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!