It sometimes seems as though I do an insufferable amount of complaining on this blawg. So, I’ll just give a little list (I've got a little list<-that's for my pa) of things around here that have made me smile of have a chuckle.
1. The Carrefour Dangereux sign that I pass when I’m on my way to the Carrefour market. Each time I go by I think it’s funny and wonder if my Carrefour is perhaps the one in the bad part of town. Like at Wash U if you bought booze with a fake ID, people would say that they got it at the “ghetto Schnucks.” Also, since it's in front of this abandoned building, it kind of would make sense for my mistaken interpretation to be the correct one.
2. The baby sized toilet in the Macdo. What’s really funny about this is that it’s in the same stall as the normal sized toilet in the handicap stall. So tiny. But so mighty.
3. Fall. This arrangement of autumn leaves was on the side of one of the buildings on my walk to and from the center of town.
4. The thin-lipped woman who’s always in the teacher’s lounge when I go in there and, inevitably, will stop talking and stare at me while I walk around the room. Not actually. This makes me paranoid. Just testing you.
5. Seeing “Bébé à bord” stickers in people’s car windows. Anyone who has ever driven in a car with me knows how dearly I love these stickers in English. Knowing they’re in France too is really just a treat.
6. This creepy collection of stuffed animals in the backseat of this car that is nearly always parked in front of the post office. In the same parking spot. Sometimes I think someone lives in the car. But I've never seen anyone get in or out of it. The mysteries of Belley are many.
The rest of this list is without pictures because it would be odd to take them.
1. French people wearing crocs. I don’t understand them as a shoe, in general. Funnily, at the Amsterdam airport, which has a baby shopping mall inside, they have a genuine Crocs store. I didn’t realize that was something you’d have a true need for in Amsterdam. I stand corrected?
2. French people in these weird jean-like Aladdin pants. I saw them on a few different girls in the same week. Generally only Aladdin, Jasmine, the Sultan, and MC Hammer can rock that look. But A+ for effort.
3. The woman at work who wears this pair of flooding pleather (though maybe they’re real leather?) pants nearly every day. I only say “nearly” because I don’t go in on Fridays, so it’s possible that she mixes it up before the weekend.
4. Walking around the school (or Belley, really, since I stick out like a sore thumb) and having students say “Hello” to me. They say it with this grin like they’re pulling a fast one on me or something. Honestly, they’re just so proud of “hello” that it warms my heart. This is in direct contrast to Katelin’s (in Lyon) experience whenever she’s walking down the street speaking English to someone. She says whenever a French person hears it, they manage to say “Fuck you” to her. I got a chance to know the magic as we walked towards the tram stop and someone said, “Hello. My name is Fuck you.” She actually stopped and asked him why he said it and told him it’s not a nice thing to say. Set ‘em straight.
And now to summarize last last week… Not much to report back. Notably, this is what the view from my window looked like nearly every morning. Imagine my surprise!
On Monday, one of Marc’s students asked me again how old I was. I said 22. And she said, “Wow. That’s really young.” I could just repeat it back to her, agreeing that it is really young. I generally have no idea what I’m doing. And I’m so lucky that the students blindly do what I tell them because I probs couldn’t control a rowdy bunch.
Later in the same class, we were talking about McDonalds (for a lesson on globalization) and I asked what kind of changes the company would make. Tituon said they don’t have Dr. Pepper in France. This got everyone a bit riled because apparently you have to drive to Paris (or maybe Geneva too?) to fill that prescription. (Get that joke? Stretch.) So I asked what they do drink. Lisa said they have Coke and Sprite. Tituon said, “Shit.”
In the afternoon, after we finished talking about some cartoons, I decided to mix it up and play a song for the class and to have them fill in the blanks. After consulting Maryse, I decided to play “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. We were sure I’d end up with a class full of hipsters. Dominate. Welp, too bad the song seemed to be massively too fast and we made it through about 75% of it. I also don’t think they appreciated the song as much as I had anticipated.
The next day, I went to Sandra’s class. They were giving presentations of “adverts” (because they learn UK English) they had made, slogans included. Here are some stand-out lines:
For an anti-cigarette campaign: “Do you want an early death?”
“Smoking is a pact with the devil.”
For a Blackberry ad: “Choose a blackberry than a boyfriend.”
For screws: “Don’t get screwed up. Buy our screws.
--Reasoning for buying these screws: Can be put in soup so you get enough iron. Can also be used as earrings.
At the end she had me introduce myself. When I said I was from Los Angeles, it got the same response of shock but I was surprised to see that even the student whom I thought was an exchange student was impressed. I really need to do more research on this kid. He dresses French, though, so I don’t know. Oddly intrigued by his mastery of English combined with French fashion sensibilities. Anyway, she asked the students to give me suggestions as to what to do in Belley.
They came up with 3 suggestions:
1) Drink wine
2) Go hunting and fishing
3) Garden
If I take their advice, I’ll definitely be the next Calamity Jane. (That was an excuse to put in more Doris Day. You can never have enough.)
Then I spent an hour subbing for Nicole as she was at CERN en Suisse (in Switzerland) because her class is reading Angels and Demons. So I stepped in and they’re doing a unit on what appears to be the American black experience as she had them looking at Ray; listening to blues, jazz, gospel, and soul (she wanted them to do without actual samples. I wouldn’t stand for it so I brought in some Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Duke Ellington, and Bessie Smith); slavery; Toni Morrison; and some other stuff. I guess you can encapsulate the struggle with all that? But it’s totally out of order. Like, we started with Ray, then discussed the music types, then slavery, then they’re doing Morrison. Mess. Oh well.
For Sandra’s next class, I had to prepare a lesson on the dangers of the Internet. So, naturally, I played Gym Class Heroes’s “New Friend Request.” Then we talked about it, had them come up with some lists, and we reviewed some vocab with Hangman. At the end, the only student I knew already, Jonathan (pronounced Jaw-nah-tah. Those 2 as are like the a in “tan.”) came up to me and said, “You’re a really good teacher.”
Only fail of the week: Sandra asked me if I wanted to eat with her at lunch. OBVIO. But I had left my meal card in my room. So I went back to get it. Then I waited in line. When I got to the front of the line, I realized I had brought my library card with me. So I went back to get the real card. Then I had to wait in line again. So I didn’t get to the cantine until about an hour into lunch. Don’t worry, though, as I walked in with my tray, I saw Sandra and Marc walking out. So I ate solo. Ain’t no thang but a chicken wang. I took the apple yogurt home with me, so I feel good about that.
(Mostly) Dominating,
Jess
Jess,
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed your students could understand 75% of that rap song because I was prop near 50%
Aunt
Sal