It changes

TIME MACHINE POSTs are things I wrote in France and then never published because of laziness something besides laziness. Here is one of them.

Every Friday I go to a literature review session for college students who apparently have nothing better to do on Friday nights. Last week when it was over and everyone was leaving, the teacher asked me where I lived and how I was getting home. When I answered that I lived by the train station and was going to take the metro she told me that was a horrible idea and she would give me a ride. I said that was very nice of her, and I put on my coat and my backpack and was ready to go.

"Woah, don't put your coat on! We're having a picnic."

I looked around, even though I already knew what I was going to see. It was 9:30 at night. There was no one else in the building. She pulled a picnic basket from underneath a table.

This is something that happens a lot in France. Someone says something very clearly, and I understand every word, but I don't UNDERSTAND. Yes, I caught that you want to have a picnic with me at 9:30 at night. I was able to grasp every word in that sentence. And yet... it's 9:30 at night. And you want to have a picnic?

Dinner was a bag of tiny chicken drumsticks that you can put in the microwave, gluten-free bread because she knew I was allergic to wheat, and a package of garlic cheese. There was a ton of chicken in the bag, but she kept telling me to eat more, until finally they were gone. Then she pulled out a second bag of tiny chicken drumsticks, barbeque flavored.

"Barbeque is a different flavor that regular," she announced in case I had never had flavored food before. "So, it changes."

"It changes" (or ça change for people who wish I didn't translate all the dialogue on my blog) is a sentence that I UNDERSTAND does not mean the same thing as it does in English, but it's impossible for me to think otherwise. In French ça change means "It's kind of different, but there you go." France is kind of different. It changes. But I like it.

a jacket a day

It's a lot warmer in Marseille than in Minneapolis, but you wouldn't know it to look around. People bundle up here like it's the arctic.

Mostly to show off, I only wear my coat when I really need it and hardly ever turn on my heater. "Look at that awesome, inappropriately-dressed Minnesotan," I assume everyone must be thinking. "She has access to warm clothing and heaters but doesn't use them, and it makes me respect her." French friends won't have any of it though. "I'm not letting you outside without that jacket - you'll catch a cold."

I know we have this saying in the U.S. but does anyone believe it? I thought it was like wishing on dandelions. Cold doesn't make you cold, any more than hanging out at the tapir cage turns you into a tapir. I have proved that second fact with four years of study at the Minnesota Zoo.

I attribute my recent sneezing (and subsequent French "bless you's") to sleep deprivation or a possible allergy to cockroaches. But no one agrees with me. "Well, now you've done it," they all say as I twitch my nose "You've gone and caught yourself a cold like we said you would. Maybe if you have worn a sweater..."

I have yet to see a dandelion here, but I bet they're worth their weight in gold.

Esssactly

Major spoiler alert for people who are months behind on reality television: I was catching up on Project Runway last week, and when Casanova was cut I was crushed.



Casanoava was a Puerto Rican contestant who spoke in broken English and was always yelling "Essssactly!"

INTERVIEWER: You seemed to struggle with some of the challenges [...] do you think it was an issue with the language barrier or do you think that it was that you had a different interpretation of what you thought that they wanted?

CASANOVA: Definitely maybe I can say both.

The guy never made any sense. No one could understand him. In short - he was me.

Because that's how I see myself lately - I am the zany foreign character on my own French reality show. Always thirty seconds behind in the conversation. Laughing really loudly when I don't understand jokes. Only speaking in the present tense. Drifting off midi-sentence when the vocabulary gets too difficult. And always, with a bewildered look on my face, repeating my famous catchphase: "What is going on?"

Other likenesses include Gloria from Modern Family



and Consuela the maid from Family Guy.



Cross your fingers that viewers find my antics endearing, so I don't get voted off.

when the cat's away the mice will dance

Last night, after watching a French movie and all its bonus materials, I told the couple I live with I was going to go to bed early. "I don't know what it is," I explained, "but lately at the end of the day I'm just freaking exhausted."

"OH MY GOODNESS!!!" they both screamed. "Say that again! Say that again!" Knowing better than to repeat what I assumed had been an accidental swear word or innuendo, I asked what was going on.

"That was such an amazing sentence! You used all the right verbs, and all the right articles, and slang only French people know!" Apparently this perfect sentence called for a celebratory dance that consisted of holding their fists high in the air and prancing around the apartment. You can't take more than two steps without hitting a wall in our apartment, so it was more like spinning around in circles.

When my flat-mates hate my hair, they really hate my hair. And when they think my French is getting rad, they really think it's getting rad. And it's scary to watch.

"Well, like I said," I mumbled, since they were too busy dancing to hear me, "I think I'm going to go to sleep."

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.

Shut up and listen to me.

I try really hard to remember every cool French idiom or word someone says, but usually I forget two seconds later. So I was glad yesterday when my roommate repeated one hilarious thing at least a hundred times. Before almost every sentence, she said the French word for "Listen."

Like when I saw a castle in the distance, and asked her if she knew what it was called. "Listen," she said. "I have no idea what that building is."

I promise this isn't a salad

There are a lot of French idioms that are so logical, like "having a cat in your throat" (getting a cough or a weird voice), and there are ones that are awesome, like "telling someone a salad" (telling lies).

And then there are idioms that aren't logical or awesome.

Some girls living in Marseille just emailed me and said that we should be roommates. "You would be perfect in the sein of our apartment!" they said. And I thought "Sein must not mean what I thought it meant." But it does. And I guess it's a nice way of telling someone they will fit right in.

Eighteen days until I leave! I hope my visa gets here soon.

I'm eating an enraged cow

As my knowledge of French idioms expands, this blog will slowly become even less comprehensible than it already is. To both French and English speakers.

The cocktail of prescription drugs I'm taking (watch your back, bronchitis) has really messed me up this week. Most of them cause "racing heart" and "a sense of nervousness," which I hoped would be balanced by my other medication's side-effect of "an increased sense of well-being" But actually the combination is disturbing.

I don't know how to describe it except to say that I feel like early tomorrow morning I'm taking my driver's license test, speaking in public, and then going to Disneyland. There's a tarantula on my shoulder and the room won't stop spinning. I can't shake the feeling that I'm forgetting something important. And dang, I just feel good about myself.

it's clock time

I miss how much it rains in Minnesota in the summer. Especially the really intense rain, where it seems like our house might wash away, and my dog stands right next to me so he's under the umbrella, but he still gets soaked and looks so, so skinny.

Tonight it's pouring outside and since my dog isn't here I'm watching Persepolis and eating hot chocolate-flavored ice cream (thank you science). Here you have to enjoy the rain while you can, because it never lasts for as long as you want it to. It's like watching fireworks, or sledding down a huge hill you spent five minutes dragging your sled up, or hot chocolate ice cream.

Chocolate ice cream melts faster than any other flavor, because it has the most extra stuff in it.



Tomorrow night I'll put myself on my 31. Actually no, I probably won't. I just really love trying to use my French slang.

three cheers for not spending a year surrounded by cows

Since Sean, the only reader of this blog, already knows this news I don't know why I'm writing it but, here it is anyway. I have some Excellent News! I got my school assignment for next year, and I'm going to be teaching at an elementary school in downtown Marseille.





The school actually very much downtown. It's a school for at-risk kids with non-so-great behavior, which should scare me. But how scary can 10-year-olds be? They're just little kids. In a couple months I will look at this and laugh about how naive I was.

Another good source of amusement in a couple months will be remembering how back in June I thought my level of French was going to be passable. Listening to French slang podcasts has For Sure adequately prepared me for life in a foreign country.

Come October it will be non-stop laughter. Right now I'm so excited I have trouble sleeping, and I have du pain sur la planche (so ready!), with visas and plane tickets.