Tech savvy

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.