There are 26 French children who know the English alphabet that didn't know it this morning. Please hold your applause.
26 genius children, 26 letters.
I wish I could say 26 was also the number of times some punk yelled "ZIZI!!!" after we said the letter Z.
But unfortunately that was more like 260.
I made an alphabet poster where each letter is colored with the color that shares a vowel sound.
A sounds like gray, Q sounds like blue, Z-- ("ZIZI!!!") ...thank you, sounds like green.
For a few minutes, R was a mess, because they didn't know any color that sounded like it (not the first time I've regretted omitting chartreuse from the color lesson.) But then one of my favorite weapon-obsessed seven-year-olds saved the day, by pointing out that R sounds like the French word for "firearm". Soon everyone was waving imaginary pistols in the air and yelling "AAARRRR!" I doubt any of them will ever forget that letter. Or be convinced that Americans aren't cowboys.
The gun-brandishing, the "I as in iPod!" and "K as in OK!" and the "ZIZI!!!" chorus - it was a pretty outrageous day. And at the end of it, there were 26 kids who knew the alphabet.
This week I invested in some sticky tack and made my kitchen wall into a makeshift art gallery of all the drawings my students have given me. The exhibit grew pretty quickly. In fact it will either have to be more critically curated or I'm going to have to build an addition by next week. Mostly because of a couple classes where I walk in and the kids all rummage through their desks for anything they could give to me.
Here's one of my favorite pieces from my collection: "I'm thankful for..." by Cooper. For now he's an adorable seven-year-old that often wears a corduroy blazer and Converses to class, but some day he's going to be the art director for a heavy metal band. I like to assume the pictures are things he's thankful for, and the crossed out pictures are things he ISN'T thankful for.
Which would make a translation read something like this.
I'm thankful for my family.
I'm NOT thankful for Yoda.
I'm thankful for my house.
I'm thankful for people who run around flipping people off. Especially that girl with a thousand teeth.
I'm NOT thankful for that girl with the beak.
I'm thankful for sphinx wearing glasses, horse/dog crossbreeds, and two-legged cats.
I'm NOT thankful for two-legged cats with one ear.
Things have been crazy lately. When I'm not working nine hours a week, reading French comic books, or teaching stray cats to beatbox, I like to stop every now and then to congratulate myself on achieving an exhausting goal: making my hair grow longer. Operation Grow Hair Longer than Current Length has been a tremendous success.
If you pay incredible attention to detail you might have noticed I'm wearing the same shirt in three of the pictures. Apparently I really like that shirt.
Here is the funny thing about teaching in France: I have no teaching experience. And I've never tried to hide that, from the program or my schools or teachers. I tell them all the time that my only experience with English is speaking it, and my only qualification for working with kids is that my favorite food is candy.
My actual job title is "assistant," to a real English teacher. But for me and all the other assistants I know, that's somehow been interpreted as teaching classes to 400 kids a week, and doing all the lessons completely on my own. So, I'm just making this teaching thing up as I go along. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. If it works half the time I consider that a success. The kids like it, the teachers never complain, and sometimes I'm excellent. (Especially in kindergarten. I'm a natural with five-year-olds.)
Until today, when one teacher stopped me as I walked into her class and told me she had some news.
"I've been talking with some of the other teachers," she said "and a lot of us don't want you to come to our classes anymore."
"Oh, ok." I said, somewhat taken aback by what sounded more like a 14-year-old not inviting me to her birthday party than a grown woman talking to a college student. "I see, English every week does take up a lot of time."
I was rarely invited to birthday parties as a child.
"No, it's not the time at all. The thing is, and it's nothing against you but, you're not a good teacher. In fact you're actually a really bad teacher."
"Alright, that's fair." I wondered why she had felt like she needed to add this, and why she hadn't said anything three months ago. "I've never taught before, and I'm only supposed to be an assistant, but if you're ok without my help that's no problem at all."
"Oh we're MORE than ok without your help." Oh my goodness why was she being so mean. "You just confuses the kids more - it's horrible."
I thanked her again, and didn't bother to remind her for the tenth time that I'm not a teacher. But if I had had more time to chat, say, two minutes and forty-eight seconds, I would have said this:
Then I got a crazy idea that no one wanted me anymore, and the principals would fire me and I would be sent back to the US with a frown-face stamp on my passport. But I went around and did a head count, and the rest of my teachers still definitely want me. Everyone else thought I did an awesome job today. And a boy with a bloody nose walked up to me right before I left and said, with excellent pronunciation: "Good morning, Brooke. I've got a bloody nose."
Granted, it was afternoon. But I don't think he has a horrible English teacher.
Every Monday afternoon I teach a class of seven-year-olds, and I swear it is the highlight of their week. As soon as I walk in they whip out their English name tags, and a couple of my most loyal fans have crossed out the English names I've given them and written BROOKK and drawn hearts.
Then I ask "What's your name?" and there's a flurry of little arms going up, and I call on everyone to say their name. Some kids raise their hands twice and introduce themselves twice, so other kids get jealous and raise their hands again, and soon everyone's said their name at least three times, and we move on to colors or carnivores or whatever the lesson is.
And then this little boy with blond hair and eyes as big as North Carolina pipes up, he does it every week, and says "Maîtresse, Maîtresse, you didn't ask me what my name was." His desk is so far forward that sometimes I trip over it, and he's always staring at me. But he never raises his hand, every week he waits for me to seek out his name on my own. And he's so heartbroken when I don't that I just want to ask him his name a million times. And that's the highlight of my week.
Also I got another silly band today. Ignore what I said previously about cockroach families, nothing grows as fast as a silly band collection. Every day a kid sees them on my wrist and freaks out. "You like bracelets?! Here, have this one!" As though there are people who don't like bracelets. Please.
The girl that gave me this pointed out that it's the letter B. "B as in Blugh.., I mean Bduul..., I mean, B as in your name!"
A lot of things about my life right now might be more cheerful than most people's. Like when I pack my things in the morning, they include glitter stickers, pictures of dogs, and Yo Gabba Gabba music. I'm greeted with hugs, and I spend every day talking about colors and singing.
But there are some downers.
Yesterday while we were drawing pictures of our families, a stressed out little girl showed me a page already completely filled with portraits. She had three siblings, two half-siblings, and nine cousins. "Do I have to draw my grandparents?" she asked? "They're dead, and I'm out of space anyway." If there is a way to say "passed away" in French, kids do not use it. I told her she was fine.
"Oh no!" shrieked the girl next to her. "We weren't supposed to draw dead people? My mom's dead, but I drew her anyway, just because I miss her so much. Do I have to start over?" I told her that she had done an amazing job, and that it was a beautiful picture of her mom. And that everyone could draw any family members they wanted.
A boy heard us from across the room, and came over to show off his solution. "My dad's dead," he explained, "So I drew his face and then crossed it out!"
...for worst-translated movie title.
In the US this movie is called No Strings Attached. I'm not saying the American title makes the movie look any less terrible, and I don't like generalizing things and blaming "France," but why must France take English titles and change them to poor English? Why not just change them to French?
As someone who has done a lot of easy things I can say with certainty that there is nothing easier than making five-year-olds love you. I teach them to sing London Bridge, I tell them to stop hitting each other, I remind them if we bite we don't get stickers, and then for some reason, when it's time for me to leave, everything I've done warrants "We're going to miss you ssssso muchhhh, you're so beautiful, I drew this picture of you will you come live in my house? I LOVE YOU." And a million kisses.
And they give me Silly Bands.
And probably head lice.
Speaking of tricking people, and unrelated to head lice, so far I've told four of my new flat-mates that I'm American, not French, and all of them think I'm lying to their faces.
It may not be the start of a great friendship, but it's building my self-confidence.
Let's start with this sweet mural not far from the entrance to my building. How cute is it? I don't know if this building used to be a library or what. But I really love it.
Congratulations, if you've been looking at the mural this long, you no longer have your wallet. Welcome to Marseille, sucker!
And in we go.
Kitchen, featuring precious drawings my kids made me and lots of Nutella. And a party bag of M&Ms thanks to my sister!
Desk, featuring map of Minnesota and surrounding areas. I really never planned on putting that up but I am hurting for decorations. Everyone says the little triangle flags look like they belong at a Halloween party. And they haven't even seen what they look like when you're reading Stephen King books in the middle of the night. Luckily the x-ray makes the whole thing less creepy. I'm planning on setting out a vase full of bloody knives later, to make it a little more homey.
My tack board has souvenirs of cool things I've done in Marseille so I don't get homesick. And then there's the picture of my family, so I do get homesick. Fun activity - looking back and forth between the two until I'm dizzy.
Plants on my windowsill. Hannah and I got them for cheap at a flower market! It said not to put them in direct sunlight, and the windowsill obviously gets almost constant direct sunlight. But extra sunlight never hurt anyone. Kind of like my favorite stuffed animals that got extra love, the ones that are now nothing but scraps of fabric. The point is I'm taking a photo of these plants because they won't be alive in a week.
For those of you that have been tired of all these words and would like some numbers, you're in luck:
Number of stairs: 7. or 8. I'm not much of a math person.
Number of days I've lived in this apartment: 2
Number of times I've fallen down these stairs: 29
Number of cuts: 4
Number of rugburns: 8
Number of rugs: 0
Number of times the wind has been knocked out of me: 1
Good thing trips to the hospital are free in this country, because I'm sure I will be visiting it a lot.
And at the top of those stairs, my little bathroom. Complete with Marseille soap. And all the other things a bathroom needs. Except a toilet.
And bed, with Stephen King books and notebooks. Check out this sweet Twins bookmark. My little sister made it, can you believe it?
Goodbye Flowers. I don't know if heatstroke or Halloween-decoration-induced paranoia will get to you first.
A couple summers ago, I was in New York City and decided to go to the top of the Empire State Building. For reasons that were never explained, we got the VIP pass instead of the regular pass.
I don't know if any of you lowlifes have ever gone to the top of the Empire State Building without a VIP pass. I've heard it takes several hours. The line for regular people is divided between several different floors - it slowly snakes around, and every half hour you get to take the elevator up another floor to another line. And as you wait there, I walk past the crowd and flash my VIP pass. The employees unhook the velvet rope and lead me into a gold-plated VIP elevator, and I'm at the top in 25 seconds.
That's the Empire State Building, VIP style.
This is a New York pidgeon, not a Marseille pidgeon. You can tell the difference because French ones wear little scarves. And track suits.
It was hard to come down from my VIP trip to the Empire State Building. The elevator trip itself was easy - but it was hard to come back down to the level of you common people. While we waited in line to order lunch, and it took everything I had not to go to the front and whisper "Excuse me, VIP pass." It took years to readjust to life as a regular person, and it wasn't until today that I was reminded that I am, in fact, a little bit more important than everyone else.
I went to McDonalds at 8 this morning, to get an expensive jus d'orange and use the free internet. Every time I go to McDonalds in the morning I try to get french fries. I don't care if it's 8 am, I love fries. To which McDonalds always responds that it doesn't care if I love fries, it's 8 am. I always give it a shot.
"Do you make fries this early?" I asked. "No," said the employee. I grabbed my orange juice and started to walk away, but he continued. "Not usually. But I can make some for you, it will just take five minutes."
Looks like my VIP pass is back in business.
PS all this talk of my wealth makes me think about butlers, and reminds me of the website Ask Jeeves. Do you remember that website? The internet has had some wild times.
A lot of people ask why I don't go to more tourist attractions in Europe. Do more traveling, see it all. I have a really good reason.
It's because yesterday, when I was walking down a busy street by my apartment, an old man began waving around wildly for something he had dropped on the sidewalk. His eyes were crazy focused, and in his rush to pick up whatever it was he lost, his cane and several boxes fell on the ground, but kept his cigarette clenched between his lips. I looked down to see what he was getting so upset about dropping, and saw a bright pink set of false teeth.
And that's why I don't travel more - because I have already seen it all.
All my posts start with an idea of when they took place in. It's not very original. This one took place a while ago. A while ago I wrote a post about my goal to say yes to everything in France. It was a pretty fun goal. It's led to some adventures. I probably fooled all of you into thinking it was great advice.
I hope for the life of me that no one takes advice I give them. I am not qualified to give advice to anyone besides maybe guinea pigs or amoebas.
Guinea pigs and amoebas listen up: do not say yes to everything. Some questions are fun to say yes to, and you end up at a circus or with free macaroons or you learn how to wind surf. But some questions make you teach English lessons every day for two Euros an hour, or sign you up for a weekly community class that costs way more in metro fare than you make tutoring. Some questions make you eat cooked carrots every night and there is nothing more gross than cooked carrots. Guinea pigs probably like them though. So I guess that last one is just directed at you, amoebas.
My point is, say yes too often and people will think you're a pushover. By the time you realize what's going on and try to say no to things that make you miserable, everyone will get angry, because they've never heard you say no before. Life is very confusing. And also I'm very homesick. If you know my address, please send me a guinea pig.
One of my favorite "English" words that French people use all the time is METRO BOY. It's their way of saying metrosexual, and it's said in English, METRO BOY. All caps to illustrate the way they take a breath before saying it, and then emphasize every syllable, the way Americans do when they say "well, SAY LAH VEE!"
I'm a metro girl. Not only do I have the stops memorized, but I know by heart the number of steps down into the metro, the sound it makes when it's a few seconds away, and exactly how far you need to lean when it's stopping so as not to move at all. At the end of a long day, there's nothing more soothing than sitting in a bright orange seat, and riding through the dark tunnel as the stops go by - Castellane, Estrangin, Vieux Port...
But today I visited my friend who lives in the seventh, a neighborhood so swanky that everyone has cars, or private jets, or something that prevents them from needing the metro. The only public transportation is the bus.
I'm not a bus girl. Marseille a hundred buses that swirl around the city like noodles, and once you're one you never know where it's going or when to get off. Miss your stop and you're halfway to Spain. I have no interest in the bus at all.
But there I was in the seventh, on a bus toward Spain. Against my better judgment, I pulled out a map and started trying to make sense of things, prompting a handful of male passengers gravitate toward me and ask if I needed directions. All of them claimed to know the place well, and be going in the same direction. I don't know if it was just because we were near the port, but it smelled fishy. The least creepy of the bunch said that my map was worthless, and that he would tell me which stop to get off at no problem. But when his directions made me miss my stop by four blocks, I gave him a little sampling of my favorite angry French words. He didn't ask for my number.
After several more adventures, I made it to my friend's without a hitch. That is, if your definition of "hitch" doesn't include getting lost three times. What can I say, I'm a METRO GIRL.
The only thing my kids love more than glitter stickers and Simon Says is the letter H. In French it isn't pronounced at the beginning of words, and my kids LOVE this new consonant. So much it may need a restraining order. This week we're learning body parts - like head and hair. And hears and harms and heyes. And after about five minutes into any lesson there are so many H's flying around that no one knows what's going on anymore, me especially.
"I have a question," asked a ten-year-old amidst the chaos. "What are hams?"
I'm trying to be more vigilant about pronunciation lately, since I figure that's the only thing I definitely have going for me. So I'm constantly correcting outrageous French pronunciation. No it's not a feeesh, it's a fish. No, it's not sreeee, it's three. And no, it's not hams. I don't know what it is, but it's not hams.
I'm back in France now, and remembering how important it is to bring a camera everywhere in Marseille. It doesn't matter if I'm on my way to a medieval plague festival or just taking the trash out, crazy things are going to happen. Yesterday the only thing I saw that I will never forgive myself for not capturing on film was a two foot bird sauntering down a busy road with a half-eaten sting ray in his beak.
