Happy Holidays, Joyeux Fetes!

Today I (fingers crossed!) fly home for the holiday vacation.

Annabelle told me about a "lights and sound" show at Place de la Liberation that's put on for Christmas, and I was eager to go see it.  I'm glad she told me, or else I would have missed it!  Since my classes finish mid-afternoon, I'm not usually out around downtown at 18h (6PM), which is when the first of three shows starts.  I saw the show on Friday with Barbara and Sara and Alicia (woo, special appearance!) who was in town for the weekend.  For anyone who I introduced Alicia to that day but didn't catch the connection, we studied abroad together and now she's in her second year of being an assistant.

Anyway, the lights show was fun to see, even if I kept on noticing things that were not particularly well thought out.  Everyone's legs were moving faster than they were walking, but at least that was consistent.  See if you can spot the horse wagon whose wheels turn WAY faster than the horse is walking, and the interaction between Remi and Santa didn't seem quite polished.  Hey Mallory, maybe you can make one of these next year!  ETA: the entire show was over 20 minutes, and youtube only allows 15, so I had to trim it down.  It took a long time to get the upload to work, so that's why this post is being finished in mid-January.

Hopefully this video of the lights show is better quality than the video from the Christmas market.  Make sure to select "HD" to view it in its full glory!

Fellow assistants, I'll see you in 2011!  Family, school friends and others, hopefully I'll see you in the next two weeks!

Snow in Dijon!

In the past month it has been snowing quite frequently in Dijon.  And since it has been colder than usual for late fall, said snow has often stuck to the ground, if only for a few days.

Yesterday was one of those days – HF let out early, and some schools in neighboring towns were canceled for the rest of the week!  As night fell, it continued to snow and swirl around.  After attempting to go to a concert with Sara and Emily that turned out to have been moved somewhere else across town, I decided to walk around and enjoy the magical weather!

First, though, I was inspired to build a snowman.  The snow was very powdery and not particularly wet/easy to compact, but I still managed.

M. Bonhomme de Neige was warm, and I was cold.

After I finished Monsieur bonhomme de neige, I walked to la Place de la Libération to see the Christmas lights in the snow.  Standing between Palais des Ducs and the Marché de Noël, I took a video of the lights and decorations!

Joyeux fêtes, everyone!  Happy holidays!

Also, I just installed the “insert video” plugin for Windows Live Writer, and noticed a pretty careless, relatively big problem: if you customize where the plugin should be installed during installation, the plugin doesn’t know where to look for its files.  It should be able to take the “install to” location entered by the user and use it effectively, but apparently that’s too much to ask here.  Sigh.  So it appears that the inclusion of media needs to be done after I've already uploaded a post.

ETA: well zut, people, I just noticed that the quality of the video is awful.  I recorded it in HD, and apparently Blogger reduced the file size on their servers via pixelization.  That's lame; sorry guys.  Also, sorry for the high pitched noise in the video.  I will admit this quirk is my camera's fault, and somewhat mine for not using an external mic.  Too bad Blogger didn't reduce that noise's volume down...

A pre-vacation mélange of thoughts

Hark the Herald angels shout… two more days till we get out!!

Did you ever have that chant in the weeks before Christmas?  I learned that from Coach Cox when I was in lower school.

Anyway.  It’s Wednesday morning, and I have 4 hours of class left to teach over two days before I’m on break for two weeks!  I’m heading home for the holidays as well as Brad and Elaine’s wedding.  Looking forward to seeing everyone!  I’m also going to miss my assistant-peeps from Dijon as well, but I’ll get to see them again soon enough :)

This post is a random smattering of things that I’ve been meaning to post.  If you want to skim through, I’ve conveniently highlighted summary sentences in green.  Let’s begin!

• Taigne (the kitten who lives at my apartment and is adorable) has recently become more affectionate; this means that whenever you’re sitting on the couch watching TV or reading, she is all up ons, purring and trying to have as much physical contact as possible.  When you inevitably get up to go do something else, this sudden need for contact produces what I’m calling the parrot effect: elle devient un perroquet (she becomes a parrot, sitting on your shoulder).  It’s adorable to see her sitting on someone’s – usually Annabelle’s or my – shoulder as he or she walks around the kitchen, organizes a binder, etc.  When I get back from break, I don’t know if she’ll still be small enough to sit on my shoulder!
• I never realized how American North Face jackets look until I saw a French person in one, and he immediately transformed into an American college student.  My third host sibling, Benjamin, is in Dijon for a few days for a surprise visit.  I’m glad I got to meet him!  He flew in from New York from vacation, and while on vacation he needed a jacket.  So he bought a North Face (“lifetime guarantee!” he said) and that is how I saw a Frenchman in a North Face jacket. It’s subtle, but the style is definitely American and not French.
• For some unknown reason, my towel keeps on disappearing from the bathroom towel rack; in the past week I must have changed towels four times!  I don’t understand why this keeps happening… it’s a very minor thing, but still annoying.  The first time (aka the first week) Annabelle mistook my blue towel for her blue towel and used it; understandable, and now I don’t use blue towels.  I pick towels that look distinct from the rest, I try to put them in the same spot each day… and more often than not, recently, I walk in the salle de bain in the morning to find my towel gone, thrown in the wash.  URG.  I realize that it’s just Isabelle trying to straighten things up, but I asked her in the beginning which towel I should pick, and she said that it didn’t matter.  I’ve been picking the same two towels, and they keep on getting washed over and over again.  I don’t smell that bad, honest!
• Aside from seeing people, there are three things in particular that I’m looking forward to when I return home: my American cell phone, broccoli, and going to the grocery store on Sunday. 
• For my cell phone, I’m looking forward to hearing my ringtone(s – Mallory, you’d better call me!), having close to unlimited talk and texting, and being able to send picture messages!!  Although now that I think about it, I can’t actually picture what my phone looks like.  I know it’s purple… ah, yes, the Motorola.  As I was typing this, I had a hard time getting the image of both my French Samsung phone and my old-old LG phone out out of my head.  Yes, Tonia and Susan, that’s the one whose blue plastic sticker-cover I saved. 
• Broccoli – I know that broccoli exists in France, but it is one of my favorite vegetables and my host family here never eats it!  I mentioned it to Isabelle, but I guess they’re just not fans of broccoli.  Anyway, these three months have probably been the longest time that I have gone in my life without eating broccoli.  Yes, I’m serious (it’s healthy, Elaine!). 
• Regarding going to the grocery store – pretty much everything closes in France on Sundays, which can trip you up when you’re used to 24/7 grocery stores.  I really want to go to the grocery store at midnight on Sunday the 26th, just because I can.  Anyone want to go with??
• France and the US have a different attitude toward decorating for the holidays. 
• As a first example, in France the cities put up lights along the streets and go all-out with lights shows, but individual families rarely put up anything.  In the US it’s the individual families who decorate, while towns and cities might put up some decorative holiday banners or a few lights on the skyscrapers, but that’s about it in my experience. 
• Secondly, Americans tend to buy Christmas trees (which can be HUGE!) many, many weeks in advance; the French buy a small tree, maybe 2-3 feet tall (because they often don’t have the means to transport a bigger tree) only a week or two before Christmas.  For example, Isabelle is planning to buy her tree on Saturday the 18th. 
• Thirdly, in the US many radio stations start playing Christmas music on December first and don’t stop until I after I want to scratch off my ears.  In stores, you can’t escape it.  In France, I’ve heard just enough Christmas music to be lovely without overwhelming.  This is my opinion, obviously, and others may feel differently.
• My English vocabulary now contains many more British words than it did 3 months ago, thanks to the 6 Brits I hang out with in Dijon.  I’ve recently found myself saying “proper” much more frequently, and earlier this week (and now) when I typed the word “niche” I could only hear the British pronunciation in my head.  The British pronunciation of some words is the same as the French, of which niche is an example, but that doesn’t mean that I will start calling zucchinis courgettes!  Oh come on Brits, don’t get the face on, it’s called a zucchini!
• Yesterday I had the class with Quentin, the kid who I made sit in the corner last week.  I’m please to report that he and his friends were model students this time around!  I could tell that they understood the message, and it stuck with them.  Yay!

That’s all for now, folks!

Open mouth, insert foot, shrug

That’s kind of how I feel about my day today.  I don’t know whether I can blame it on my sickness or not, but that would certainly be an easy way out.  Also: oh gosh, this is a long blog post.

As of today, my voice is pretty much officially gone.  Sometimes I was able to actually make speech noises, but not necessarily for the duration of an entire sentence.  My throat feels fine, like nothing’s wrong, but when I go to speak, no sound comes out.

However, this morning I was still hopeful that I could teach my Terminale class at C by speaking softly (it’s a class of only 4 or 6) and using handwritten signs.  So I got up, got dressed, ate breakfast and drank my tea, brushed my teeth, and started to head out the door… except my keys were gone.

Moment #1:

We all (the four of us) leave our keys on a desk next to the front door of the apartment.  Since I always store my keys on the desk, my first thought was, “someone must have taken my keys by accident, or maybe Annabelle lent them to a friend because of their project presentation today.”  Normally, I would take someone else’s keys and head out, assuming the swtcheroo would be fixed that evening.  But there weren’t any keys on the desk at all.  I was the only one home.

When I decided to just go to school and worry later about how to get back inside, I discovered that the door was locked.

I was locked in the apartment, and supposed to teach a class in 30 minutes.  Joy.

You see, French doors are locked using deadbolts (2 turns to fully lock, for some reason), but the deadbolts can only be turned/released using keys.  Doesn’t matter if you’re inside or outside, a key is required.

I looked through all the drawers, on all the tables, in my purse: every place I could think of, and found no keys.  So I texted people (I’m hoarse, remember?) to ask for help and/or let them know.  Isabelle was at a massage, and Annabelle was in the middle of a test (I found out later).  Paul’s University campus is far enough away that it wasn’t worth trying to get in touch with him.  So at 10:55AM, after 25 minutes of scrambling and searching I finally called Carnot to say that I was stuck and could not teach my 11AM class.  The man at Vie Scholaire was kind enough to call the administration for me, since I was obviously straining to overcome my hoarseness in addition to being locked indoors on the 2nd (1er) floor.  Sigh.  Thank goodness that the German teacher Kirsty and I talked to yesterday gave me the number for the school, because otherwise I wouldn’t have known what to do!

However, this situation then led to my first bête (idiotic, foot-in-mouth) moment of the day – I eventually found my keys in my purse, at the very bottom of the pocket.  D’oh.  I remember putting my keys on the desk last night, and I checked my purse before I called C.  Oh well, *shrug*; with my sore throat it was probably better for me to rest anyway.

Moment #2:

Isabelle was going to the doctor’s office today, and told me to come with her so that I could get my throat checked out.

The doctor isn’t in on Wednesday afternoons, but I made an appointment for Thursday.  On the way home, we swung by the pharmacy to get a refill of one of Isabelle’s medications for her knee pain.  However, there was a significant, unforeseen delay in this leg of the trip, because our car was hit by a Divia bus on the way there.

Now when I say “hit,” I actually mean that the side of the bus scraped the side of the car at roughly 5 mph. We were both turning left and the bus driver unintentionally cut us off by turning from the right-hand lane (the traffic patterns are being redesigned, so the lanes are constantly in transition).  “Unintentionally” because he thought there was only one lane instead of 2. 

It was a weird and slow experience, though, because we were turning… I could see that there wasn’t much room in the “goal” lane… the bus’s turning radius meant that it was getting closer to my side of the car… the side of the bus was 2 feet away and closing… and by the time I tried to verbally/scratchily react beyond, “wow, that bus is close to us!” the distance had already been closed and we were being pushed and jostled by the bus, in the middle of the intersection.  We could hear and feel some of the metal being bent and the bumper being damaged. 

The car was still drivable, once we got the bumper lashed back “on,” and the rest of the delay was waiting for the Divia people to arrive, inspecting the damage and filling out the report (Isabelle, not me).  Surprisingly, everyone was quite friendly and at ease – I was really worried that the situation would be tense and hostile.  I’ve never been in a car crash before (knock on wood!), but I imagine in the States there would be yelling and it would be a generally unhappy time for everyone.  Maybe this was different because it was a public bus instead of two private individuals, and Divia has a formal procedure for this sort of incident.  Not because it happens very often, but because they have to.

Anyway, I got a closer look at the French accident citation process this afternoon than I ever expected to.  This moment was much more of a “sigh” moment because I was feeling tired and kind of sicky, and I just sort of quietly observed the whole thing, feeling as though I was experiencing things kind of behind a curtain.

Moments #3 and #4:

These foot-in-mouth moments are not nearly as exciting as the first two; they were more of the standard “why did I write that…” moments.  I’d like to think that if I were well I would have thought through those Facebook posts a little more fully, but who knows.  Neither was very serious, and both were easily fixable by explaining what I’d actually meant, it was just sort of the icing on the cake. 

Suet isn’t meat, as it turns out (aka I need to pay more attention when I read recipe ingredients), and suggesting going on a walk when talking about someone’s figure (because you’re aware of the bridesmaid dress you need to wear at the end of this month) is easy to interpret offensively.  Sigh/shrug.

Moment #5:

Because of the aforementioned sore throat, I emailed the teacher whose classes I have tomorrow that I may not be able to speak in class.  She (Florence) wrote back, saying, “you will come to school tomorrow whether you can talk or not… I’ll prepare another activity in case you can’t talk.”  AKA, she wanted me to take part of the group of kids no matter what, even if I just give them an activity to do on their own.  I thought the phrasing was a bit brusque, but hey, okay, I can do that.

I’m glad I emailed back to confirm, because she sensed that something wasn’t right and then clarified in another message: “you should see if you’re feeling well in the morning, and if so then come in and teach.  Otherwise, she will prepare an activity to give to the students herself.”  Aha.  Makes more sense, though I can imagine her meaning the first version as well.

“Verrai,” not “viendrai.”  Oops.  Normalement (if I were well), I hope, I would have read the verb properly.  Tonight, I’m just glad I emailed back to confirm.

And… that was my day.  It was definitely one of the more crazy ones that France has thrown at me so far.  Next post I’ll try to include some pictures so it’s more interesting for you.

Dear Dijon weather and chatty lyceens...

... please stop raining and be quiet (respectively)!

The weather here has been quite cold recently, although the shift this week from snow to rain has brought the temperature above freezing.  Annabelle and Paul were sick a week ago, and though I've been fighting it since then I have finally succumbed to sinus annoyances and a sore throat.

Prepubescent boy voice, anyone?

So what does a teaching assistant do when she has a sore throat?  Continue teaching, apparently; or at least that's what I did today. 

I woke up and could speak some, so I figured I should at least go in and give it a try.  These two last weeks before the holiday break, I'm doing a special type of lesson at HF with the secondes.  The students who scored highest on the most recent test are given to me to do a discussion activity while the other students review the test material.  If I hadn't shown up today, the teachers would have been overloaded, and the good students would have missed out on more advanced practice.

The first class went pretty well; when my voice broke a few times, I smiled along with the students because I sounded so ridiculous.  The second class started out pretty quiet, with only a few kids who would respond to questions.  However, soon after my introduction - including the "you need to listen carefully because I'm sick and can't speak loudly" bit - some of the students started chatting amongst themselves, and would not stop. 

Now, I don't really like quiet classes, but classes that chat in French are worse because it's counterproductive.  I'm sure you can imagine, if you haven't experienced it yourself, that trying to speak/read/listen in one language is much more difficult when there is a second language being spoken!  Léna, Quentin and Léa in particular would would not be quiet.  What is almost more frustrating is that they would occasionally participate in English , but then go right back to chatting.  If they happen to find this post and can understand it, good job kids, but you should have respected me and been quiet in class!

Anyway.  I told the three of them to be quiet, I told them specifically to be quiet because they were distracting, I called on them repeatedly to answer questions when they had obviously been chatting... and after each time they continued.  By this point it was severely distracting for me (and I'm sure the other students as well, though they didn't mind as much), and I was getting irritated.  This sort of thing happened at C a few weeks ago and I hadn't realized during the class period how I should react, and I didn't want to make the same mistake this time.  This time, my throat was paying for it. 

Quentin and Léna were the most disruptive, and Quentin was sitting between the two girls.  So finally I responded by saying, "Quentin, if I have to tell again to be quiet, I'm going to make you sit in the corner."  I knew there was a chance that he hadn't completely understood this warning, but I'd given him enough warnings already.  I singled him out partially because of his position (divide and conquer), but also with the hope that Léna would get the hint and not reply back to him.

So, inevitably, the next time he started talking to Léna in French: "Quentin, I told you to stop chatting.  You need to go sit in the corner."  At the confusion on his face, I walked over, took an extra chair, and placed it in the corner, facing away from the class.  Now he understood. 

After the chair was in place, he wanted another chance, but there was no way I was going to have that. "But I'm going to participate, I can say things..."  To be honest, I don't remember whether he was speaking in English or French.  At that point, I'd just had enough, and I wanted to make a point.

The rest of the class period was much more quiet - no more chatting!  Success.  But they were also quieter in general, understandably but unfortunately.  At the end of class I approached Quentin and told him that I'm happy when he speaks English - he's quite good, and he was participating in the beginning! - but that he has to stop speaking in French during class.  It was clear he knew he had misbehaved, and I hope he doesn't do it again.  Léna, who was often a co-conspirator, was off to the side and had a coy looking smile on her face as I talked to her friend.  Hopefully she understands that next time, she will also go sit in the corner. 

These students were supposed to be the good ones, argh.

So in conclusion, what was memorable today?  Confirming that both 5- and 15-year-olds understand that getting put in time-out  is bad, that's what!

I had to do something, and it worked, but now I'm second guessing whether it was the best way to handle the situation, or whether I should have made Léna sit separately as well (there wasn't another easy corner, though).  Thoughts?  I learned after class (of course after class...) that detention does exist here, and I could have just given him/them detentions.  Well, now I have an alternative the next time someone chats to that excess.  But if they want to behave and chat like 5-year-olds, I'm tempted to treat them like 5-year-olds until they realize that I expect them to pay attention and participate.

Whew.  Here's hoping Thursday doesn't require a repeat performance.

p.s. - as I was writing this post, Taigne fell asleep in my lap.  Awwww...