happy halloween

The only "disguised" person I saw today was a 7-year-old boy on the metro wearing red eyeliner, holding a dozen pieces of candy, and growling softly to himself. I wanted to give him a piece of chocolate but I realized I'd eaten the entire box already. Sorry werewolf-kid. Or whatever you were.

haunted cat

In a desperate attempt to have a real Halloween, and to not spend the whole day watching television, we went to the cemetery today.



Marseille has a cool cemetery. It's huge, and the gravestones and tombs are packed in there like crazy. And it's easy to get lost, because there are so many DEAD ENDS! Thank goodness for cemetery jokes.

Cheese Review 7

7. FICELLO
This is just string cheese. I bought it the same day I bought the apple yogurt, the day I now refer to as the worst decision-making day ever. There were two varieties, regular and "baby", and I got the baby kind, assuming the word "baby" was being used the same way it's used in "baby carrots" - small like a baby, not made for babies. But when I got home I noticed the package called it "Baby's first cheese!" How does a baby eat string cheese? How does string cheese milk a cow? Like this:

Rating: 6/10

simply market

A couple weeks ago I was grocery shopping at Simply. It's my favorite grocery store because it has almost the exact decorating scheme as Toys R Us - there are banners on the ceiling that say "Be Happy! Be SIMPLY!" and there are rainbows on the ground.



I was looking at the aforementioned rainbows when I saw an abandoned five-euro bill. I went over to the help desk to turn in the bill, excited for two reasons.

Reason one: I like saying new sentences in French, and I had never said "I found this money on the ground" before. In fact it was my first time saying "ground."

Reason two: I knew turning it in would up my grocery store karma. And I can always use some grocery store karma.

The karma exchange rate in Marseille is fantastic. Not once, or twice, but THREE times, people in line in front of me have said I can go before them because I'm buying less than they are. A cashier helped me count out my change when I tried to give her 3 euro and she saw I had 2.94 euro worth of change in my hand. (In French 94 is pronounced "four-twenty-fourteen" and I just like to avoid it completely.) A man gave me a free apple when I asked how much it was. Bagged rice, my favorite food, was on sale 2 for the price of 1. Strangers always ask me how I'm doing, or what yogurt I would recommend. Yesterday I left a dime on the counter and another customer sprinted after me to return it.

People might tell you that French people are really snotty and that they don't like Americans or some other sort of complete garbage, but I am going to set the record straight. I don't think grocery store karma is real. I think people in Marseille are just the nicest people I've ever met.

look out

After a month of searching I finally found a hair straightener in France and, to celebrate the occasion, brushed and straightened my hair this weekend.

FRANCE LOVES IT WHEN I BRUSH MY HAIR. With a response like this I can only imagine what would happen if I wore clean clothes. I heard "Have you been to the hairdresser?" so many times I've completely mastered how to say it. Why is it such a big deal when I fix my hair? I kept asking myself. Do I usually look that bad? Could this get any more insulting?

These questions were answered, with the question my mom asked as soon as I turned on my camera to video-chat with her last night.

"Are you wearing a wig?"

Bizarre yogurt review #1

I gave myself another food goal today: to try a bizarre flavor of yogurt every week.

"But Brooke," you ask "where are you going to find the time? Aren't you already really busy with your 12-hour a week work schedule and your cheese-a-week goal?"

YES. Add to that some personal chocolate and macaroon goals and a lot of movies and sleeping and I am completely CHARGED, the French word for overworked. To make matters worse, after a total of seven hours of work this month because of strikes, I just started a two-week fall vacation.

France has some crazy flavors of yogurt. So far I've seen grapefruit, pistachio, coconut, watermelon, and... green apple and kiwi!



I was really hoping this yogurt would be green, but it was still really good. It had chunks of apples and lots of kiwi seeds/mouse droppings.



rating: not bizarre

smell my feet

Good news: when I'm talking with French people lately, I participate a lot more in the conversation. Either it's my French is improving or it's because lately the topic of conversation is usually Halloween, a subject I know a lot more about than my flat-mates, who just bought a giant bag of oeuf plat (fried egg) gummies and pink marshmallows they're going to hand out to kids on the street on Halloween.



Everyone's getting stoked for the "Halloween" party this Friday. I'm putting that in quotes because when I ask what people were dressing up as they all said they're wearing orange and black. "The colors of Halloween!" So pathetic. "That's not Halloween." I complained on our way to the cemetery yesterday. "Yeah, it's two days before Halloween. But more people were free that day." Maybe my French isn't improving after all. I decided to let my disgust go under the radar, because I thought of something way more important.

I told them about how when I was little, a bunch of people would bring their cars to a parking lot and circle up and go from trunk to trunk getting candy. So much candy, so little walking, and so much less of your mom worrying about hypodermic needles. Take that, orange and black party. I waited for their response.



"Man, that's ugly." And everyone agreed that trunk-or-treats, combined with drive-in movies, perfectly summed up how janky and lazy Americans are. What's wrong with getting ten pounds of candy, five pounds of which are those gross cherry-flavored tootsie rolls? What's wrong with a costume's value being based on how few people can guess what it is? Who on earth goes to drive-in movies anymore and when did they become janky?

Boo.

another reason to hate math.

What people don't tell you when they talk about the beautiful weather in the south of France, is that there's a crazy, crazy wind called the Mistral that reaches speeds of 50 miles per hour.

Mistral + my hair x French people's bluntness = this daily conversation with one of my flat-mates:

HIM: Hey Brooke!
ME: Hey!
HIM: Wow, your hair looks really terrible!
ME: What?
HIM: Terrible - in that context it means like really snarly and standing straight up.
ME: Oh, I understood the word terrible I was just... ok, thanks...
HIM: Why does it look so bad?
ME: Just naturally like this mostly.
HIM: Wow. Do you want some chocolate?
ME: Definitely.

hint: it's the last one.

Today, while I was singing a ton of "hello" songs with a group of five-year-olds, one adorable girl asked if we could sing another song. I asked her which one. "No, none of those ones," she said, bouncing in her seat. "Sing us a very beautiful song, and we can just sit and listen."

So I sang this.


Which one of those sentences isn't true?

and proud of it

Today when I told a class of French fifth-graders I had a dog a girl in the back of the class, who hadn't participated all hour, raised her hand. "Is your dog an American too?" She asked. And I assured her that yes, my dog is an American.

SOLIDARITÉ!

When you walk out of your apartment and see the city covered in smoke and red banners you know it's going to be a good day. Last Tuesday was going to be my first day of work, but school was closed for the national strike. I have little to nothing invested in the French retirement age, but I love a good manif so I joined in on the coolest protest/festival/party I have ever seen in my life.

Three fun facts:
1. There were like half a million people marching through the city.
2. Since school was canceled, there were tons of kids with adorable home-made signs.
3. There were really cool posters and political graffiti everywhere.



Everyone was singing awesome songs about revolution and solidarity and sticking it to the man, and there were free stickers and dancing and fireworks. At one point I got to a part of the march where I was right behind an announcer with a megaphone.

Announcer: You are tired!
Crowd: WE ARE TIRED!
Announcer: But you are unified!
Crowd: WE ARE UNIFIED!
Announcer: And now, you're going to set this city on fire!
Crowd: WE'LL SET IT ON FIRE!
Brooke: WE'LL MAKE MORE STICKERS AND DO SOME MORE DANCING!



At that point I got a little creeped out, and decided to call it a day.

I have chicken flesh

My French is nothing to brag about but my French idiom knowledge is DEFINITELY something to brag about. No one can butcher the French language while beautifully mastering its idioms as well as I can. And I show them off as often as possible.

Last night the people I live with asked me what time it was and I glanced at my watch. It was two minutes to ten. "Ten o'clock - on the dot." I said, hiding my wrist. I'm sure they think either my watch or my brain is broken. But they'll never know which.

look out

The woman I live with says she will teach me this dance.



But she says I'll never be as good as they are. Not with that attitude I won't.

1000 words

Today I was looking through my photos for a picture I can show to my students to tell them what life in the US is like. It's really hard to condense "life in the US" into a photo. Should I go with a photo of a baseball game? A snowstorm? Tacos? New York City?

If I had to pick one picture I want to describe my life it would be this one.

Because I love my family, and I love how Drew closes her eyes when she hugs people. And I love that she's hugging me the way you would hug a long-lost friend, but the reason for the hug is that she gave me some weights I wanted for my birthday.

And I love pinatas.

Now I'm off to search "eating tacos at a Yankees game during a blizzard" on Google images. You look at a picture of that and you feel like you're there.

super-size me

My second day in France I chatted it up with an employee at a cell-phone store, and told him it was my first time living in the country. He asked how I liked it and I said it was rad.
"You probably think everything is really small here, don't you?"
This caught me off-guard. Marseille is a freaking huge city, and my first week I felt so small. I was an ant and Marseille was a driveway. I told him France was different in a lot of ways, but not in size.
"But in America, everything is big! You have sky-scrapers and New York City!"
I nodded, assuming he was a lunatic that thought Jay-Z and I ate hamburgers together for breakfast every morning in Central Park.

But now I realize he was right. Things are shrinking. My room is the size of a nice closet, and my bathroom is the size of a nice suitcase. When I walk through the supermarket my left elbow grazes the salami and my right hand gets caught in bunches of grapes. If I wear a backpack my whole day is a struggle, I think "Oh, I can't go to that store, I won't fit in with the backpack. I really have to use the bathroom, but I won't be able to get in there with the backpack." People cram in together on tiny chairs in the tiny metro and sometimes I just want to go to Costco in a minivan and run up and down the aisles with a giant cart of family-sized products and spread my arms way out.

I thought living in the second-largest city in the country might be the real cause of my claustrophobia, so I did some really intense math, and found out that the US has 80 people per square mile and France has 300 people per square mile. If you are living in the US right now, look at the personal space you have at this very instant- your room your apartment, your desk- and divide it by almost 4. We are packed in like sardines over here, guys.

how is that spelled?

People here are usually really cheerful - the only time they scowl at me is when I tell them my name. Then they take a stab at saying it. Bruuuuk?  Breeek? Brugh? Bruoghk? Never the same pronunciation, never close to the real pronunciation. I was in complete shock when last week a teenage girl said she thought my name was beautiful. In French my name sounds like vomiting.

The closest until today was my French teacher, who mocks my by calling me "Brick!" whenever I say my name with an American accent.  But the 4th grade teacher at one of my schools says my name perfectly. And every time one of his colleagues shook my hand and repeated "Broouugh? Nice to meet you." he would yell "What the heck is wrong with you guys, it's pronounced Brooke, it's not that hard." It felt really good to hear someone say what I've been wanting to say for the last month.

The principal kept asking "Is that a popular name? It sounds familiar." and I kept assuring her that she had probably heard it because it was a pretty normal name. Then later, mid-sentence, she clapped and shouted "Wan Treel! That's what your name is from." When I said I hadn't heard of the show she accused me of not watching tv. Do most middle-aged French women watch One Tree Hill? I'll try to answer that question as the year goes on.

Cheese Review 6

6. BOURSIN
Recommended by Aimée and Alaine, fellow English teachers. Boursin is really, really, really good. It's losing a few points because the only thing worse than cheese breath is garlic cheese breath.
Rating: 7/10



Ok, there are worse breaths.

"ello, my name is Baguette."

It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon at an elementary school in downtown Marseille, and the second-graders were ripping out each other's hair as they wailed their wolf mating song in the blood-soaked schoolyard. Schools in France, or at least in Marseille, don't have playgrounds - instead they throw 100 kids loose in the terrace to run around screaming at the top of their lungs like wild animals. This is what I listened to as I waited in the teachers' lounge for my first day.

I taught two classes, the equivalent of kindergarten and first grade. It's freaking hard to learn a second language. I tried to teach the first graders a pretty simple hello song, and they looked at me like I was singing this:



More like I was a really beautiful superhero singing that while levitating and shooting lasers. One of the kids whispered "she's such a beautiful singer." They were really enthusiastic. I would sing "Get up on your feet!" and they would repeat "Waaa-haaa-vaaaaa-yaa-MEEE!"

Kindergarten didn't fare as well. They spent the whole hour raising their fingers and asking "How do you say gold? How do you say scab? How do you say giraffe? How do you say earrings?" They also had a hard time believing that I understood them.

KID: How do you say butterfly?
ME: butterfly.
KID: It's a little bug, with colorful wings
ME: yes, in English it's butterfly
KID: it's very small, it comes from a caterpillar.
ME: in English the word for it is butterfly.
2ND KID: you should draw a picture and show it to her next week, then she'll understand.

But they all completely loved me, and kept grinning at me and hugging me, and they were super well behaved. One kid told me his name was Baguette, but he said it so politely and was such a good singer, that it was hard to get too mad at him. Those French kids love their baguettes. At the end some kids gave me pictures, and they all couldn't wait for next week.



I'm assuming next week a six-year-old will walk up to me and tell me that she saw a butterfly with gold earrings bite a giraffe and give it a nasty scab. Minds like steel traps, those six-year-olds.

Cheese Review 4 and 5

Still way ahead of schedule on my goal to try a new type of cheese a week.

4. FROMAGE BLANC
Recommended by Hannah. This is more like yogurt than cheese. But it has the name cheese, and it is delicious.
Rating 8/10



5. KIRI
Recommended by Sonia, who said if I like kids food I'll like Kiri. There are two brands of this cheese: La Vache qui rit, and Kiri, which sounds exactly like "qui rit." Madness. It tastes exactly like cream cheese. I told the people I live with that we have a cheese like this in the US, but you're not allowed to eat it plain, you just put it on a specific type of pastry. They looked at me in a way that says "if you don't have anything interesting to say, don't say anything at all" which is a look I get a lot from French people.
Rating: 9/10

the money's under your hat

MORNING
Woke up early and didn't have anything to do so I gave myself bangs. Yikes.



AFTERNOON
Saw someone downtown wearing a Twins hat! I have never been so excited to see a stranger in my whole life. My friends heard people speaking English and came over, and I introduced my new friend: "This guy is wearing a Twins hat!" After we parted ways they asked me where I knew him from. From five minutes ago when I saw he was wearing a Twins hat. Already covered this, guys.

Every time I see someone I know in Marseille I get so excited - "Almost a million people in this city, what are the chances I would see HER!" I always say. And my friends point out that the chances are pretty high, because this is the street she lives on, or we're all walking to the same restaurant, or it's a really popular bus stop. But I think meeting people from Minnesota was crazy, good luck convincing me otherwise.

NIGHT
Ate dinner at an Indian restaurant with fellow teachers and our awesome Parisian friend Anne. Then went home and my French family had dinner ready - gluten-free pasta salad. So I ate a second time, for the third time this week. Afterward we watched a movie and I fell asleep several times but I think I covered it up pretty well?

These middle-of-the-night baseball games are really messing up my sleeping schedule.

good questions

Do you ever have one of those nights where you hear the street-cleaners outside your window and realize it's already 1 am and you've spent the whole night watching Yo Gabba Gabba videos on YouTube? Why did you get on YouTube in the first place? When did 1 am become really, really late? Remember when 5 am was really late?

This video answers all of these questions.

dance party

HAPPY FRIDAY DANCE PARTY #4 from blaine hogan on Vimeo.

good news

band directors and my hideous face

Two thoughts on what French children are going to think of me next week.

A sad thought
In sixth grade I played flute in band, and when our band director was gone the school had a hard time finding substitutes. Instead of musicians they were children's librarians or high school math teachers, and they never knew what they were doing. One such morning a substitute walked into the band room and was greeted by 50 preteens shouting at him if he was a real music teacher. He picked up the little baton from the music stand and used it to silence us.

"I'm not, but I played one in a movie."

Then everything got a lot louder. What movie? Do you know Leonardo DiCaprio? Are we being filmed right now? He waved his hands around to try and get us to quiet down.

"That's just a quote, I was joking."
"So you're not an actor?"
"No."
"Or a music teacher?"
"No."

I have never thought so little of someone as I did that substitute. What a loser, I thought. He's not a conductor. He's not an actor. He probably lives with his mom and she probably knitted that sweater he's wearing and his favorite food is probably canned corn. When I grow up I'm going to own a rocket ship and invent a product you can use both to brush your teeth and as a body wash, and this guy is just a grown-up loser.

A not-sad thought
This summer I worked in an elementary school, and was helping a third-grader catch up on math homework in the hall. In between problem 12 and problem 13 she looked up at me.

"You're ugly. You have a weird nose and a weird face." she said, scowling.
I asked her whether she wanted my help or not, and she turned her attention away from my hideous mug and back to counting by tens.

And I survived that. Most kids are awesome, but even when they're mean it doesn't really matter. At the end of the day I can buy all the candy I want and I have a car. And I hate canned corn so I don't eat it. Take that.

imagined conversation between two hôtel employees

Jean:  Hey, did you see that girl who just walked into the restroom in the lobby?
Louis:  The really skinny one with her hair in a bun?
Jean:  Yeah, she comes in and uses that restroom almost every day, but I don't remember her
            ever checking in.
Louis:  What, you think she comes to this nice hotel just to use the bathroom?
Jean:  Just saying it's weird.
Louis:  Ha! Do you think she's some sort of freak of nature and uses the bathroom like several
           times a week? Or EVERY DAY!!?
Jean:  Oh my gosh that would be so crazy.
Louis:  What if people really DID use the bathroom every day, and there were bathrooms in
           most public places?
Jean:  That would be insane! It would never happen.
Louis:  What if they had them in like supermarkets and train stations, and libraries!!
Jean:  Stop it! You're hilarious!
Louis:  What if they had them in schools! And you could go to the bathroom whenever you
          needed to!!!!
Jean:  I mean it, don't make me laugh! I've had to go the the bathroom for the last three days.
Louis:  Sorry.
Jean:  It's ok. Anyway, she's probably a guest here.
Louis:  Yeah, probably.

earlier retirement, and more chocolate mousse

I went to two of my schools today and they are sssssso niiiiiiice. They looked freaking shady when I walked by last week, just a regular door that says "school" on it, no yard, no colors, no playground.


But inside they have big terraces with trees, and they're huge and so nice and so clean. They both only have a dozen teachers, and the teachers all eat lunch together with the principal and talk about politics. One teacher, Fred, made fun of me for eating rice cakes (I didn't know we were going to eat lunch, I just happened to have them in my bag.) I laughed along, thinking to myself that if we were in the US his lunch of two plums, a piece of nice cheese, and a tiny chocolate mousse would definitely have gotten some strange looks too.

But we are not in the US. Tuesday is my first day of work, and when Fred heard that he turned to a teacher next to him and asked if she was going to be there Tuesday.

"I was planning on it, why?"
"There's a strike Tuesday."
"There is? What for?"
"I don't know, Francoise just emailed about it."
"Ok well, I won't be here then."

Fred told me not to come Tuesday. This is the third time they've been on strike in the last month, so I'll probably have a lot of days off this year.

I'm going to call it right now.

Everyone here wears Yankees hats, which has had me seeing red the last couple days.

My friend said that when you ask a French person in a Yankees hat if they're a big fan, they always answer "What are Yankees? I love New York!" and point to the NY. So that's some consolation.

Even better consolation would be if I could watch it on tv when the Twins beat them tonight.

what I really want is Freedom Fries.

There's plenty of room for improvement, but so far my French has been decent. My definition of "decent" is that everything I trip up in conversation could be mistaken as a bizarre sense of humor or compulsive lying. My definition of "room for improvement" is roughly equivalent to the distance between my index finger and Mars.

The one thing I have never gotten right is the distinction between fruit and fries. If I ask for one, they give me the other. Calling them apples and potatoes doesn't simplify the situation at all, because those two words are just as similar in French. While waiting to order today I practiced over and over. I want fruit. I do not want fries. Fruit, fries. Fries, fruit. Fry juice, french fruits. Then I asked for fruit. But when I went to pick up the bag it was fries.

A sane person would have gone back to the counter and practiced fries vs fruit some more, this time with a visual. A tired person would have just eaten the fries. But I was way more than tired and wasn't into either option. What does it take to get some fruit in this city? Why can't anyone pay close attention to the way I pronounce the ends of words?

So instead of complaining or eating I walked 10 minutes to the port where the same woman always sits on corner with a sign and a stuffed monkey that has seen better days. I presented her the bag and asked: "Excuse me, Ma'am, would you like some fries?"

In beautiful French. And she understood me perfectly.

heureuse

Things have been so wild lately that I haven't had time to write about how wild everything is.

I am living with the nicest family in the world. They play card games with me, and show me their stamp collection, and tell me about the ten most popular kinds of tomatoes. They don't make fun of how bad I am at making eggs (I cook horribly under pressure). They teach me words like "sweet and sour sauce," "drumline," and "tree bark." I teach them the difference between sunny-side-up eggs and over-easy, even though I can't successfully make either. I really don't bring much to the relationship, which is why I feel so lucky.

They even made this rad dessert for me my first night here:



I have a room with a ceiling so tall that I can stand up straight on top of my loft bed and get serious vertigo. And we live in the middle of downtown and there is always a ton of exciting stuff going on outside.

My definition of exciting doesn't involve parades or anything, just tons of people buying baguettes and walking around with boom boxes and chasing after their dogs.