Au Revoir

Returning to the US

Due to a family emergency, I have decided to permanently leave France. While I loved every part of living in Mayenne, this decision is the best one for my family, which made it extraordinarily easy to make. I'm so grateful for everyone who made my stay in France so enjoyable. Even though I won't be physically there, I will continue to post blog posts on my experience thus far, because there is so much more to say! I'm happy to reflect on the wonderful time I have there, and I know I will be back some day. And to everyone on the US side, thank you for your kind notes of support. They are appreciated.

Two Weeks in France

Our Guest Today Is: Nicole

Hello all,

Today marks the end of my second week of work in France. These first two weeks have been primarily a time for observation, as stipulated by my work contract. Essentially, my goal these two weeks was to observe how classes run in France, and to introduce myself and get acquainted with the students.

There are six English teachers at my high school, and each of them teaches a couple classes. In most of their classes, I came in to introduce myself for the full 55 minute period using the slideshow below. The students had a chance to ask me a number of questions both about myself and the US. For these classes, I will take a portion of the class and teach my own lecture each week. I also sat in on “Euro” sections, which are where students take math and science in English. I’ll be assisting in these sections with pronunciation and vocabulary. I also got to see other classes just for fun, like history.

Even though I presented this same slideshow like twelve times, I still had so much fun doing it.

Here are some excerpts from the slideshow I showed the students:

This map shows where I’ve lived. I had students guess how far it is between the stars, and they were shocked by how big the United States is. Yes, it really does take 6 hours to fly from New York to California!

God I hope Mr. Pratt never reads this, but each time I presented this photo in a particular English teacher’s class, she would say, “well it might have been an all-girls school, but that history teacher doesn’t look too bad!” *wink*. You’ve got admirers overseas, Mr. Pratt.

Every time this slide came up there was this unanimous audible gasp around the room. Students were shocked and amazed to see the university, and kept saying “are you sure it wasn’t a castle beforehand?” I told them that this is just the front entrance and there are several other quads but usually they all looked at me in annoyance like “why is she lying about the number of quads? Surely there cannot be more than this.”

Students would stare blankly at this picture until I clarified, “that’s me.” Then they would look from this picture back to the real-life me like “wow you’ve really let yourself go.” I would say, “this picture was taken just a few months ago, in May,” and they would send me pitying glances at the apparent downfall of my beauty regimen.

One of the English teachers really had students study up on my presentation, and they had to take this quiz afterwards! Others had to write a one page essay about my life. It was so bizarre (weird, cool, touching, awesome!) to read about myself from their eyes. (Nicole likes horse riding; she went to Madeira; she lives here in Mayenne!).




Throughout my observations, I was weirdly proud of knowing the answers to questions in class… even though I have already been to high school and have in fact already completed college. In observing a science class, I was so proud of myself (I got Question #2 right… it’s True – people in industrialized countries do often eat more processed foods than in developing countries!!!). Even in English class I kept giving myself a mental pat on the back… for knowing high-school level foreign language vocabulary in my own language. It essence, the two weeks of sitting in on high school classes have just affirmed my nerd status – I really like school. I love being presented with fascinating new ideas every day, I love getting questions right, and it is such a meaningful experience when good teachers guide you through the whole process.



I hope to be one of those good teachers.



All the best,

Nicole.

First Five Days

Five Tools I Used to Survive the First Five Days...

and how they were all essentially to my detriment



I have had the most wonderful beginning of my stay. People are all very nice and helpful; the area around Mayenne is very rustic and beautiful; I ate four croissants last Thursday. I've had to adjust quite quickly to only speaking French all day everyday, but already I can tell I've improved (last week I was not so optimistic, but today I have a positive outlook).


But anyway, here are the things I've done to get by my rocky adjustment to French language and life.

Smiling and Nodding

I have done a ton of smiling and nodding my first few days here. It’s mostly a combination of 1). People being very nice and friendly, and 2). People telling me vital information that I’ll need for my stay. Thus… smiles. Head nods. The main problem is everything is happening so fast, and I understand very little of what’s being said to me. In trying to seem agreeable this first week I’ve kind of smiled to get by, but at the expense of people thinking I have any clue what they’re talking about.


Example:

The school secretary handed me some papers, told me some things, and thing offered a lengthy description of where my mailbox was (the personal one, for the apartment), how to open it, what mail would go there, what address to use for it… lots of things I’d very much like to know. I smiled the whole time, nodded along, said, “ah, oui, okay,” the whole time. And she smiled and left, having definitively given me all I needed. But truth be told, what I got from that conversation was “mailbox… words, words, words,” and not much else. Perhaps if I had looked a little more confused and less like an enthusiastic lottery winner finding out how to collect her prize, I might know how to get my mail.


Blank Stares


Ah, yes, blank stares. The opposite end of the “pretending to understand what’s being said” spectrum. To me, blank stares are reserved for when you’re so confused you can’t even fake it. It’s when you’re so overwhelmed that your brain cannot even compute a logical response, and goes into shutdown mode, essentially abandoning you in your idiocy.

Example:

At lunch at the teacher’s table, someone asked me what I planned to do that afternoon. I had no clue what she’d said, so I asked her if she could repeat. She did, slowly, and yet I still had no clue what she’d said. I couldn’t ask her to say it a third time – that’s just too much. So I just stared at her awkwardly. Panic engulfed my brain. I looked next to her, to Claudine, an incredibly kind English teacher who has shepherded me through these stressful times, even taking me into her own home. My look was kind of like, “Mom, help.” Like as a kid when you go to the doctor and you know exactly what’s wrong, but still rely on your mom to describe your symptoms to the scary stranger.

Claudine did me a solid, saying “this afternoon.”

I had hoped she would translate then answer the question for me, but of course, no one knew what I was doing that afternoon but me. “La banque,” I finally got out in embarrassment.


Ca Va



It’s one of the most versatile phrases, and I’ve used it to my advantage, essentially to avoid having to elaborate or use any foreign or unnecessary words. I’m not sure if I’m using it right, but, hey, ca va.

As in:

How’s it going? Ca va. Do you have everything you need? Oui, ca va, merci. I can arrange for more pillows if you like. Non, merci, ca va. Let’s plan your first lesson tomorrow! Ok, ca va.



“Je ne parle pas francais”

I’m not proud of this one. Pretending you don’t speak French when you flew thousands of miles just to practice the language is, really, a low move.

Example:

I was with Claudine finding some sheets for the Spanish language assistant to use. The woman who we borrowed them from noticed I had smiled and nodded but not said a thing during the whole encounter, and finally she turned to me and said, “tu ne parles pas bien francais, alors?”


And Claudine’s back was turned, so after thinking about it for a minute, I simply shook my head and said…. Nope.


Claudine turned sharply back and said, “no! She speaks French well! Elle parle francais!!”


Hide


It’s all been a little overwhelming. Although I went abroad before, I mostly traveled with a pack of American kids to big tourist cities where many people speak English. I’ve never been immersed this way, and the first couple of days were very confusing and a little lonely. My first day on my own, I bought a big pack of cookies and hid in the apartment until it was time to go to bed.




Things have been tricky, but also really rewarding too. I’ve been shocked. Despite the fact that what I’m doing is moreso speaking words that resemble ones in French rather than actually speaking French, people understand me. I set up my French phone number. I opened a bank account (and signed a million documents to do so). I hung out in the teacher’s lounge, went to the grocery store, chatted with the bank manager – I say words and people take them to mean something. Magic.


Nicole

I'm Going to France

Well, this is it. Tomorrow I fly to France and start my new job as an English language assistant.

Two weeks ago, I started to compose a blog post called “On Being Afraid.” It was about all the fears I have going into TAPIF, fears that are in fact even greater than when I went on Semester at Sea. It’s hard to believe given that deep water is my biggest fear, and I willingly chose to put myself on a ship for three months and cross the deep deep Atlantic Ocean. But it’s true. I had a few general fears before beginning Semester at Sea, but I knew I would be safe with friends and professors. I knew I would be missed if I showed up to the ship past the time we were due to sail on to the next port. I was not worried for that journey the way I am worried now.

It was poetic, this blog post I composed. It was about all the fears I have going into TAPIF, and how even still, it’s something I choose to do. It was about how I truly believe the most important thing in life is doing the things that scare us. For only then do we feel alive, and only in being afraid can we experience that beautiful relief washing over us, that euphoria, when everything eventually goes all right.

But I scrapped it.

It was too poetic, too tender and out of place on the blog, and anyways, I’m no poet.

Despite scrapping my blog post on “fears and how to conquer them,” I do have one last fear before leaving for France tomorrow. One that’s a little lighter, one that I’m willing to share:

It has to do with actually speaking French.

It’s most people’s first question when I tell them I am going to teach in France for seven months. “Oh, well do you speak French?” they immediately ask. Usually I am surprised, because that’s not the first thing I’d ask. I guess I would just assume that someone spending that long in France actually speaks French, although I know that’s not necessarily the case for a lot of people and programs out there. But alas, I smile and shrug and say, “a bit,” which I hope conveys the two years of middle school, four years of high school and four years of college I’ve spent trying to learn the language.

The problem is, while I’ve been learning French for quite a while, I’m plagued with two issues. First, I have a terrible memory in general. I could spend months learning something only to forget it all within the next year, which is actually not great when it comes to this very pricey education I now have. Second, and perhaps more importantly, my knowledge of conversational French is quite limited.

It seems like it shouldn’t be possible, after 10 years of French. But once entering college, my French became a bit… specialized. In 307, we read an entire book from the first-person perspective of a tree. For that semester I gained a very good vocabulary of words like branch, limb, trunk, bark, apple tree, pear tree, fertile soil, you name it, words that I’m now not sure what to do with (the words I remember, anyway). In my “Love Stories” class we read La Dame aux Camélias and I learned ten different types of prostitutes, and the proper words to describe them all. I can't help but hope those words aren't a part of my daily vocabulary this year. I had the most wonderful teachers and I learned the most fascinating, valuable things, but now that I’m about to spend all this time in France, I’m worried about certain practical matters.

For instance:

A few days ago I decided to try to set my French cell phone service up from the States, just to see if I could. I had some issues charging my credit card, and I ended up having to call customer service. (It was actually very neat, if you do it over your computer you can basically Skype with someone in customer service and they can send you helpful links - very cool).

So, the video starts up and this beautiful woman of color smiles at me and asks me, in French, what problems I’m having.

I smile and say bonjour, and then pause, because I don’t really know any other relevant greetings. Do I say comment ca va? Ask her how she is? No, we’re not two friends catching up. Let’s just move on.

I describe the issue in detail and she gives me a funny look, but I continue on in my valiant charge to do the best I can. Man, why do I have all this tree vocabulary and nothing for dealing with customer service???

As I finish a very awkward recounting of my technological woes, she looks at me for a long minute, taking it all in. She's a little hesitant, probably from having to parse through a complete butchering of her language.
Finally: “Ok... oui, I think I have an idea,” she says in French. “There were some words I didn’t understand, but I think I know what the issue is.”

I feel like laughing, but I just smile because I know it would be an anxious, desperate laugh, and that would be creepy. “Oui,” I say, c’est probablement parce que j’ai inventé quelques mots.” I made up most of the words in that story.

We fumbled through a solution despite my abysmal language abilities, and finally got to the goodbyes, where I simply repeated everything she said because I didn’t know what to say. Right down to, “I hope this was helpful for you, too.” No, Nicole. Just repeat the parts where she says “Au revoir” and say “I hope you have a nice day, too.”

We hung up and I looked up all the words I had essentially invented on the spot. Much like I thought, the real words for “charge” and “cancel payment” were nothing like the ones I was trying to use.

I felt this heavy feeling sink over me, realizing the next seventh months were about to be me trying to get people to understand words I’d made up in my head. At the same time, though – isn’t this why I want to go? To fumble around until finally, hopefully, I develop some sense of understanding?

Although over the past couple of weeks I've had many fears going into TAPIF, right now I’m mostly excited, and hopeful. Yes, I will butcher a beautiful language. But I will teach English, and learn French, and get to know people and drink fine wine and explore a gorgeous countryside. And when I come back? I’ll know how to say “tree roots” and chat with a local.

I leave for this journey tomorrow, September 26^th. I hope you will join me and read along.

Best,

Nicole

Same Blog, New Content

Preparing for the Teaching Assistant Program in France

Dear readers,

Welcome to my new and improved travel blog, To Sea the World. After using this blog to document my journey on Semester at Sea, I’m now turning to my next adventure: teaching English in France. While I love a good nautical theme, it’s a tad less fitting for my land-based adventures in France, so I’ve had to spend a bit of time tossing cartoon-y pictures of anchors overboard and scrubbing salt water out of the nook and crannies of the blog’s inner workings. Excessive nautical imagery all simply to say: here’s my updated blog, slightly less “sea” themed, ready to go. (Although, as many of you know I can’t resist a good pun, so the blog title quite obviously had to stay).

Posts on this blog from here on out will all refer to my experience doing the Teaching Assistant Program in France (TAPIF). I’ve wanted to live in France since I first started taking French in seventh grade. It’s been on my bucket list right there next to “learn to ride a unicycle” and “attend the Kentucky Derby.” (In case it’s cause for concern, I’ve updated the list since seventh grade and “achieve impressive unicycle feats” is no longer on the list. I don’t know where that one came from). Despite many changes over the years, my desire to live in France for some period of time has not changed. Learning the dreaded subjunctive tense, watching film after 1960s Nouvelle Vague film, and spending long hours attempting to understand Camus have not shaken my resolve. If anything, my desire to deepen my understanding of the language has increased with every French class I take. So it is with a great deal of excitement that I turn to this next chapter in my life.

What will I be doing exactly?

I actually don't know too much. I know that I'll be working with high school students in small groups in a little village called Mayenne, in the Nantes school district. I know it's pretty rural, and I should have lots of time for exploring. I anticipate that I'll be eating far too many croissants and pastries. The rest is a mystery, an adventure I'm eagerly awaiting. 

So, from here on out begin a series of posts documenting my next great adventure, my move to France. I'm counting down to my departure on September 26, and I hope to keep you posted as the day approaches. In the meantime, you can read more about the program on my about page, here.

Much love,

Nicole