Frustration

Grrr.  I arrive at school at 9 a.m., since no one has bothered to tell me what time my classes begin today.  I have no class at 9, so I spend an hour fiddling around on the computer, answering emails, that sort of thing.  Then at 10 I go to the teachers’ lounge to ask with whom I am supposed to go.  Three different teachers say, “Well, you’re not with me, you must be with...” I finally follow the person with whom all of the previous three eventually decided that I was supposed to be with, only to have her be surprised when she discovers that I think I’m supposed to be with her and say no, no, you’re not with me.  So I’m left with two hours to kill.  And I’ve found out that my classes this afternoon have been cancelled as well, so I’m basically only here to teach the English Club at lunch, and I don’t even know what I’m going to do for that.  So I guess that I’ll write up an entry, then maybe go visit a marché that is going on right now and looked interesting, then come back, figure out something to teach the kids at lunch, teach the club, and go home.  Grrr.  This is frustrating.  I don’t have a schedule yet, and the person who is supposed to be setting up my schedule gets upset every time I try to insist that she do it.  I mean, one of the other assistants is at three different schools and she already has a schedule - why can’t I get one for *one* school?

Honestly, though, things are going well, if quietly.  I “went for a walk” yesterday - a 10 km (6.2 mi) stroll to a little pair of towns outside Laon, called Persles-et-Thierry.  It was a wonderful, wonderful walk.  The countryside was beautiful, the weather was fantastic, I petted a horse… Actually, it’s funny - I even got to give the horse a treat.  I was standing on the side of the road, petting the horse, when a car pulled off onto the shoulder and a guy got out.  I thought, “Uh-oh, it’s the owner and he’s going to tell me to leave his horse alone!” But when I asked the guy if there was a problem, he said, “No, no, pas de tout(not at all),” and asked me if I’d like to give the horse a bon-bon.  Without waiting for an answer, he opened up his trunk and got out a bag of horse treats, fed a handful to the horse and gave me a handful to do the same with.  (The horse was very happy.) He asked if I lived around here, and when I said yes, that I lived in Laon, he amazedly asked if I came on foot.  When I said yes again, he asked me if I need a ride back to Laon, as that was where he was headed.  I said, “No, thank you though.  The weather is beautiful.” He agreed, got into his car and started to drive off - without his little dog (a terrier of some sort that had slipped out of the car when he first opened the door).  I waved at him, he paused the car, and I picked up his dog and showed it to him.  He was very surprised and glad that I had noticed!  ::grin::

Yesterday afternoon went well, then, and I had that wonderful feeling of absolute contentment that I’ve gotten other times, usually when I’m by myself doing nothing in particular - wandering around a foreign country, for example.  I’m starting to get excited about all the traveling I might be able to do in the next few months - Madrid in a couple of weeks, England for Christmas, Germany at the end of February… It’s amazing to be in a place where a few hours drive takes you to a totally different culture and country.  I know that the cultures of the different parts of the US are fairly different, but they are at least all in one country and speak (mostly) the same language.

I’m sure that there were other things that I was going to say in my entry, but I honestly can’t think of them right now.  Maybe they’ll come to me while I’m walking around the marché, and I can update again later today.  It’s funny - I’m also feeling like I’m not doing exactly what I meant to do with this weblog.  Part of me had this grand(iose) idea that I would be able to make insightful remarks about life in Europe, how it pertains to the world, things like that.  Instead, I find myself using it mostly to record my emotions and actions.  I know that this isn’t a bad thing, and that one can infer a lot about the culture and life around me by what emotions they engender, but it’s yet another example of idealistic notions running headlong into reality.  I’ve had quite a few of those run-ins these past few days. 

I have lots of things to say…

... but not enough time in which to tell all of them.  I had a great weekend, went to a fantastic concert, talked to the principal cellist for a long time afterwards, went to a nice little museum of art and archeology here in town, the weather has been great, the kids in my classes have been good, my French is improving, and in general things are going well!

Whew!  I have to run, because a class needs to use this classroom in just a few minutes, but I’ll try to write more later.  I’m thinking about spending a bit of money on some CDRWs and writing my entries in advance on my computer, burning them to disk, and then just copying them from the disk onto the internet through one of the computers in this classroom.  ::shrug:: We’ll see.

A short entry…

...because I don’t have much time before my next class.

Things I don’t understand about France/French:

1.) pigeons that sound like crows (they caw)
2.) parking lots that you have to drive over a curb to get into - isn’t that awfully rough on your car?
3.) students that leap to their feet any time a teacher or other adult walks into the room
4.) milk that can be stored at room temperature until it’s opened (it tastes disgusting)
5.) gendered nouns that don’t agree with the gender of the subject of the sentence.  For instance : “il entre dans sa chambre” (he goes into his feminine room)

More information as time allows.  I have a meeting/audition for the viola teacher at the music conservatory tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll let everyone know as soon as I can thereafter if I am allowed into the orchestra.  It will actually kinda suck if I can, though, because rehearsals are on Saturday afternoons from 2-4 p.m.  This means that if anyone comes to visit (like Aunt Suse), I’ll either have to skip a rehearsal or miss out on time with them.  I guess that I’ll worry about it when I get to that point.

Life is pulling together…

So, it looks like I’m finally going to start incorporating myself into the life here in Laon.  Classes will be happening more regularly starting next week, and that means that I will start making friends among the students at the school.  In addition, I’ve a meeting tomorrow with the director of the Music Conservatory here in town, to discuss having me play the viola in the orchestra at the school.  Yay!  And I am going to a concert this Saturday evening!  Double yay!  There has been a Berlioz festival going on here in Laon for the past few months (a concert here, another there, spaced out over the weeks), and the final concert of the festival is this Saturday.  They are playing Berlioz’s “Harold in Italy” - a hugely important piece in the viola repertoire, since the part of “Harold” is acted out through a viola solo - and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 - one of my favorite pieces.  It’s actually only through the extreme niceness of a lady at the Tourist Office that I’m going.  I was under the impression that there were three different ticket prices, and I was going to splurge a bit and buy the cheapest one, at 18 euros.  However, it turned out that all tickets cost 24 euros - too expensive for me.  I turned to walk away, disappointed, but the woman called me back and told me that she would pretend that I was a student at the Music Conservatory, and I could therefore have a ticket for 10 euros.  Triple yay!  She said that there are too many people who attend these concerts only to get dressed up and show themselves off, and that she wanted to encourage those people who actually want to hear the music as much as possible.  I’m so excited!

I’m also excited because Fall Break is coming up in two weeks, and I’m trying to figure out what I want to do.  I might visit a friend in Madrid, if I am allowed to leave the country, or, more specifically, if I would be allowed to return once I had left.  (Technicalities of my visa.) Or, failing that, I’m considering bicycling along the Loire for a few days, visiting Fontainbleu (spelling?) and staying in youth hostels.  Or I might just take a train into Paris, maybe stay overnight, and visit the Louvre - I get in FREE!  That’s right - since I have this thing called a carte professionelle, I can get into any of the national museums completely for free!  Quadruple yay!  Decisions, decisions… better have a look at my finances, I think.

Oh, by the way, I’ve had it pointed out to me that I left something rather crucial out of my mass emailing.  I’m sure that you’ve all figured this out, but if you want to send something to me, it’s important that you put FRANCE in big letters at the bottom of the address.  Woudn’t want to confuse the USPS!

So, this afternoon I will probably stay in my room for the most part, relax, watch strange French commercials (and they are bizarre, let me tell you).  I also might visit the library that’s located right across the street in what used to be a monastery.  It’s great - not only do I have a gorgeous, hundreds-of-years-old building greeting me every time I walk out of the front door of the school that I live in, but it houses a library!  Life is good....  ::grin::

Ah, the weekend…

Well, I finally gathered up the fifteen or so (you think I’m joking?) documents that I needed to apply for my carte de sejour, and went into the prefecture first thing this morning, handed them all over to the woùman behind the desk, and after waiting for an hour, received the little card that officially states that I have applied for the carte.  Yee ha.

Otherwise, the last few days have been pretty uneventful - I’ve sat in on a few more classes, gotten the same sorts of questions asked… Oh yeah, I almost forgot that I got to go on a French field trip.  We went to visit the Chemin des Dames, which is a 15-ish mile stretch of countryside a bit south of Laon that saw some of the most horrific slaughter of WWI in France.  Very cheering, let me tell you.  It was actually quite fascinating - we visted a museum at the Caverne du Dragon, an extremely long cave/quarry that was used by the Germans, the French and sometimes both at once as bunkers.  I didn’t understand most of the tour, surrounded as I was by chattering French middle schoolers, but there were a number of signs translated into English.  Besides, the most important impression - that I never, ever, ever want to have anything to do with war and especially do not want to live underground - transcended the language barrier.  The countryside was absolutely beautiful, which made it all the more strange and sobering to realize that not all that long ago the ground was strewn with dead bodies, mines and the other accoutrements of war.  Strange.

This weekend is going to be nice and relaxed for me.  While there is a good chance that I will decide to go visit Reims tomorrow with Lauren, the English-as-in-from-England assistant, it’s going to be a laid-back trip for fun, rather than a business trip.  She wants to go champagne tasting - might not be bad, if only for the rather silly-snobbish feeling of joy that I get when I think about doing somthing like champagne tasting.  It sounds so grown-up and… un-Julia-esque.  ::grin::  What do you think?  Regardless of what I do tomorrow, I am sleeping in and doing n-o-t-h-i-n-g on Sunday.  And what a wonderful day that will be.  (Okay, so I might explore Laon and the surrounding area on foot, but that’s not really doing anything difficult, which is what I meant by doing nothing.)

Rassafrassin’ bureaucracy…

Okay, I am officially a member of the “France’s bureaucracy is monumental and engraging” club… or, if such a club doesn’t exist, I’m thinking about creating it.  You need anywhere between 3 and 10 pieces of paper to do anything, from merely proving your existence (but, but… I’m standing here, aren’t I?) to opening a bank account to proving that you are worthy of being paid.  It’s absolutely infuriating and I’ve been pounding my head against the bureaucratic wall for the last week, and particularly for the last three days.  And I’m not finished, because when I stepped up to what I thought was my last desk this afternoon, I discovered that a piece of paper that was absolutely necessary was also one, as it turns out, that was absolutely necessary for another thing that I had applied for at my school earlier this morning.  I had left the piece of paper at the school to be copied, the school is closed on Wednesday afternoons, and I’m working all day tomorrow.  Argh!

Other than the bureaucracy and the normal extreme homesickness, things are actually going pretty well.  I really like Laon - it’s small and imminently walkable (presuming you like stairs… a LOT), and quiet, which I find nice.  I’d probably go crazy if I were forced to live here for years, but for a few months, it’s nice.  The people are very nice, put up with my broken-and-ground-into-dust French, and consist of a round assortment of ages and types.

The first few days in Amiens for the training were a lot of fun, despite the training itself.  (The training was not very informative and was boring on top of that.) But I made a few friends: three from Germany, one from Nothern Ireland, and a couple from England.  We hung out quite a bit, and it was really interesting to me to have to translate English!  When my friends from England and Northern Ireland started speaking quickly, it was almost as difficult to follow as the French or German the others spoke.  :-)

One of the things that is the most striking to me is the sheer age of things around here.  I mean, there are the usual assortment of new-to-fifty-years-old buildings, but sprinkled among them are three hundred years old buildings, or five hundred years old streets.  I walked around the medieval walls of the Ville Haute (the part of Laon that’s up on a plateau), and it was sobering to realize that even these walls, so ancient by American standards, are postively young in comparison with the founding of the city over a thousand years ago… Made me feel like something of a Mayfly, given how short my lifespan will be in comparison to the duration of the walls and city.  It also made me wonder whether I will be able to make any lasting impression on the planet, and about the dubious advisability about having given certain members of the US government the ability to make such an impression.

Anyway, I am doing well.  I will be spending the next few weeks merely observing in classes at my school (which turns out to have a high majority of “special needs” classes).  My first observation period today was more like a session of 20 Questions, and it was interesting to see what they were interested in.  All the students hung on my single-word affirmative to the question, “Do you have a boyfriend,” for instance.  :-)

Until next time… bonnes journées!

Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to France I go! (Or: Am I really doing this?)

Well, everyone, this is it.  My inaugural weblog entry as well as my last full day in America for a very long time.  I’m leaving for France tomorrow, and despite being caught up in all the last-minute flurries of details, I’m still finding the energy to be nervous.  Quite nervous, and also a little homesick (already).  ::shrug::  Oh well - that’s part of traveling, isn’t it?

I will try to update this page as often as I can, although my connection to the internet is uncertain at this point.  Expect this page to be updated more often than you get emails, although emails from you will probably be answered fairly quickly (I hope).  Mostly this page will consist of descriptions of the life and times of me - plucky English assistant in the small French town of Laon.  (That’s pronounced like “long” without the “g” sound, as far as I can tell.)

Laon is a town of about 26,000 people about two-thirds of the way between Paris and the Belgian border.  I don’t know much about it (nor are most guidebooks very helpful), other than that it has a fantastic cathedral, was founded by the Romans in about 40 B.C., and was sacked by about five other groups thereafter.  Additionally, there is a celebration going on until the 28th of September.  It’s called Les Ecrits Lumiere (Light-Writings), and apparently it involves big pictures being projected onto the walls of the buildings in the Old Town at night.  I’ll let you know how it is.  ::smile::  (If you want to check out the website for the town of Laon, you’re welcome to, but good luck - it’s entirely in French.)

I’m going to miss all my family and friends very, very much, and I hope that I hear from you frequently.  I know that I’m going to have fun and have an experience that I’ll treasure for the rest of my life, but right now I’m caught up in the emotional complications of leaving everyone I know for nine-ish months.  It’s tough.  ::sigh::  Take care, everyone, and write often!

P.S.  Check out the pretty pictures on the other pages!  ::grin::