself into CIEL like Barcelona never happened! On the other hand, Europe is happy this week. Very happy. Twenty years ago today the Berlin wall went down and over 30 heads of state stood under the nasty Berlin fog and rain to celebrate. The radios have been recalling that era non-stop, including Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall” speech. In Paris, to intensify the intentions of amity between both countries, they actually built a small wall just to tear it down yesterday at 12 a.m. That is intense. As if that were not enough, tomorrow is the day of the Armistice in France, when the French people celebrate that the Nazi’s got out of France and peace reigned again. It’s ironic how it all happens together and so fast. Twenty years ago Europe was divided in two, and today I can fly from France to Spain without even showing my passport. Magnificent.