au bon pain

Back to the French stereotypes. Let's look at bread, or more generally, food and eating. They really do love bread! Walk around the streets of Rouen between 4pm and 7pm and you'll see dozens of Frenchmen and women on their way home from work with a baguette (or two or three) tucked under their arm. Boulangeries (bakeries) are everywhere - they're more ubiquitous than Dunkin Donuts' in New England. One of the little pleasures of living in France is paying a visit to the boulangerie/patisserie (pastry shop, sometimes the two are separate but more often together). I particularly like how they take very special care of your order by wrapping up everything - no paper bags like at Dunkin Donuts. Instead, they very carefully wrap your eclair or tarte aux pommes or whatever in paper and tape it securely like it's a Christmas present. They wrap up the bread too, putting a little paper around the center of the baguette. Then when you get home...it's like it's your birthday. You unwrap your present, and - tada! - there's an eclair inside. The French have a good thing going with their eclairs. Instead of filling them with yellow custard, they put chocolate mousse inside! Yum. I've also seen pistachio and coffee flavored, but when there's chocolate, why try anything else?

The French do take eating seriously and they like to maintain a certain eating ritual. They don't snack very much. One of my collegues at school visited America last summer and said that she really liked the food there, but that "Americans just eat whenever!" For a nation that puts a lot of stock in the quality of what they eat, it probably comes as a shock to the French that Americans would just shovel down food without giving it the proper setting of a table and the proper time of a set meal. The French like their 3 meals a day...and that's sufficient (probably a big part of why they don't have the obesity problem we do). When they eat, they take their time. We have almost 2 hours for lunch at the primary schools. At Silver Lake High School, where I subbed last fall, we got 18 minutes. They like to eat their courses in succession, starting with salad, then an "entree" - usually pate or veggies or something like that, then the main dish, then some cheese (just by itself, and it's plenty good on its own), and finally dessert (sometimes real dessert and sometimes fruit). This tendency to eat in stages even carries over to how they eat fast food. At McDonalds I saw many eating their fries first (with a fork!) before starting in on the burger.

I've found that eating in France is not just a means by which we fill up our tanks to get through the day, but rather something to be enjoyed and savored - in moderation - with friends and family. It is rare to see someone eating alone, or eating with haste, or eating while multi-tasking. Food is serious in France, and it deserves all of your attention.

Presidental Address

Just a quick note as I watch a presidental address of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the debate which follows. Some impressions: (1) The format: Not a speech like we are used to in the US, but rather a roundtable-type press conference with 3 TV news personalities grilling the president. At first I was impressed that the president would go before a national TV audience in such a setting, but my roommates quickly assured me that the questions are predetermined and Sarko knows whats coming. Still an interesting difference from the US format, which shows the head of state in a different context, delivering a speech either all alone in the White House or in front of the Congress.
(2) The post-address breakdown: In the US, we're used to having the talking heads start jabbering on all the networks as soon as the President gets out his last word. A minimum of 15 minutes of breakdown is obligatory. Here in France, the address was shown on three channels. One went straight to the talking heads. One went right to the evening news. And one went right to an episode of CSI Miami - no wrapup at all - straight from Sarko to some supposed detective speaking French on Miami Beach. Curiously, her lips don't match her words...
(3) Every French talk show that I've watched has had a studio audience, always with an "in the round setting" like "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" so no matter what the camera angle, you always catch a glimpse of someone in the crowd. They don't participate but they're always there. It's kind of weird to get used to - imagine "Sportscenter" or "Larry King" with a live audience. The weekend soccer wrap-up shows always feature an engaged audience (and the producers know their audience well - the front row is always filled with pretty girls....) but the audience for this political debate is not so interested. The camera just cut to one of the panel members and we could clearly see the guy in the crowd behind him dozing off! until someone jabbed him in the leg or something and he came back to consciousness and resumed pretending that he was interested in the discussion and hadn't just agreed to sit through this so he could be on TV. Poor guy, at least in the US he'd get a commercial break every 10 minutes.

The French Stereotypes: Smoking

Picture, for a minute, what you imagine the typical Frenchman to be like. He's probably named Pierre or Jacques, wearing a beret and sporting a mustache. A cigarette is dangling from his mouth and he's got a baguette in one hand and the hand of his girlfriend in the other, with whom he was just smootching quite publicly - and unashamedly - in the park. He likes art and poetry and has a distaste for Americans and the way their "culture" is invading his own. After six weeks in France, I am happy to report that most of these stereotypes are true! Lets start with cigarettes.

Yup, the French like to smoke. According to the World Health Organization, 34% of French men and 23% of French women smoke. Compare that to 26% of American men and 20% of females. The numbers, however, don't really tell the story. In America, we've been told for years (for me, it's been my whole life) at school, through the media, etc, that smoking is bad. Smoking will kill you. Any American that picks up smoking in today's day and age is really an idiot, given how our society has clearly sent this message. As a result, smokers in America are largely ostracized when they smoke. We can't smoke indoors. We have to stay a certain distance from the building. We've been so well educated on the dangers of second hand smoking, that non-smokers steer well clear of anyone smoking. So you see smokers huddled in little packs, taking a drag behind a building. It's become embarrassing to be a smoker in America. Not so in France. My first week here, I remember thinking how brazenly everyone was smoking, as if smoking were some kind of crime that should only be done in private, or at least in a place somewhat out of view. Of course it's not, but that's almost the way it seems at home. Here in France, while smoking has been banned indoors, everyone at an outdoor cafe table is lighting up, young mothers push a stroller with one hand while their cigarette is in the other, and high school kids smoke without consequence in front of the high school. In short, smoking has largely become socially unacceptable in America while it remains very much a visible part of French culture.

At long last...settled

After six weeks of living without a home, I finally have a place to live. Last Friday I moved into an apartment just outside of Rouen. To have my own space, a fully-stocked kitchen I can use, and - most importantly - my own bed is a relief. More of a relief than I expected, in fact. The vagabond lifestyle was wearing on me more than I realized. But my patience has paid off as I found a really nice place with 5 French roommates who are friendly and don't speak English! I can't think of a better way to learn French. Finding a furnished apartment to share with French people was harder that I thought it would be, but I've found myself a good place with good people and a landlord who is on the ball (always a plus!). He owns a bunch of properties around Rouen and has a website with some pictures of my place here.

Well, I've got a lot to catch up on, so I think my posts for a while will cover what I've been up to and what's been on my mind thus far. Hopefully I can get caught up before too long! But I'll start with what I'm doing in France and why I'm here.

I am in Rouen, France, a city of about 500,000 (including suburbs) located halfway between Paris and the Normandy D-Day beaches. For the next 6 months or so I will be teaching English in 3 French primary schools, kids aged 6-10. My job is not only to help the kids develop a foundation in the English language but also to teach them about American culture. My contract with the French government calls for me to work 12 hours a week, so I have a lot of free time that I hope to fill with interesting stuff. Now that I am settled, I can start to focus on how I'm going to spend the 156 hours left in the week.

Voila! - a very brief overview of what I'm doing here. Now I'll explain a bit about why I'm here. I first heard about this program when I was in college - my French professor encouraged me to do it. But at the time I had very little confidence in my French and the thought of spending a year in a place where I would be forced to speak French was pretty scary. So, though it sounded interesting, at the time I decided it just wasn't for me. Over the past few years I have had a number of friends who have taught for a year in France and really enjoyed it. So nearly a year ago, in the midst of a frustrating job hunt in Pembroke, I applied, not really sure I wanted to do it, but wanting to keep my options open. Then this summer I spent 6 weeks in Senegal helping out at a ministry known as the House of Hope, a home for formerly orphaned street boys. I had a fantastic experience getting to know the boys, hearing their stories, and encouraging them. These boys have overcome so much and God, through the House of Hope, is transforming their lives. At the same time, it was very sad to see thousands others who aren't cared for and loved living on the streets of Dakar and to know that there are millions others around the world who are alone and with little hope for the future.

I wanted to learn more about the House of Hope: how it got started, how they provide for the boys, how the boys come to the House, more about the boys themselves, etc. I was full of questions...but my French (or lack thereof) limited me. But while I was in Senegal, I got placed in Rouen for this job, and, well, it all seemed to make sense. Learn French for a year, and return to the House of Hope able to ask the questions I want to and better enabled to aid their work. And after that, I'm not sure what I will do, but I feel strongly that I will be working with or on behalf of children, and perhaps in the francophone world.

So here I am! Living in France, teaching English, and trying to soak up as much of the French language as I can. Oh, and also eating a lot of croissants, pain au chocolats, eclairs, cheese....

La Greve

With the late debut of the blog, I have a lot to catch up on. Schools, language, food, malodorous roommates...there's a lot to cover. But I would like to first talk about what's had France in the headlines for the past week - la greve! Across France millions of people (or is it thousands? The news outlets list 2 figures for demonstrations: the number reported by the unions and the number reported by the police) have hit the streets (or simply stayed home) to voice their displeasure at the government's plan to raise the retirement age. In Marseille, the garbage men have been on strike for the past week, resulting in mounds of trash strewed around the city, while in Lyon there have been some minor riots involving high school kids. Oil refineries have been blockaded for 10 days now and as a result there is a shortage of gasoline, with many pumps having run dry.
Though there have been several days of marches through the streets of Rouen, things have been fairly quiet in Normandy compared to the rest of the country. I watched one of the rallies and it was pretty boring. Just a bunch of people calmly walking down the street, chatting with one another, while a few ringleaders used megaphones and others held banners. It looked more like a charity walk than a protest. Things must have heated up a little bit after I left, though, as the next day I saw the banks had been pelted with eggs and paintballs. Stay classy France...

For the most part the protests have had little impact on me - I've had to walk rather than take the bus a few times, a day trip to Versailles with a teacher was postponed because there was no gasoline to be found - and have mostly just been a nuisance. For others who must commute daily I realize the rolling strikes have been much more disruptive. But as the strikes enter their 4th week, I've officially decided that I've had enough. The strikers finally got to me last night when I learned that my flight to Spain to visit my sister had been cancelled do to yet another day of strikes. I was momentarily furious. The retirement reform bill has already been passed by the legislature, it's a done deed. Yet the air traffic controllers (in a telling display of "solidarity" some, not all) stayed at home in protest because the idea of working a day past the age of 60 is too much for them. Really? Working 35 hour weeks with 8 weeks vacation per year until you're 62 is too much to ask? I think most Americans would take that deal in a heartbeat. This whole retirement reform protest/greve saga strikes me as a bit immature. They're like childish high school kids, throwing eggs at the banks and marching around self-righteously. I don't think these strikers realize how good they have it. Now I know it's a part of their history, part of their fabric, to demonstrate publicly and express how they feel about government changes. And honestly I think this is a good thing, a good way for the public to keep the government in check. If nothing else, this affair has shown that the French are certainly involved and aware of political matters. But at this point they need to give it up. Go back to work already.

Bonjour!

Bonjour from France! I meant to start this blog a while ago, as I've been in France for over 3 weeks now, but it's been a little difficult to connect to the internet here. But I have a steady connection now. I am enjoying France - the food is as good as advertised and people are really nice and no one holds it against me that I am American (at least that I know of...). I am not enjoying the strikes that have been going on for a week, but I will write about that later. Soon. Anyway, that's all for now - just wanted to set this up and get the ball rolling.

A bientot!