Ma vie à Blois, or My Life in Blois

Well, I guess I'm really living in Blois now.

What, Erin? you may be wondering. Haven't you been living in Blois for the past month?

The simple answer to that is, yes, of course. (Don't worry, loved ones, I haven't been homeless or deceptive about my true whereabouts.) But a more complex answer accounts for the fact that there's a difference between being a tourist and being an inhabitant. And judging by my lack of blog posts over the past ten days, I'd say I've crossed that barrier and become a real resident here in France. In other words, I have established a rhythm and a social life. (I have also found a site where I can access all my favorite TV shows and have been enjoying that immensely much to my shame, but for the purposes of this blog, we'll just say that's part of my rhythm in Blois, as not watching TV would feel more touristy than inhabitant-y. I mean, girl's gotta watch her shows sometimes, even if girl's in France.)

So, here's what you've missed:

School
I work at two different schools. I go to École Buhler, located on the other side of the bridge (about a 12-minute walk from my apartment), on Mondays and Tuesdays. I have Wednesdays off, and then go to École Foch, about a 20-minute walk, on Thursdays and Fridays. The schools are very different, and I will regale you with an intense discussion of their characters in another post. Essentially, I spend the day teaching the same lesson over and over again, modified according to age-level (ages range from five to twelve years old), in 45-minute segments with large breaks built in for recess and lunch. For lunch, I have a 3-hour break, which I fill by sitting awkwardly alone in the lunch room before being joined by my rapid-French-speaking colleagues. Then I try my best to follow their fast-paced meandering conversations about their students, French educational bureaucracy, family life, and political goings-on before being abandoned once again while they all go take their smoke break. Alone, I prepare myself for my next lessons and read a bit. I avoid crossing the courtyard where the kids are as they have taken a liking to attacking me with hugs and "HEL-LOH!"s whenever I come into sight.

The kids tend to be rowdy in class, so I've started really laying down the law this week. This includes speaking harshly to them in rapid French, giving them my pissed-off scary face, and calmly asking them to describe what proper behavior in English class should be. Usually, these tactics work well. I have to establish my authority or be walked-over for the next six months.

Brazilian BBQ
I went to a barbeque thrown by the Brazilians last Saturday. They crammed about thirty people, mostly men, into an apartment about four times the size of my room. Yes, it's a big room, but let's remember that my miniscule apartment barely holds four people comfortably, so really it was pretty crowded. We were a multi-cultural group, hailing from France, Brazil, Colombia, and even the Czech Republic. Among us, we spoke six or so different languages. I was the only American and native English-speaker and spent most of the night switching between French and English with a variety of young men who came to perch beside me before going to grab another beer or succulently-grilled meat chunk. I was recovering from a head cold, so I didn't partake in much, but it was fun nonetheless.

Lunch with Charly and Edwige
Charly and Edwige, my brief hosts, invited me over for lunch on Thursday. Charly is the director of École Foch, so we walked over together after the bell rang, picking up a baguette and Charly's cigarettes on the way. Edwige went all out with a whole roasted chicken and spaghetti squash, fresh goat cheese, and fruit from their garden. Delicious! They are planning to paint their living room over the vacation, so may go over to help with that project.

Tutoring
Other fun social events include tutoring sessions with François, our tall, blond, bearded English tutee. He is super nice and speaks English very well. He comes to my room about twice a week for "English lessons," really just two-hour-long conversations in English. Harriet and Amy usually join us, though I think we overwhelm him with our multitude of accents (Harriet has the classic, "posh" British accent that you hear in Pride and Prejudice; Amy has the Liverpool northern accent--sounds like a British/Scottish twist on a Southern Appalachian accent; I have my mutt-like American accent). On Thursday, we moved our English conversation to a pizzeria off the Place Louis XII and had a great dinner out.

Drinks
On Friday night, Carlos the guitar player asked us out for drinks. All his Brazilian friends had already left on vacation and he was all alone. Carlos's native language is Portuguese but he can speak French and English. He is more comfortable talking about some things in French and others in English, so we pieced together our conversation by switching languages often.

The Halloween Party
Saturday night, we babysat for Nancy's grandchildren in a small village near Vendôme (about 40 minutes north of Blois). Nancy's second daughter just married an American, and due to the French and American red tape they had to saw through to marry, they were unable to hold a wedding reception. So, they decided instead to throw a massive American/French Halloween party in honor of their nuptials. Nancy asked us, her three assistants, to babysit for her grandchildren so the adults could party late into the night, but really we just got to be guests at the coolest Halloween party ever.

They rented what is called a "cave" (pronounced "kahv"), a system of interlocking caves built into the rock of the soft hills of the Loire valley that used to serve as dwellings for the people of this region hundreds of years ago. Now they're used as wine cellars, party halls, storage, and, in some cases, honest-to-goodness, state-of-the-art homes (think hobbit holes). This particular cave must have housed some bored soldiers in the Second World War; they decorated the walls of what is now the bar with a tribute to sex through the ages--bawdy images of knights, monks, gentleman, and soldiers molesting their curvy conquests, all dated 1945. The groom's mom brought two suitcases-worth of decorations and candy from America. They swathed the uneven stone walls of the cave with cobwebs and plastic spiders, placed Jack-O-Lanterns in all the crevices, and covered the tables with orange and black table cloths and Halloween candy.

Everyone came in costumes: Nancy was a mime, the bride and groom were the protagonists from Kill Bill, Nancy's husband was a Middle Eastern man bringing the couple a traditional wedding rug as a present. There were a lot of witches, a mummy, a geisha, a biker chick, a pirate; even the dog was dressed up as a clown. Nancy and her husband have converted the shop under their house into a functional theater, and Nancy invited us to dig around the costume closet for costumes to wear. Harriet was a flapper girl, Amy an adorable sailor, and I was the unsinkable Molly Brown per Harriet's suggestion, complete with evening gown, coat, and flowered hat.

Guests brought food to share, but the owner of the cave also roasted four legs of lamb over an open fire pit for the occasion. After the meal, they served a traditional French wedding cake made of a stack of choux pastry balls filled with chocolate cream and drizzled in caramel syrup. Nancy and her daughter performed a skit, and the groom (very American, very bro) played his guitar and sang. Dancing to American rap music closed out our evening, as we had to leave to put the kids to bed. The party continued well past 3am, or so we were told in the haze of the next morning over breakfast.

Amy cared for Nancy's eldest daughter's baby, while Harriet and I tucked in her step son's two little girls, aged four and nine, I believe. We stayed in Nancy's house, one of the oldest in the village. The central tower that acts as the staircase is the town's old watch tower, dating from the 12th century. It has a drawbridge and everything. The rest of the house is more recent, ranging from the 14th to the 17th century (though let's be real--that's still freakin' old). It was really cold and drafty, though not creepy. (Nancy assured us there were no spirits present.) We read the girls a story in French and tucked them in, then had a whispered sleepover in the room next door. The next morning, the girls woke up early and upset, so we welcomed them for a snuggle and more book reading in our bed until the rest of the house woke up. A great adventure!

Vacation
In case you hadn't picked up the subtle clues, it is vacation time in France. November 1st, All Saints Day (or Toussaint, as it is called here), is a major holiday here where families come together to remember loved ones that have passed away. School is out for two weeks around this holiday, so I am officially on my first paid vacation. Harriet and Amy are headed home to England, and I will be setting off on Halloween to meet up with my old high school friend, Betsy, who is an assistant in a small town near Nantes. Betsy also has a blog, which you can read here: http://briocheberets.blogspot.fr/

We will be exploring Betsy's area on the western coast of France, then heading up to Brittany, my old stomping grounds, for a quick peak at Rennes and three days' relaxing in St. Malo. Then she's coming back to Blois with me for a couple of days which we'll use to explore my area.

I will not be posting during the vacation, or at least not while I'm traveling, thus the extremely long post (thank you for reading if you've made it this far--that's true dedication!). So, Happy Halloween and you'll be hearing about my vacation adventures soon!
 

Post-Party Euphoria

Just wanted to let y'all know that the coming-out party was a total smash! At least half the building was there. At one point the male-to-female ratio was greater than 4 to 1. There was some awkwardness at the beginning, but Mr. Gauben plied us with alcohol, so it became quite a fête come 9:30 or so. And then Damien went to get his guitar, and Carlos, Brazilian and  master acoustic guitar player, went to town playing a vast repertoire of songs, ranging from Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" (shout out to my uncles Dave and Darrik! Thanks to you, I could sing along.), "Hotel California," the Beatles' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and "Hey Jude," Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours," some classic Brazilian dance tunes that made me want to get up and mamba, and, lastly, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," at which point I got the opportunity to sing in my actual first soprano range instead of Carlos's tenor, totally amazing everyone much to my own personal embarrassment. Having jam fests around a guitar is not common practice in France like it is in America, so I'm going to blame their total astonishment that I can sing on the novelty of the phenomenon.

I finally got to meet Madame Gauben, Monsieur Gauben's wife, and liked her equally as well as Monsieur Gauben himself and their daughter, Marie, whom I met during an impromptu soda at a café followed by a trip to McDonald's (McDo). Mr. Gauben tells me he is reading my blog (Salut, Monsieur Gauben!) and really enjoying my descriptions of his residents. Truly happy (and lucky!) to be at Les Cottages here in Blois. This weekend, the Brazilians have asked us over for a BBQ Brazilian-style--translation: lots of meat. It looks like we Anglophones may start having a social life beyond the Great British Bake-Off on YouTube (which is lucky since the series finale was posted today).

Bedtime! La vie est vraiment belle en France!

Creative Couscous

In about an hour I will be heading to the salle de réunion (meeting room) of my apartment building to meet my fellow residents. Yes, the night of the Anglophone coming-out party has arrived. There are signs everywhere, and we have at least two attendees, Ajit our Indian neighbor, and François our English tutoring student. We, the Anglophones, are eating an "early" dinner tonight (in France eating dinner before 8pm in unheard of), opting to chow down at 7pm in order to not have awkward tummy grumbling while meeting our French (and Brazilian, Chinese, and Indian) neighbors. So, I wanted to take the opportunity, since my dinner is done 20 minutes before schedule, to make my first recipe post.

Inspired by one of my favorite stuffed pepper recipes and my favorite Indian restaurant in Northfield, MN, I have created Creative Coucous.
Here's the recipe that I'm making up as I type, based on what I just made up as I cooked:

Ingredients:
1 T olive oil
1 clove of garlic, smashed and chopped
half a white onion, chopped
half a red pepper, chopped
10 dried apricots, sliced
20 cashews
about 1.5 cups couscous, medium grain, prepared (should yield about 3 or so cups when prepared)

1. Heat up oil in frying pan over medium heat.
2. Chop garlic and onion and add to pan. Then add chopped pepper. Sautée until they smell really good.
3. In the meantime, make couscous.
4. Add sautée mixture to fluffed couscous, then stir in apricots and cashews.
5. Add salt and pepper to taste.
6. Enjoy while watching "The Great British Bake-Off" finale with your two English friends before going to your awkward coming-out party held by your jovial match-making landlord.

Cheers! I'll let you know if I lock eyes with my future French husband (aka my dad's worst nightmare).

Impressions

I'm almost done with my first week of teaching. Things are going well so far. This week was supposed to be observation, but as expected, I was thrown right into teaching. I have some 16 classes, most of them 12 pupils at a time for 45 minutes every other week. This means I have approximately 384 students, and I've only met about half of them so far. The kids are excited to have me in class, both because I'm an exotic American (though most assume I'm English) and because I offer a fun break in their normal routine. Most French teachers rule their classes with a smile and an iron fist, and I am working on this technique. I have been studying teachers' presence in class and noticed that they are intimidatingly calm. They speak softly with a kind, patient tone most of the time, but if a student steps one toe out of line, they transform into screaming French banshees who quickly frighten the misbehaving student into submission. It is quite something to see. When I'm teaching my half of the class, their normal teacher is usually in an adjoining classroom with the other half of the class. If the teacher hears the students being to loud or rowdy, she swoops in and yells at them, towering over them in such a fury that they immediately become as still and silent as stones. Frankly, they scare me a bit. Luckily, they only address me in their calm, friendly voice.

The little girls are especially excited to have me around. At École Buhler, which has a central outdoor courtyard where the kids play and which I have to walk across to get pretty much anywhere, the girls swarm me, touching my coat and asking me questions in French peppered with "HEL-LOH!"s and "OUW ARR YOU?"s. The boys aren't quite so pushy, but many have admitted to being in love with me, blushing bright red. When I introduce myself to the class and get them to introduce themselves, I shake their hands à l'American, something not done very often in France. Once the boys figure out that if they raise their hand to introduce themselves I'll come over and shake their hand, I have about ten boys jockeying for my attention.

I find the work fun but exhausting. Sometimes I feel like a babysitter, other times I feel like a real, full-blown teacher. Sometimes I feel like a twenty-two-year-old, unassertive Minnesotan in a class full of fast-speaking French monkeys. (I am working on my French teacher scary voice.) I have to think on my feet a lot. Next week, I hope to have a better lesson plan in place. I will be starting a unit on Halloween, a holiday not celebrated in France.

Nancy, actress and mime that she is, told us in training that teaching is a form of theater. As a teacher, you play a role. You get up in front of your "audience" of students and perform, and hopefully they will be engaged enough to pay attention and get something out of the lesson. I've been meditating on teaching as theater and find I love that interpretation. I'm not sure the metaphor always works, but in preparing myself for my role as a teacher, thinking of my work as performance helps me re-envision my task as a teacher. I find my greatest and most difficult task is engaging my students in the task at hand, something I hope to get better at as the year goes on.

In other news, Amy, Harriet, and I spent yet another hour in Monsieur Gauben's office this afternoon. Yesterday, we were in there for about thirty minutes shooting the breeze, though our original intention was securing my first "kit linge" or laundry kit (two washer and dryer tokens each and four soap disks). Mister Gauben, as we call him, is a portly gentleman in his sixties, very good-humored and self-proclaimed trickster. He likes teasing us and teaching us French slang. He is determined to find us all French boyfriends. He doesn't seem to be very daunted by this mission as he houses forty eligible bachelors at Les Cottages. He is a little perturbed by the fact that Amy already has a boyfriend in England ("He'zzz not allowed heerre.") He calls Amy's boyfriend her "fiancé" just to poke fun at her. Mr. Gauben is particularly interested in securing me a French man, though he's given me the go ahead to pursue the five Brazilian boys living at Les Cottages. They travel around in a pack speaking Portuguese, and he wants them to get French girl friends to improve their French. "You can speak French pretty well, so it's ok for you to be together. You can teach them French and a little English." According to Mr. Gauben, language-learning is a solid foundation for any relationship. Forget emotional fulfillment--a relationship is worthwhile only when you can gain a second or third language out of it.

I don't see much of my potential suitors; they pretty much keep to their rooms doing their engineering homework and playing video games, but here's a quick sketch of the ones I have met briefly (note: I don't usually publicly scope out the men folk, and I do so now merely for your entertainment):

Romain (Roh-mahn): We met him briefly in the hall when the lights short-circuited. He is tall, gangly, and shy, and would only speak to us in broken English. He impressed us with his bravery by flipping the scary switch in the electric box, restoring power to the floor. Then he darted into his room without another word.

Ajit (Ajet): He is earning his PhD at the engineering university. He's originally from India, though he earned his Masters degree in London, so he speaks English well. Poor thing has been terribly lonely in France, where he's struggled for the past two years to learn the language without classes or French friends. His interests include horoscopes, palmistry, and Canadian comedians. He also gallantly tried to fix my shower (to no avail) when I admitted to having been forced to take cold showers in the morning.

The Brazilians: I really want to get to know these guys better. They seem like a fun group, though they are intimidating in their huge Brazilian pack. They all seem very nice, and with their dark hair, soulful brown eyes, and cinnamon-tinged skin, they're not too bad to look at either. They seemed excited to meet someone else from the Americas. ("Mr. Gauben, it's ok if we have American girlfriend?")

Rémy (Ray-mie): Really cute guy at the end of my hall. That's all I know. Everytime I talk about my room, Mr. Gauben says, "Ah yes, the pretty boy ("joli gar") lives at the end of your hall."

François (Fran-swah): Tall, blond, French (shouldn't he be Norwegian?!) guy with a beard. He's looking for an English tutor. We haven't officially met, but Mr. Gauben insisted on giving us his number so we could set up an English tutoring session with him ("Only for studying, ladies," *wink*).

Thomas (Toh-mah): As Mr. Gauben says, Thomas is "cooool." He's from Marseille, which automatically means that he's a laid-back party-er. Take the outfit I first saw him in: board shorts and sandals, a pastel collared shirt, topped of with an enormous winter scarf slung casually around his neck. It was raining that day. We spotted Mr. Gauben helping him move a sleek red couch into his flat (being from Marseille, he's also loaded and has one of the large flats complete with a balcony where he's strung up a hammock). We asked Mr. Gauben about the couch and told him how much we liked Thomas's snappy outfit. Mr. Gauben communicated our compliments and told Thomas all three of the English ladies want to come have drinks on his new red couch. Evidently he's pretty thrilled. I can't wait for my invitation.

Mr. Gauben is arranging a welcome party for us English-speakers next Thursday, also known as our coming-out party. I hope to make some friends as Harriet and Amy will be leaving me for two weeks starting the end of October. It's fall break and they're ready to go home to England. They plan to stuff their suitcases with English delicacies like crumpets and mince pies for me to try. The lack of crumpets and mince pies in my life is evidently cause for great concern--I mean, what planet am I from? Luckily for me, they're here to make sure I get my fill of the Motherland. I don't know what I'd do without them.

Cockroaches, Hippies, and Eight-Year-Olds, Oh My!

I have now been in my studio for a full week. It's a cute little room, and I have made it feel like home.

My studio

I would be completely at ease if it weren't for the cockroaches. My fellow English assistant, Amy, has them as well. When we told our landlord Monsieur Gauben, he didn't believe us at first (he's never had them here at Les Cottages; he thought we were being crazy English girls), so we stayed up until 1am hunting them one night. We caught an adult and a nymph (baby cockroach), and he then apologized profusely and hooked us up with some serious cockroach spray. That same evening, we made friends with Ajit, an English-speaking engineering PhD candidate from India. We asked him if he had cockroaches. His response: "Of course!" Our new suspicion: as Les Cottages houses mostly engineering (and predominantly male) students between the ages of 17 and 24 attending the university here in Blois, chances are their potentially poor cleaning habits and general apathy to all things that crawl have incited a secret cockroach infestation that only a couple of English girls and an American would care enough about to bring to Monsieur Gauben's attention. My room's not too badly infested (I see about one a day, usually dead thanks to the spray), and I'm being super careful about leaving food out to discourage them from hanging out in my room. Also, I have sprayed the merdre (excuse my French) out of my room, risking self-poisoning.

Kitchenette, hopefully de-cockroached

Besides cockroach hunting, I have spent the past week in training with Nancy, our coordinator here in Blois. I absolutely adore Nancy. She is an American who moved to France during her junior year of college to study abroad...and never came back. A theater and French major, she enrolled in Paris's famed miming academy (yes, she's a mime) and began a twenty-year career in theater and miming. She eventually married a French man and had three daughters, all very French and very bilingual. Eventually, she gave up her miming career and pursued a degree in elementary education and proceeded to become one of the best English teachers in France. Now she coordinates other English teachers. Imagine a 1970s American hippie and combine that image with a sophisticated French woman--this is Nancy. Her signature: she only has one ear pierced thanks to a failed attempt at self-piercing back in the day, so she frequently sports a large dangly earring from this ear (my favorite being a triangular piece of a record). She is quirky and can be a little scatterbrained sometimes as the French school system has her running all over the region doing EVERYTHING. She is also super nice. She took Harriet, Amy, and I shopping for the apartment essentials as well as holding an interactive training week for us (most assistants just get thrown in without training). I am so lucky to have her!

This weekend, a new friend and fellow assistant Suzie (also British--American accents are beginning to sound strange...) visited from a nearby town. We showed her the sights and took her to the Saturday open market, a huge weekly event hosting 100-200 vendors selling everything from apples to purses to freshly-caught oysters to mattresses. I successfully bought 5 euros worth of produce fresh from the farm. Next Saturday, I plan to attempt a cheese purchase.

Loire River

Today, I went for a run along the Loire. I think it's one of my most favorite things I've done so far here in Blois. The river is wide and beautiful. Migratory birds were floating on its surface, and fishermen in waders were testing their luck along the bank. The leaves are starting to change color, so everything looks bright and crisp. I found a river-side park where a French couple was teaching their young daughter how to ride a real bike for the first time. So cute, and yet another reminder of those many things that cross the cultural divide.

Tomorrow I become Ms. Beaton, English teacher. I have already introduced myself to most of my classes (part of our training with Nancy) using a formula that went like this: "Hi everyone! My name is Erin. I come from the United States. I'm 22 years old. I'm going to come here and teach you English, and it's going to be really fun!" Most kids just stared at me blankly, a couple laughed, but when Nancy asked them what they understood, they were enthusiastic and actually able to understand quite a bit. My favorite moment was when an eight-year-old jumped out of his chair to announce I was 99 years old. I am excited to work with them, but I'm also a little nervous. This week's supposed to be just observation, but Nancy said some teachers may expect me to be prepared to take over. So we'll see how things turn out. In life and especially in France, I've found it's best to just go with the flow.