Play on the Concrete

I don't know why it's taken so long for this thought to hit me: neither one of my schools has a proper playground. During recess the kids play in the fenced-off concrete area in front of the school. They have some soccer balls, and there are a few trees and bushes near the fences, but that's basically it.

When I went to elementary school, we had two pretty awesome recess fields with jungle gyms and zip slides and monkey bars, a dirt area and a basketball court, tether ball, a soccer area, swings...

And the classrooms are just... rooms with chairs. I mean, yes, there is the generic educational decoration stuck to the walls, but when I was little we had reading corners and sinks in the room, microwaves and cubbies.

I never realized how good I had it.

The Time I Fainted

This morning was eventful, to say the least.

I woke up and got a text from my roommate telling me she won't be able to do sports for a while, she's back using béquilles to walk. I had to look it up: crutches. She had told me that last year she hurt her knee snowboarding and had to go to the hospital, and almost exactly a year later, she hurts herself snowboarding again. I stuck my head out the door and let the people I live with (I'm going to start referring to them as V. and P., it's weird calling them "the people I live with" or "the people I rent from") know what was going on, and then V. got a text from her asking if she could pick her up from her boyfriend's place to go to the hospital. 

I, during this time, was sitting at the computer printing a document I needed to file an Identity Fraud Affidavit for the IRS, and as usual I was mindlessly cracking various parts of my body. I turn my head to the side, expecting that beautiful crack, but instead I heard a grinding crunch. That didn't sound good. Then I got tunnel vision. 

Then all of the sudden I was in the arms of a strange bald man, and a red head was talking to me in French, and I don't think I understood what they were saying for a moment. I had no clue where I was, I had no clue who these people were. A few seconds later it all came back to me. Right, I'm in France which is in Europe, and I speak this language, and these are the people that I live with, and I am currently on their floor, and I need to print this document. V. told me I ripped my sweater. I looked... indeed, I nearly ripped my sleeve completely off on the way down, I caught it out the desk. Dang, I liked that sweater. 

I'm okay now, my neck hurts like crazy and I'm trying not to move it, I'm a little worried I did something serious to it. Every time I think about that gross crunch I feel sick to my stomach and dizzy again.

Note to self: stop cracking your neck...and your toes and your feet and your ankles and the back of your ankles and your knees and your hips and the three parts of your back you like to crack and your shoulders and your fingers and the sides of your fingers and your wrists. But mostly your neck, stop cracking that.

The people I live with were really sweet about it. They're convinced I need to eat more sugar (oh boy, if only they saw how many cookies I ate last night) so V. bought me a little cake thing and ordered me to eat it, haha. Didn't take much convincing.

And once again, I don't think my to do list is going to get checked off any time soon. Sigh. This weekend man... merde. I think all the kids are just going to play Bingo tomorrow, I don't feel like making lesson plans. 

A Little Tram Story

A few days ago a Portuguese assistant hosted another International Dinner. Just like our first one, it  was basically a pot-luck. The first one was really, really great, so I was super excited for this one, I actually made good food, and I never make good food. I got to the tram stop, and one tram drove right by without stopping. I overheard a lady with a stroller talking on the phone: "Ouais, il n'y a plus de tram ce soir" (Yeah, there aren't anymore trams tonight). What? I went over and asked her if she knew what was going on. Apparently someone had been aggressive toward a tram driver and I guess here when that happens, all the drivers are able to go on something of a mini-strike and just...stop. So no trams, no buses, no warnings, nothing. I slumped back home with my big bowl of food (which I ate for every meal for the two following days) and stayed in. I don't quite understand this mentality. There are young kids who take the tram from one place to another, there are people that are an hour away from home, and what are they supposed to do? I could possibly understand if they got mad, put out a warning that night, and then didn't run for a couple of hours the next day. But just stopping like that, when a whole city and it's suburbs depend on the public transportation system? C'est quoi ca!?

Identity Theft?

A couple of days ago I woke up bright and early at a quarter to noon, as my increasingly-lazy self has started doing more and more, and the first thing I did was check my email.

IMPORTANT EMAIL CONCERNING SECURITY INFORMATION: the subject heading from my old job. Needless to say it caught my eye.

Turns out that a couple of days ago thieves broke into the HQ of the company worked for before leaving for France, and had stolen a stack of ready-to-be-sent-out W-2 forms, which, naturally, had our names, addresses, DoBs, and social security numbers.

What do I do first, do I cry or save that for after I rip my hair out?

I actually didn't end up doing either one. But my to-do list for that potentially-productive day totally went out the window and I spent the day on the phone with everyone. The IRS, Social Security, my banks, credit bureaus, the FTC, AllClear ID, my mom...

I still have papers to send in and credit reports to order and other stuff. It was really the first time I wished I was at home, because working everything out with a nine-hour time difference from the other side of the ocean is frustrating.

The worst part is waiting. When something like this happens there are steps you can take, but in all honesty, if this person/these people decide to use my social security information, there isn't much I can do besides wait for some sort of problem to arise. A new credit card in my name that I didn't open, a credit inquiry I didn't initiate, the IRS calling asking for more taxes on money I never earned, being arrested for a crime I didn't commit... I'm going to stop there because it's nearly 1:00 am and I have enough trouble sleeping as it is.

There was a positive side to yesterday, one that appealed to my 12-year-old self. I had to wait a couple of hours before I could start calling everyone (décalage horaire...you kill me), so I decided to go for a run up to a forest not to far from my place and I found an adorable little tree house along the way. I think, when it comes to awesomeness, tree houses rank somewhere near the same level as goats in my mind. That's saying a lot.

So... fingers crossed, I guess, with this whole situation.

Je Suis Charlie...Partout

Some random snapshots of various "Je Suis Charlie" signs around the area. They're absolutely everywhere....

In the library

I passed by a few magazine stores the other day and ALL of them had signs like this: no more Charlie Hebdo, referring to the most recent issue published right after the attack

With one of my private students I read My Weekly, a weekly English newspaper for French tweens, this whole issue was about Charlie Hebdo and reactions in the Anglophone world

You can hardly see them, but walking around the mall there were six militaires with machine guns, they're in the train station as well, according to the conversation I heard between a kid and his dad on the tram

Coverage of the Paris march

St. Laurent du Pont

The five of us went on an impromptu trip to St. Laurent du Pont, a little village at the foot of the Chartreuse Mountains to visit Pierre's sister. Finally stuck my shoes in some real snow.

Vizille

This last weekend I finally decided I needed to move my butt and go somewhere. A couple of friends and I decided to visit Vizille, a small town about 25 minutes away, with a chateau that doubles as a French Revolution Museum, and really nice park surrounding it. I won't bore you with the detailed history (i.e. I don't feel like Googling it) but, in short, it was the place where the 1788 tennis court meeting was held, during which and a meeting of the estates general was demanded, which subsequently led to the revolution, bloodshed, guillotines, etc. You get it. 

Putting up a "Je Suis Charlie" sign

Park in front of the Chateau/museum

Just for the record, she attacked me

Le Retour

A few days ago I finally started to look for tickets back home to Seattle. I was surprised at how nervous it made me.

I've gotten used to my life here: I know how the public transportation system works, I have my favorite places to run/wander, I finally have something of a system when it comes to planning lessons, I feel completely normal kissing strangers on the cheek, I have my favorite brand of cereal, I've even managed to find a group of people I hang out with, etc. It'll be weird going back after all the work I did to adjust.

But it's more than that. In fact, giving up French crackers and running trails are the least of my worries. When I chose to do this program I had two big reasons: I wanted to travel and I wanted to give myself time to seriously reflect on what I want to pursue in life after college. I've been here for nearly four months and I'm ashamed to admit I haven't really made much progress in that latter area. I've had many nights of lost sleep because of this, and they seem to be getting more frequent as I think more about going home. I put my head on my pillow and try to sleep, but my brain refuses to shut off, so I relent and search for jobs, I browse random graduate programs, I wonder if I should teach English somewhere else...

I'm scared I'll go back and stop progressing. I'm going to be honest, my life of 20-hour work weeks and frequent two-week breaks is pretty lax, and by normal standards my life is pretty stationary. But progress here isn't the same as progress back home. Every time I have a remotely fluent conversation with somebody I feel like I've had a small success, when I learn new words and plug them into a sentence, that's success, when I manage to navigate French bureaucracy, well...for that I deserve a medal. You can't really help but progress when you're in a different country, whether you take notice of it or not.

I really really like being in situations where "success" is very well defined. Here it's getting over the language barrier and learning to effectively plan lessons, in college it was getting good grades and internships, in high school it was getting into college, when I did sports it was about winning... What I'm realizing is that one of the hardest things about "real life" is that you really have to define success yourself, whether that means doing good in the world, making money, traveling, etc.

And that, to a large extent, is why I am nervous to go home, because being here creates the sort of safety bubble I had in college. And the moment I get off that plane the bubble bursts.

At the same time there's always a bit of...disappointment, I would call it, upon returning somewhere you've been missing for a while. Somehow that thing that you couldn't wait to eat doesn't quite taste the way you had been imagining it for months.

All that being said, lately I have been finding myself thinking about the things I miss from home. The coffee, the coffee made by that beautiful machine that stands in my kitchen. Almond milk. It exists here but it tastes like water, I guess there aren't enough hippies here to create a large enough demand for the good stuff. My dog. Lounging around my house like a hobo without judgement. Costco and Trader Joes. Stores being open on Sunday. Good crackers.

So I'm a bit torn, as you can see.

Galette des Rois - King's Cake

Last Sunday the people I live with invited me to have a slice of Galette des Rois - king's cake - with them to celebrate le Jour des Rois, or L'Epiphanie, which commemorates the coming of the Three Wise Men.

The cake itself is made differently according to region, but here it's a puff pastry filled with almond paste and it's dangerously good. No matter what the specific recipe is, the important part is the fève, which is a little ceramic trinket in the cake, whoever gets the slice with the fève is the king or queen for the day and is supposed to wear a crown.

The next day I had a private lesson, and the family gave me more cake. A few weeks ago after our English lesson the girl told me her and her mom decided they were going to bake one typical French dessert every week and asked if I would be interested in taking home a little bit each time. Do I want you to give me cake? Why do you even have to ask? So they've been fattening me up, and last week's weapon on choice was Galette des Rois.

And then the next day when I babysat, guess what they offered me?

Tu versus Vous: The Never Ending Struggle

In French, like in nearly every other language, there is a formal and an informal way of addressing people: vous and tu respectively. I've been learning this language for more than a third of my life and I still sometimes have difficulty knowing when to use what. As an anglophone I'm not naturally wired with this distinction. As a basic rule, when in doubt, use vous, but it's not that simple. It's more polite, but it also creates a certain distance between you the the person you're addressing and can make you seem cold, and in certain situations (from what I can tell) it can be considered almost insulting.

Sometimes it's easy to feel it out:

Meet a random old lady on the street: Vous 

Talk to a small child: Tu

In a job interview: Vous

Among friends of friends at a party: Tu

But often you run into gray area, which is what I face at my schools. The principle vous me, I vous him, it's all good. But the teachers all tu each other, and they all tu me. I started off by vousing all of them, and only one of them specifically told me I could tu him and all the other 4th grade teachers. Problem: I deal with 17 or 18 different teachers a week, I have no clue who teaches fourth grade, and during that first week I didn't want to deal with remembering who I called what. At the same time I would have felt weird saying vous to some of the teachers and tu to the other ones. So I did what I probably shouldn't and kept right on vousing him and all the other teachers, even though it's starting to feel weird and way too formal, and it makes me something of an outsider. Today another teacher told me to tu her... shoot I don't remember which one it was.  

English, why you no prepare me for this? 

Poland for Christmas

This year I finally got to spend Christmas with my family in Poland. Overall it was really relaxed and relatively uneventful and filled with lots of cake. I talked with my grandma a lot, filled up on good tea and food, watched TV, missed WiFi, got groceries, etc.

Getting to Poland was quite the journey. I took a tram to Grenoble, train to Paris, bus to airport, flight to Modlin, bus to Warsaw, and then a train to Bydgoszcz. Overall I think it was something like 19 hours. And then coming home I had to do it all over again. At some point on the first train I put instant coffee in my yogurt because I was so tired and had no hot water. That was a low point. And yes, that does mean I brought my own instant coffee. It's an addiction, leave me alone.

I spent the first couple of days with my cousin and his wife in Warsaw, where we ordered the biggest pizza known to man, visited Stalin's gift to Poland (the Palace of Culture), and hung around drawing family trees and talking a lot. It was really great, not only because these are literally the two nicest people I know, but because I was able to speak my native language with them: mostly-Polish-with-random-English-thrown-in (they both lived in England for 10 years), not many people speak it. Although for the first few days my brain kept trying to say things in French, I kept popping out random pardons, d'accords and ouais. It took a few days before I didn't have to consciously think of what I was going to say before I said it.

On my way to Bydgoszcz I learned that my great-uncle had died at the age of 94, and I ended up going to his funeral and seeing loads of extended family I never thought I'd see again, and a lot more I didn't know existed.

I met my baby nephew for the first time.

I caught some sort of a virus and spent nearly a week too tired to do anything besides sit and watch TV. Talking was a struggle, which was annoying since most of what I did there was talk to people. I had absolutely no appetite and anything I ate made me feel sick (but it was the holidays and I was surrounded by Polish food so naturally I still ended up gaining 6 pounds, no joke). My grandma finally made me go to the doctor. I reluctantly went. I don't like doctors.

I welcomed 2015 by drinking what tasted like sugared rubbing-alcohol with my grandma, and exchanging życzenia (basically what you wish the other person in the new year) which I don't think is a thing in the U.S. (it should be). It wasn't the most exciting of new years celebrations, but at that moment I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else.

Then the next day I made the long trek back home where nothing interesting happened except for the conversation I had with a Congolese man on the tram. Although I was so dead by that point it might have been a hallucination. It started at 4:00 am and I was able to flop onto my bed a bit before midnight.

We even got a little snow

Christmas in Bydgoszcz

Went to go see my cousin's band (B.O.K.) in concert. Maybe standing in front of speakers in a crowded room isn't the best way to deal with a virus, but I'm really glad I went

Yum, drugs

What?? It's hard enough to read this shiz in English

Happy New Year :) I promised I wouldn't share this post-shower photo, but I love it too much

Wigilia part 1

I swear all this kid does it eat

Wigilia Part 2

Warsaw Uprising Museum, some of the armbands of the underground movement members

Soviet "liberators," Warsaw Uprising Museum

Palace of Culture. Thanks Stalin

Our Christmas Tree. I've never decorated one of the kitchen table before, very efficient

This made up 80% of my diet

And the journey back home begins...