Movin' On Up! Or Down, Rather...

        To all of my former teachers and professors, and to all of you reading this who teach for a living, I give you major props. I don’t think ever realized how annoying kids could be until I had to discipline them in my own classes. You deal with a lot. Seriously. I mean, kids can really be quite the little rascals. And that’s putting it nicely.

        Last Thursday, I was released into the wild (i.e. on my own in a classroom without any teacher present), to try to teach the children of Saverne about American culture and the English language. Class breakdown of my day went as follows:

        Class 1: Premières. 16-17 years old. For the most part well behaved. For the most part don’t speak or understand English at all. I thought to myself, this should be interesting. Sylvie, the professor whose class this was, had given me a Harry Potter movie poster to work on with them. She gave it to me and said, “discuss”. As far as I am concerned, this does not exactly constitute a lesson plan. So, it was up to me to come up with an impromptu lesson on Harry Potter. How many kids in the class had read the books or seen the movies? One. Um, serious difficultly here. Basing a lesson plan on a book or movie that practically no one in the class has read or seen is nearly impossible. So what to do? Well, we worked on questions. Who, what, where, when, why, how. That’s right. Something you learn when you’re about 6 when learning a foreign language. However, these kids had some trouble forming sentences with these words. I have my work cut out for me.

        Class 2: Nothing special. Moving on.

Patty Melt



        Class 3: Secondes. 15-16 years old. Very well behaved. Basically speak no English. Project for the day? Restaurant vocabulary and a typical American menu. Going through the menu, I tried to pick out the most “American” items to explain to the kids – hamburger, hot wings, onion rings, Caesar salad, Prime Rib, etc. I purposely skipped over the ones I had no idea how to explain. Case and point? The patty melt. To be honest, I don’t even know what a patty melt is. In fact, I just googled it. Essentially it’s the same thing as a hamburger (for all of you who, like me, aren’t wise in the ways of all meat and cheese creations). Seriously, America? Why is it even a different sandwich?   

"Typical" American Menu



        Anyway, I thought that we could spend half the class going through the menu, and the other half going over typical questions you would ask your waiter, what a waiter might ask you, etc. But no, it took the full hour to go over the menu! Explaining what “hot wings” are, was incredibly difficult. Since they’re not technically wings, and actually legs, but with “chicken legs in spicy sauce” not sounding amazingly appetizing, it was tough to get the idea across. Needless to say, I don’t think any of them will be ordering hot wings upon arrival in the US. If they ever venture outside of France.

 

         Class 4: Terminales. 17-18 years old. My objective for these classes is to prepare them for the oral part of the bac. In this class we worked on a really interesting document (see the cartoon below). Dora the Explorer, every American child’s favorite explorer, as an illegal Mexican immigrant getting her mug shot and being beat up in jail. Interesting, huh? Leave it to the French to find things that make Americans look bad. (This was a teaching “gift” from another professor) But we actually had some stimulating conversations about how this relates to what Sarkozy did in France by kicking out all the Romanians. Turns out, French kids aren't such big fans of Nicolas. Actually, as it turns out, most of France is not.

Immigration "document" for class.



Class 5: Secondes. 15-16 years old. Well behaved, spoke great English. Thank god. Subject for the day? Halloween! It was so much fun to talk about American Halloween (No one dresses up here, trick or treats, or does anything fun. Totally boring). We went around the room, saying what each of us would be for Halloween if we were going to dress up. There were witches, Frankensteins, mummies, zombies, devils, a pumpkin (the one boy in the class who wears an all-orange outfit every day, no joke), etc. When I told them that I had been a butterfly one year, Minnie Mouse another, a tsunami last year (my whole house was weather patterns…), they thought I was crazy. One kid goes, “Well, that’s not very Halloween.” Naturally I asked what he meant by that. He replied, “It’s not mean or scary.” Guess they’re totally into the sinister over here. They also couldn’t believe that kids took pillowcases out on Halloween and filled them with candy. Typical American excess!

        Class 6: Terminales. Miserable human beings. They were so badly behaved; I almost kicked a girl out! And they’re mostly 17. I mean honestly, you are no longer a child at this age, you know how to behave. And let me tell you, I can be mean, mean, mean when someone misbehaves in my class. I have one rule - don’t talk while I’m talking (typical teacher rule). This girl spent the ENTIRE class talking, and flirting, and being disruptive. Again let me say, teachers, I do not envy that you have to deal with this day in, day out, for years on end. If she comes back, best believe I will whip her into shape! In this class we worked on a Nicorette advertisement, which none of them really seemed to understand. Why quit smoking? It’s fun! Needless to say, my views are somewhat different…

        Friday was an equally long day. I got up at the crack of dawn to visit the bank and post office before I hopped the tram and train to work. Dear post office, my mom sent me a package in the mail 3 weeks ago, may I please have it? Sorry, we have no record of your package and we are too busy to look for it. Leave your name, and we might potentially find the time to look, and if we so feel like it, we will call you and let you know if it is here. Never going to happen. Better question: why haven’t I been getting my mail? Because France is in a state of complete and total disaster right now. Perhaps I should explain.

        Oh wait, I did explain didn’t I? In my last blog, if you care to look. Well yes, the protests about raising the retirement age a measly 2 years are still going on. I haven’t gotten my mail in 3 weeks, or my trash collected in about the same time. We haven’t had normal train or tram schedules, and many students and teachers are on strike. Basically it is incredibly difficult to get anything accomplished. So on Friday morning, after visiting the post office and the bank (to FINALLY get a credit card after 5 weeks of living in France, ugh), I was on my way to the train in plenty of time. Or so I thought. Because most the tram employees are protesting, essentially less than half of the Strasbourg trams are running. Including those to the train station. I waited, and waited, and waited for a tram. Eventually one came, but I got to the train station 2 minutes after my train to school had left. The next train – canceled. And the one after that, also canceled. I waited at the train station from 9am until 11am, when I could finally get a train out to Saverne. I missed two of my morning classes. For anyone who knows me and my type A personality, you know I was apoplectic at missing two classes this early into my job. I frantically emailed the professors whose classes I was missing, and called the school. Only the woman at the school got my message wrong, and told all of the teachers I wouldn’t be there for the whole day. What a mess. I eventually got to school in time for my free period. Perfect timing. After lunch, I observed a class of Seconds, studying detective stories, and was lucky enough to follow that by teaching the worst class of all time.

        Class 4: Premières. 16-17 years old. I had a really interesting lesson planned, based on American advertisements. Too bad one boy wrought complete and total havoc. Until I put him in his place, that is. Remember how I said I could be mean? Well, talking throughout my class just really doesn’t fly. I can’t hear myself think when others are loud and disruptive. And he was. So, I yelled. And then I gave him the evil eye multiple times until he shut up. Then he was the last to be able to pick out his ad, and that was the end of my problems. In the second half of my class, he was actually the one to answer the most questions and speak up the most. Ha! What a disciplinarian I can be. Care to know something interesting? Well, as I said, this class was based all on American advertisements. I had brought 15 ads with me to school that I had ripped from People magazine, Sports Illustrated, National Geographic, or something along those lines. I set the ads out on the table, and said that the students could come up one by one and pick out the ad they wanted to study for their project. The first one chosen? McDonalds. I was not at all surprised. It’s so typical. In fact, as I write this, I am sitting in the McDonalds in downtown Mulhouse (southern Alsace), staring out the window onto the giant protest going on below. Oh, how I love France. (“McDo” has free wifi, people.)
          I have to admit, I was incredibly tempted to buy a Big Mac today. One of my classes asked me to do a little experiment. They wanted me to go to a McDonalds here and see if the Big Mac tastes the same as it does at home. Small problem – I have never in my life had a Big Mac in the US. So, why not do it in the reverse order? I’ll eat one here, and then go home and eat one, and tell them what I think when I come back. Standing in line, I was seriously thinking about it. So what did I choose in the end? What am I having as I write this? Diet coke. I couldn’t break down just yet…especially since I already had fast food once this week. But I’ll explain that later.

So back to Friday. My last class was amazing. I had a class of Terminales with a “Euro” concentration, which means they are very internationally minded, and want to explore and travel, and study other countries. Just like me 5 years ago. And for the record, NOT typical French, if you wanted to know. They were so interested in what daily life is like in the US, in what my hobbies are, in what my friends are like, if the boys are cuter in the US, what French food I liked, etc, that we spent the whole class just chatting. I left the classroom laughing and smiling – it was a good way to end week 3 of work.



Ebru, Yildiz, and Me



I got home, quickly changed, and rushed back out to a friend’s for a dinner party. My responsibility was to bring the wine. Normally expensive in the US, right? Well, I volunteer to bring wine over in France. Why? Bottles of wine are 1 euro. ONE EURO. It is amazing. And it tastes better than most of what we have in the US, to be perfectly honest. First on my list of “Pros” for living in France. Jen, my friend who was hosting the dinner party, has a pretty nice set up. She lives in Neudorf, a residential suburb of Strasbourg, in a house with 3 really nice girls, Ebru, Yildiz, and Barbara. Remember them from my last  blog? Anyway, Jen, who is from LA, but whose family is from Louisiana, decided she would do some down home cooking for   

Looks gross, but it was so good.

dinner. The menu? Slightly absurd and not even really “down home”, but here goes: chips and guacamole for an appetizer, bruschetta for appetizer number 2, followed by a 3-cheese macaroni and cheese, then a pasta dish with grilled chicken and vegetables. That’s right – macaroni and cheese and THEN pasta. Like most southern cooking, everything was made with copious amounts of butter, cheese, and in this case, crème fraiche. I tasted each item on her menu, and almost died of instant heart attack. After dinner I was so full I couldn’t move, and I swear I probably clogged half of my arteries. Note to self: must go on 5 runs to make up for what I ate. I was so full that I couldn’t even roll myself home. I spent the night at their house, and made my way home Saturday morning.

Saturday. MOVING DAY. For those of you who don’t already know. I moved. Two days ago. I used to live in an apartment by the University of Strasbourg. Now I live in a village outside Mulhouse. Remember Saint Amarin, where I visited last weekend? Well I live here now. Population: 250. And it really is incredible! I moved for multiple reasons, but a huge push for the move was the money that I will be saving while living in this tiny town. The rent is less than a third of what I paid in Strasbourg, with all utilities included. I have always said that I wanted to find a job and living situation that would allow me to travel while I am here, and now I have it! I’m living with my Irish friend, Aoife. We have a nice 4-bedroom apartment to ourselves, and I must admit, I quite like country living. Yesterday I went to the grocery store, which is about a 15-minute walk from our apartment, to get a bunch of stuff I needed. Since I knew I would be moving, I hadn’t bought groceries in weeks, and this was to be a big shop. After I got through the line and loaded up my giant bag full of stuff (and heavy stuff, at that), I knew my walk home would not be fun. The bag was heavy. I was struggling up the hill outside Simply, our store, when a nice old man stopped his car, asked me where I was going, and asked if he could give me a lift. I gladly accepted (And no, I’m not stupid. He was 80, I knew I could overpower him if he tried to kidnap me). He asked if I was planning to go all the way to Saint Amarin with my heavy bag. I said yes. He said, “Oh no, no. That just won’t do.” I hopped in the car, and we got to chatting. In fact, he spent most of the ride back giving me a recipe for choucroutte, a Alsacian regional specialty (sausage and saurkraut cooked in lard from what I gather, yum). He dropped me off and said that he looked forward to seeing me back at the store so I could give him news on what I was up to. What a nice man. This NEVER would have happened in Strasbourg. One point for small town life.

Don't judge.

 Now, orchestrating my move was a whole other issue. Remember the protests and how all the trains are messed up? Well it turns out, taking the train to move, which was originally my plan, was not an option. Saturday, Aoife couldn’t get up from Saint Amarin to Strasbourg to help me with my stuff (I have a lot. 18 pairs of shoes, remember?). So I had to spend the night again at Jen’s on Saturday night. But what do I care? I love her roommates, they had a big party, and someone brought karaoke. For anyone who knows me, you know that you could park me in front of a karaoke set and I would be entertained for as long as I had a voice. For dinner we made her roommates another “American dish”. Fajitas. Hahaha, kind of a joke, but we have a lot of Mexican people in the US, don’t we? It counts. Sunday morning arrived and I couldn’t find a train to get down to the village, and was beginning to get frantic. Luckily Ebru, Jen’s roommate, who is Turkish, but grew up in Germany, offered to drive me the 150km down to my new home!! Can you believe it? So nice. In exchange, I would obviously pay for any gas and food along the way. Well, I didn’t exactly know what that would mean, until we were half way down to Saint Amarin and Jen saw a KFC. This is what they decided to eat for dinner on Sunday night. True to my word, I bought them the bucket of KFC chicken and fries. Now swallow this – Jen is a vegetarian. Has been for 3 years. But she decided KFC was good enough to break her 3-year long spell for, and she dug into that bucket. Not much of a fast food eater myself, I was hesitant. Especially since I’ve heard that KFC grows weird chickens that have so many legs and breasts, etc, that they can’t really be called chickens. But in the end, I succumbed to the smell, and ate. Besides, all the chickens in France are free-range. And it was good.

Have you ever seen a bucket in
real life? It's huge.

So all in all, things are well and good in rural Alsace. I wake up each morning to see the leaves changing on the trees that cover the Vosges Mountains. I can still go to Strasbourg whenever I want, as it is only a 40 minute train ride away, and I have tons of friends who have offered their flats to stay in. I think I get the best of all worlds! The city when I want it, the countryside when I need it, and the money to do what I love the most: travel. My classes are interesting and I am planning some exciting projects with my students. And while I do miss home and my family, especially now, I am doing what I love and couldn’t be happier!

One more week of school and vacation starts on Friday! Off to Paris and then Ireland…more news soon!

The Craic

               If you ever want to know what all the stereotypes are about Americans, work in a French high school. You will learn more about yourself then you could ever imagine (note: extreme sarcasm)! Like how we only eat meat, and no vegetables, at every meal, and how most moms are housewives that love to go bowling. Yes, bowling. Throughout my classes last week I learned more about the ill-conceived perceptions the French have of us than I ever have living and working here before.

            Class 1: Study of the Johnsons, a typical American family from Long Island. Where do they live? Stoneybrook. Which, according to the professor, is a “small village outside of New York City”. What do you the Johnsons like to do? Well they bowl, of course, because every American family does, but their son plays also lacrosse, which is “the game of Indians”, in case any of you were wondering. What do the Johnsons eat? Well for breakfast it’s bacon and eggs, waffles, pancakes and maple syrup, toast with jam AND coffee or juice. All at one meal. We like to eat big, remember? During the summer all they do is barbeque, eating ribs, steaks (2 inches thick, to be exact), and corn on the cob with melted butter. Yes, melted butter was one of their vocabulary words. For dessert? Apple pie, obviously. It’s all we eat. No fruits or vegetables. Unless of course, it’s corn on the cob with melted butter.

The only vegetable we know and love, according to the French.

            Now the French school system would not be my choice for my children, and here’s why. First of all, classes last from 8:00am until 5:00pm. That is an incredibly long day. If they want to do sports, they do it after that, from 5 to 7, or 6 to 8. Then they go home and do their homework. Basically the students have no time to have lives of their own, which is why so few of them actually do play sports. The ones that do anytime tend to play an instrument. Another reason I don’t like this system is their way of distributing grades to students. In the US tests are returned facedown at the end of the class on each students desk. Or at least they were at my high school. That way, no one else knows what grade you got (saving you severe embarrassment if you have done badly). In France, they distribute papers or tests at the beginning of class, and they call out each students name as they pass them out. Now this wouldn’t be so bad, if each name wasn’t qualified with “I was very disappointed, Emma,” or, “Helene, what happened? I thought you were a good student?” This way, everyone else in the class knows you bombed whatever exam you just got back. Not exactly what I would call encouraging.

            Class 2: How to give and ask for directions in London and New York. Basically if you ask a French person for directions in an English-speaking country, you will get lost. The concepts of “go straight ahead” or “go along the river” were completely lost on these children. They couldn’t even tell left from right. In order to head from St. Pancreas Station to the Hyde Park, I was supposed to go right and turn at the roundabout (they teach them British English), and then go straight on. Needless to say, I would have probably ended up in the Thames.

            The rest of Monday’s classes were pretty uneventful, I just observed class procedures and took notes on what the students are studying at the moment. Thursday however, was a different story, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

            Wednesday brought to my calendar the TAPIF (Teaching Assistant Program in France) orientation for the Alsace region. 148 English, Spanish, Turkish, Chinese, German, Arab, and Italian assistants gathered at Lycée Kleber in Strasbourg to learn all about what our year would be like? What did we learn? In a nutshell, we learned that we will have unruly students, no matter what we do. We learned who to contact when said unruly students misbehave, and that if we kick them out of the classroom for misbehaving, we are still responsible for them while they’re roaming the hallways alone. Well thank you Rectorat de Strasbourg, I probably would have thought of those insightful pieces of knowledge by myself, but I’m glad I got to spend three hours in a lecture hall listening to you repeat the same information in 8 different languages. Note, the buddy system is alive and well in the French school system. If your student has to go with the bathroom, they must take a buddy who makes sure that they actually go to the bathroom and come back, and don’t escape from school (apparently this is a common occurrence).

            However, the “stage” was not all bad. Afterwards I went to lunch with three other assistants, Jen, who is from LA, Nicola, who is Scottish, and Aoife, who is Irish. For those of you who reread that last name 5 times trying to understand how it is pronounced, let me help (I don’t speak Gaelic either, don’t worry). She pronounces her name E-fa, not A-oaf (which is kind of what I thought originally…). Lunch was great, we spent hours talking and roaming the city, complaining how there are no cute boys here. Sadly, somewhat true. We decided to meet up later for drinks and go out with some of Aoife’s Irish friends who are here on their Erasmus year.

            Skip to 11pm that night. Irish people can drink, wow. I must admit I was impressed and a little terrified. After meeting the Irish contingent, Aoife, her friend Mick, and I, went over to Jen’s to be extremely French and drink wine and chat. It’s all people do here, really. So we went, and we drank, and we chatted. And we met Jen’s roommates (1 German/Turkish, 1 French/Turkish, 1 German) and their new kitten. I got to practice a little of the Turkish I learned this summer (thank you, Elif), and the girls were quite impressed! However, I did make one huge mistake. Sitting on the table was a bowl of chips. Jen offered the chips to everyone, and so I decided I would taste. The second I put that piece of hell in my mouth I immediately regretted it. Note: if you go to Germany or ever encounter Germans, never, I repeat, never, eat what the brand of chips called “Fuego”. I thought I was going to die. I still don’t think I have all my taste buds back yet. On the way home, Aoife and Mick explained to me that what we were doing was “the craic”. Pronounced crack, it really has no translation into our English, but means something along the lines of “a really fun time.” So yes, I had craic on Thursday night.

Absolute and total death to
your mouth. Never eat.

            Moving on. Thursday came and a long day of classes. For some I observed, for others I was like a biology experiment. A real, live, American girl in the classroom! What shall we do with her? As with most classes, they decided to get to know me by asking questions. What did they want to know? Well of course my name, my age, and where I was from. Beyond that, nothing too much about me. The boys wanted to know if I had a boyfriend (at which point one boy leaned over to his friend and said, “Hey! You have a chance now!”), when my birthday was (and what I wanted), and finally, could they have my phone number? (To which the professor replied, only if you get good grades. If that’s not an incentive to work hard, she said, I don’t know what is!) Greaaaaat. Bribes. May I remind you these children are 15?

Free wine tasting at the grocery store. 1 euro bottles of wine.
Gotta love France.

            The weekend rolled around and Jen and I decided we wanted to get away. Aoife lives in a small village outside Mulhouse (southern Alsace), and had invited us down for a relaxing girls weekend. A weekend in the country? Sounds good to me. And so we packed and set off to St. Amarin on Friday evening. The trip wasn’t too long, as she’s only about an hour south of Strasbourg, and we ended up at her doorstep around 7:30pm. Her town is beautiful. It is nestled in a small valley in the Vosges Mountains, and it is just trees as far as the eye can see. Every morning I would look out my window and see an array of colors as the leaves on the trees are just now changing color. It was breathtaking. Always the good housewife, Aoife had made us dinner on Friday night. By the time we woke up on Saturday morning, she had already run down to the boulangerie to get kugelhopf (pronounced coo-gull-hoff), an Alsatian breakfast delicacy (amazing, by the way).  

Kugelhopf

St. Amarin

We then spent the day roaming around Mulhouse, which is not far from her town. It’s the second largest city in Alsace, and is basically a somewhat smaller version of Strasbourg. It is adorable! It has tons of restaurants, shopping, and cobblestone streets, which I love, and is also home to a big university. So the town is very lively and fun. While there, we happened upon a market that was right outside the church. We sampled jams, breads, and all different types of wine. No need to buy food anymore, folks. Just go to the local outdoor market in France, pretend you’re buying something, and ask for a sample. I swear I was tipsy by the time we left! The rest of the weekend was filled with hiking, walks, cooking, and lounging. It was really nice to be away from the city for a change!

Especially because, when I got back home yesterday, I was made fully aware of the “grève national” that is gripping France. If any of you follow French news, then you’ll know that France recently made a reform to change the age of retirement from 60 to 67. This has France in complete upheaval. The entire country needs to spend time in anger management, seriously. But, they have the right to protest over here in France, so the whole country thought Tuesday would be a good day to go on strike. And so they did, the trains, the trams, the postal service, the universities. You name it, it went on strike. And so, as I arrived back to the city, I was met with screaming crowds yelling about how Sarkozy is the new Vichy government, and that reform needs to be changed. Because none of the trams were running, I walked 45 minutes home with my suitcase. Now that was fun. Thank you, France!

Sign I found on the side of the road. It says, "Sarkozy, keep your word, take back the reform."

As far as today goes, I spent it preparing lesson plans for tomorrow’s and Friday’s classes. Nicorette ads, Harry Potter posters and Chili’s dinner menu, here I come!

Voilà Sarah, she comes from the USA.

           For the first time in 18 years I got ready for my first day of school not as a student, but as a teacher. I woke up early, and like a civilized human being, showered, had my breakfast, and made the commute to work. For those of you who know me well, or at least my sleeping patterns, you should know that my early-morning wake-up was not the easiest. I am the girl who schedules all of her classes after noon, sleeps in until the last minute, and often goes to class looking like a slob because she hasn’t left herself enough time to properly get dressed. Well, not anymore! Last Friday, my first day of school, I actually showered, dried my hair, and put on make-up. Now this is big.

As my school is not in the city of Strasbourg itself, I have to take multiple forms of public transportation to get there. I take the tram five stops, switch to a different line, go two more stops to the train station, and then hop a train to the little town of Saverne. From there, it’s a ten-minute walk to Lycée Général Leclerc. In all, the journey probably takes me about an hour, but with my Ipod on and a good book for the train, I hardly notice the time. En plus, the town of Saverne is adorable. It is incredibly picturesque, with small winding roads, little Alsacian houses, and flower boxes on every windowsill. It is one of the most authentic French “villages” I have seen. 

Downtown Saverne

          I made my way to the school around 9:45am. I was to meet one of the 9 English teachers in the “salle des profs” (teachers’ lounge) to begin my introduction to the school. It wasn’t until a few minutes into my conversation with Mme Girard, when we switched from French to English, that she realized I was American. “We were supposed to get a British assistant,” she said, “I am SO glad you are American!” Apparently all of the other teachers went through a similar state of shock upon hearing my accent. Luckily, they were all as pleased as Mme Girard.

Lycée Général Leclerc

        While I was meeting the other professors and getting shown around the school, I happened to meet the German assistant, Nadine. She speaks great English and seems really nice! (Dressed a bit like that guy in the Matrix though, all in black…) She’s renting an apartment in Saverne for the year (have no idea what she is going to do with her free time there, as there really is nothing to do), right down the street from the school. She is fresh from studying at Oxford for the past few years, so needless to say, I will not be needing to learn German to communicate with her. Phew. That language is much harder than it looks.

         Before going off to my first class, the English teachers had a few questions for me. Did I speak French? Yes. For how long? 20 years. Okay, well it’s safe to say that you speak well? Yes. Can you please pretend not to speak or understand French while you are in the classes? Sure...That way the kids will only approach you in English. If they know you know French, you will never teacher them English. Good to know.

         At exactly 10 o’clock the bell rang – time for my first class! I followed Mme Willé to Salle 11 to meet some of the “Terminales” I would be working with. As you might have guessed, they are in their last year of high school, mostly 17-18 year olds. My job is to help prepare them for their baccalauréat, the exam that all French students take upon their exit from high school. How well you do on this exam determines where you can go to university and what kind of jobs you will be eligible for in the future. Basically, if you fail, you are, for lack of a better word, screwed. I will be helping my students prepare for the oral part of their English exam, the part that French students seemingly have the most trouble with. If you’ve ever taken an AP language exam, then you know kind of what this part of the exam entails. You write about a text you’ve previously studied (in this case, A Midsummer Night’s Dream), and then speak for 10 minutes about an unknown document that is presented to you right before the exam. This “document” could range from anything from a small text, to a picture, poster, or comic strip.

        In this first class, all of the students went around and introduced the person sitting next to them. To say the least, my ears were not at all prepared for the abominable English that trickled from their mouths. Not only the accents, which made the “English” practically impossible to understand, but also the way they formed phrases and sentences. They made a TON of mistakes. Well, I guess that’s why I am here. After they went around the room, it was my turn to introduce myself. I said where I am from, a bit about my family, what my hobbies are, etc. I’m not sure a single one of them understood everything I said, but hopefully that will improve. The second part of the class was devoted to the topic of immigration. Pertinent to discussions of the US right now, I suppose. The class had previously done a listening exercise in which two Americans, one an immigrant, and one from “immigrant stock”, talked about immigration in America today. The woman, who came from an immigrant family that had lived in the US for many generations, believed that new immigration was bad. The man, an Irish immigrant himself, believed that immigration was good. The class discussed the different viewpoints and they asked me a bit about immigration in America. I talked about where different groups of immigrants tended to go (Irish to Boston, Latinos to Miami, etc), and how the US was incredibly culturally diverse. The professor then asked if I would share my personal cultural heritage. When I said that I was English, Irish, Scottish, and German, the class burst out laughing. How could I be so many things? they wanted to know. Pretty much everyone in France is, well, French. They thought it was really strange that my family came from so many places. Oh, and to add to it, the teacher made them write down exactly where I was from and who came from where because they would later be tested on my heritage! Glad I did a little family research with mom before I came over…

        The second class was “Secondes”, mostly 15-year-olds, in their first year of high school. For the most part, they just don’t speak English. This might be the most difficult class of all. When Mme Girard introduced me to the class she said, “Voilà Sarah, she is our language assistant for the year. That is all I am going to tell you. If you want to know anything more, you’ll have to ask her yourself.” I must admit, this was a good way of getting them to actually put up their hands and ask questions, but what ensued what a jumble of English vocab words put into French grammatical context with the end result being something along the lines of gibberish. The first girl who raised her hand, in an effort to find out where I was from, asked, “Where live you?” This was followed by similar questions like, “Speak you French?” or “How long study you French?” Only one out of the 27 students in the class had ever been to the US. Most haven’t even been to Paris. They wanted to know how long my plane flight was to Paris, and when I got there, if I thought it was beautiful. I told them that indeed it is. Really the only things they know about the US are Obama, Johnny Depp and Eva Longoria, with a few more celebrities scattered in there, I'm sure. For the rest of the class, I attempted to decode their half-formed questions and give answers as to what my family was like, if I had pets, how long I will be in France, how many languages I speak, what other countries I have visited, etc. Needless to say, the list from Semester at Sea had a few jaws dropping in the classroom…           

        This exercise was followed by one about trends in the US. Today’s trendy topic? Crocs. Which, if I’m not mistaken, are on the way out in the US? Well, everyone in France loves them. They consider them trendy and expensive shoes. The exercise about the Crocs was pretty basic. What is this a picture of? What are Crocs? How many pairs of Crocs are there? Are there many colors? What colors are there? But getting the answers was like pulling teeth. I left already feeling overwhelmed that I would soon have these children on my plate for one hour a day.

But overall, I really love my new job! I left the school with a big smile on my face, eager to return this week. I like all of the teachers I work with, and I think I’ll find the experience rewarding.

Okay, so you remember how on my last post I said I wasn’t having beer again for a very long time? Well, that idea went down the tubes (and the beer down my throat) when my roommate Chrissy invited me to the Oktoberfest in Stuttgart, where her parents live. I couldn’t very well say no! I would just have to suck it up and go eat more French fries, bretzel, and beer. My life is very difficult, I know. So Friday after work, I set out from Kehl with my other roommate, Laura, to take the train to Stuttgart. In order to get the most inexpensive ticket, we had to take only the regional trains. So how long did it take us by train to go what is normally one and half hours by car? 5 hours. No, I kid you not.

We got on the first train from Kehl to Appenwier. A 10-minute ride. In Appenwier, also known as the complete middle of nowhere, Germany, we had a bit of a layover before taking another train to Karlsrhue. This one was a 40-minute ride. Felt like a year though because our car was infiltrated by a big German bachelor party. 25 men carrying crates of beer and partying it up on the train. Good choice guys, the Deutsche Bahn regional train. However, I must admit, if I was them, I’d think a party on a train was preferable to one in Appenwier as well. In Karlsrhue we switched one last time before the one and half hour ride to Echterdingen, where Chrissy’s parents live (short ride from Stuttgart). After our 5-hour-long journey (including tram, train, layovers, etc), we met Chrissy and her dad on the platform, walked a few minutes to their house, and were warmly greeted by Chrissy’s mom with a couple of glasses of champagne.

On Saturday we woke up late, had a home-cooked meal for breakfast, and then went with Chrissy and her mom to explore the American military base in Stuttgart. Chrissy's dad works as a civilian employed by the military here. The base was really pretty cool! We went into the BX/PX, essentially the Walmart of the whole place. They sell food, clothes, electronics, cookware, etc. Complete with a full rack of dirndls, lest you should need one for Oktoberfest. You name it, they have it, along with 30 different versions of the mini deep fat fryer. The one thing I didn’t expect though, was that everything is paid for in dollars, not euros. Makes sense, but I never would have thought of that!

Dirndl display

I must admit that I was most intrigued by the food. I wanted to see what American products these military men and woman just couldn’t live without. And what did I find? Well first off, ChexMix, for which I totally applaud these men and women – you have good taste. I miss ChexMix too. The other major culprits you’d expect to find – Doritios, Cheetos, Combos, etc – all adorned the aisles of the snack shelves. On the wine and champagne shelf, none other than my best friend from college, Andre. Oh how I did love those $6 bottles of champagne. On the toothpaste and deodorant aisle I was surprised to see over 30 different kinds of Crest toothpaste. I didn’t even know Crest made this many varieties, and yet here they were. The other things hard to come by in Germany? Halloween costumes. They don’t dress up for Halloween here, so the BX imported costumes from the US to sell to the kids and adults on base.

For a whiter smile

After our trip to the BX, it was time to go to the fest. Chrissy’s parents had a table reserved in their favorite tent, and we were meeting some of their friends there around 4pm. I told myself I was only going to drink one masskrug (each one liter), you know, nurse my beer the whole night? Yeah right. But we don't need to go there, do we?

Working on beer #1

We ordered plates of French fries and big roasted chickens, sang along with the band, and danced on tables. We also met a nice group of Italians (who believe I am their new best friend, I can’t tell you how many times I was invited to Bologna) at the table next to us, and played a few drinking games with them. 

My favorite t-shirt ever: I'm not 40, I'm 18 with 22 years of experience.

I think perhaps I might even like the Stuttgart fest more than Oktoberfest in Munich because it’s still so much fun, but it is more intimate and relaxed. There are less people crowding the tents, which makes trips to the bathroom, drink orders, and moving around the tent much easier. But the music is equally good, and the people are just as entertaining!

Chrissy and I at the fest!

Sunday morning rolled around way too quickly and we were off on the five-hour journey home. When we got in, all tired, dirty, and ready for bed, we barely even said goodnight before hitting the sack. It was an early morning this morning when I got up for day 2 of work, but that’s a story for next time…