Sacré Blah

Still, You've Got To Love It

2010-05-03T15:58:00.000-07:00

I've been ploughing through a number of heavy books about the history of linguistic policies in France (and yes, it's almost as riveting as it sounds) for one of my dissertations, a word that should never exist in the plural. I came across this paragraph, which I'd like to share with you:

"As always, the French sought institutional answers to the problem [of the threat of English] with the creation over the years of a number of governmental institutions to defend the integrity of French... The first governmental institution to be founded was the Haut Comité de défense et d'expansion de la langue française, created by decree in March 1966... In 1973 this body was replaced by the Haut Comité de la langue française, the change of name reflecting a name in orientation, the term 'expansion' being seen as too 'colonial' and the term 'defence' too negative. In 1984 it was replaced by two bodies, the Comité consultatif de la langue française and the Commissariat Général de la langue française. Finally, in June 1989, they were replaced respectively by the Conseil supérieur de la langue française and the Délégation générale à la langue française."

This paragraph neatly demonstrates everything that is wrong about France.

There's No Place Like Home

2010-04-23T06:21:00.000-07:00

I've been back in the UK for a week and a half now, and have experienced the strange feeling of examining your own culture from the perspective of a foreigner. I'm still in French mode, so I keep trying to kiss people when I meet them*, and talking to myself in French when trying to remember things. I haven't quite shaken off the slight feeling that we're driving on the wrong side of the road, or the surprise at how enormous banknotes are here.**

But there are also many things I'm grateful for about living in this country, things which I took for granted. Politeness, for one thing; whatever Lynne Truss says, most people will still say 'sorry' if you bump into them. The NHS, which I will never moan about or describe as inferior to the French health system again. Bourbon biscuits. And, as Dara O'Briain marvellously points out in his new book, Tickling the English, the fact that we Will Not Be Told that our country is nowhere near as crap as we like to think it is.

I went to Brighton yesterday to see some friends and also to visit the library since, thanks to my dissertations (and there's a word that should never exist in the plural), I have a hell of a lot of research to do. Within ten minutes of being on campus, I had been handed six flyers (two of which were for demonstrations against things I didn't care about) and offered an STD test. It's always nice to know that some things never change.

One of those things is the British sense of humour. I wondered why, despite the French propensity for physical affection and extremely personal questions, I always felt that they were always somehow more distant than British people, and now I realise what was missing. It's the constant joking. Almost every exchange you have on this pretty little island of ours - and that includes soul-baring, weepy conversations because we only allow a limited amount of self-pity - will involve some kind of sarcasm, irony, self-deprecation, or plain old piss-taking. It's a reflex as natural as breathing to us, and I didn't realise how much I missed it until I got to experience it again.

A quick example: when changing trains at Brighton, I had to show my ticket to the inspector so he could let me through the barrier manually. I mentioned that, for some reason, that ticket had been playing up all day and that it hadn't worked in any of the machines at any of the stations I'd changed at that day. With a completely straight face, he replied, "That's because the machines are fitted with a special chip that identifies all the pretty girls and sends them to us inspectors to make the day go faster."

Now, in France, the inspector in his position may well have said something similar, but the difference is that a) there would have been genuine intent in his flattery and b) he would have tried to get my number. But this guy wasn't being sleazy - he was a grey-haired fiftysomething, probably with a wife and grandkids, just joking around. I could make some deeply philosophical hypothesis that he was spreading joy and happiness by doling out cheerful compliments, but the truth is that he probably was doing nothing of the sort. He was just reacting in the only way he knew how. The British way.

* Fortunately, the first person I did that to had lived in France himself for a few years many moons ago, and completely understood my sudden onset of affection. Cue a lovely long chat about how wonderful the food is and how chiant the civil servants are, something that only a foreigner living in France can appreciate.

** Seriously, go look at a £20 note some time. I'm surprised they fit in our wallets.

Premature Nostalgia

2010-04-06T04:29:00.000-07:00

I now have only two teaching days left (and half-days at that, due to mock exams) before I return to England for good. I will confess to mixed feelings about my departure: on the one hand, I'm looking forward to seeing friends and family again, and have been promised one of my Mum's whacking great fry-ups when I get back. On the other hand, I really feel at home here; I walk the cobbled streets of Rennes feeling like it's my city, and I feel like the kids I teach are my kids.

So, all in all, the last week or so has been pretty emotional. It's essentially been a fortnight of goodbyes, as every class has been my last for that group. Three of my students have cried so far, which isn't bad going seeing as they're all over 16.

I'm really going to miss some of those kids. In my last practice oral with him, Philosopher was as breathtakingly bright and enthusiastic as ever - instead of droning on about how bullying was bad, as his classmates had done in response to a particular text, he started talking about Jamie Bulger and debating whether children can be held morally responsible for violence. Remember, this is a 17-year-old kid (whose moustache still hasn't properly sprouted, to his frustration), speaking in a foreign language about a news story most people in his country have never heard of.

As I was going home last Thursday, I walked past a darkened nook, where I could just about make out two students... well, making out. I tend to sympathise with the students on these matters, remembering those days well myself*, so, hearing the Principal leave his office, I decided to give them a heads up.

"Come out, get your tongue out of her throat - the Principal's coming."

And who should emerge, but a scarlet-cheeked Mr Boombastic and one of his female classmates? This is the kid who, only the day before, had announced in his presentation on stereotypes of England that, "English people are all ugly, except Zoe. And English men are especially ugly and they smell really bad, so I think she should break up with her boyfriend and have a French boyfriend."

I grinned and said with mock hurt, "Mr Boombastic, you never told me about this! I feel betrayed!"

I'm only entering the teaching profession because I like torturing teenagers.

Seriously, though, I want to be a teacher because, as I mentioned in a previous post, I've now had that crack-cocaine high of getting through to a kid, and I want more. It's amazing how quickly you forget the crap times after a good lesson. I asked one class to write a short statement (in French) to help me with one of my dissertations, on their opinion of what the point of having a language assistant is. I collected them in after the lesson and started to read them, but had to stop because I was welling up too much to see properly. Some of the anonymous comments, roughly translated, were:

"Having an assistant is definitely a good thing because her lessons are more fun than the ones we have with our normal teacher, because she plays games and songs and does acting, but we still learn a lot."

"Having a language assistant is a good experience because we can learn about her culture. It's made me realise that not all English people are weird and that some of them are actually quite nice."

"It's been very positive for me to have had a language assistant this year because I feel like I've improved my English so much because of her. Normally, I'm too shy to talk very much in class but she's very relaxed and encourages me to try so I don't worry so much about making mistakes. I now have a lot more confidence about speaking English in front of English people."

As I read that last paper, tears rolled down my cheeks and I felt a million miles away from the nightmare lesson I'd had a couple of weeks ago, where I'd stood in that same classroom sobbing after the class had left, but for very different reasons. I realised that this was why I had to go into teaching, for all the warnings about league tables, paperwork and pushy parents I'd received. And then, because some things never change, without thinking, I picked up a red pen and corrected the ending of 'parler'.

* All right, then - imagining those days well myself. I was a late starter...

Fish, Frogs and Cheese

2010-04-01T11:38:00.000-07:00

Today was April Fool's Day, or Poisson d'Avril, as the French call it. I have absolutely no idea where their obsession with fish comes from, but it appears that the pinnacle of Gallic wit is to pin a paper fish onto someone's back when they're not looking. Very bizarre, but then again, we are talking about a country where Mr Bean is still found amusing.

It's getting towards the end of my stay here, so my lessons have become a lot more lighthearted and self-deprecatory. I gave one class a list of bizarre sports practiced in Britain, such as bog-snorkelling, gurning, shin-kicking, the Bognor Birdman, zorbing, and so on, and got them to decide which were real and which I'd made up. They were amazed to discover that they were all true, leading to declarations that, "Ils sont fous, les anglais!" Just in case our reputation wasn't bad enough.

They were particularly struck by cheese rolling. For those unfamiliar with British rural pastimes (we really do have top-notch eccentrics), this is a race which takes place in Gloucestershire every year. A large Double Gloucester cheese is rolled from the top of Cooper's Hill, a very tall and steep hill, and hundreds of people run/stagger/fall down after it in an attempt to catch it. The person who manages to grab the cheese first is the winner, but since it can reach speeds of up to 70 mph, there are usually plenty of injuries, although so far, there haven't been any deaths.

There are some great clips of last year's event here, although I'm slightly disappointed that they've gone all health-and-safety mad by now having lots of races with smaller groups instead of everyone at once. Still, there aren't many times in your life you get to hear someone yell, "Get the cheese!" at the top of their lungs.

My students were absolutely dumbfounded; after I explained how it worked, there was a stunned silence followed by a bewildered, "But... WHY?"

I looked at the girl. "You spent today trying to stick paper fish to people, right?"
"Well, yes."
"And you think the British are weird?"

Of course the real answer is that if you have to ask why someone would want to roll down an enormous hill, risking serious injury, while chasing a 70-mph cheese, then you're simply the kind of person who will never understand.

I'm The King Of The Castle

2010-03-29T12:31:00.000-07:00

There's a saying in France that, "Le client est roi" - the customer is king. It's often viewed as being rather tongue in cheek, because everyone has at some point experienced being totally ignored by someone supposedly in the customer service sector. I remember in my first week of being here, I was waiting in a long, long queue in Fnac (yes, yes, I know), which only had one girl on the till. After about ten minutes of queuing, another girl turned up to help her out. I, in my English naivety, brightened up, expecting her to throw her jacket off and get the till opened as quickly as possible to start serving customers, as I would have done. Oh no. Instead, she wandered leisurely over to her colleague, fait la bise, naturally, and then started up a little chat with her about the weekend. So now, instead of doubling the speed of service, she actually stopped the only cashier from working - and I was the only one who was surprised by this.

Yet the fact remains that, once you get used to little idiosyncracies like this, you do actually get great service in France. Shopkeepers and even fast food servers do actually speak to you like a human being and use full sentences. You might be nothing when you're in a queue (which may explain the French's distaste for such things) but when it's your turn to be served, it doesn't matter how long it takes. Unlike in the UK, you never feel like the person is constantly checking their watch and hoping you'll hurry up so they can reach their speed-of-service target. In a pharmacy, after I'd paid for my prescription and was about to leave, the pharmacist engaged me in a long, in-depth discussion about how pretty she thought my dress was, and after I had my travel vaccinations, the doctor kept me chatting for ten minutes about the imperial monetary system in the UK. Previously, I would have felt guilty about such time-wasting, but my head has become accustomed to this very French way of not caring about keeping others waiting. Right now, I'm the customer, and it's my right to be the king.*

Even in the supermarkets, you never feel rushed. One little act of politeness I will most certainly miss when I return to Blighty in just under two weeks is the fact that cashiers wait until you have finished packing your bags, putting your change back in your purse, and are ready to depart (with a bonne soirée, naturally) before they begin scanning the next customer's items. There's no pressure, just respect, and both the cashier and the person behind you will wait quite patiently because that's what's expected. You're not herded through with a two-minutes-per-customer target time like you are in certain UK supermarkets.

Furthermore, aside from in McDo (as the French call it) and Quick, you will never see a spotty, sixteen-year-old waiter or waitress. Putting plates on tables isn't a standby for the unqualified or a Saturday job for teenagers; it is considered an art form. I don't eat out very often, an assistant's wage being nothing special, but even in the cheap restaurants or family-run crêperies that I visit, every single waiter knows how to clear and carry plates in the 5*, silver-service fashion. Good service is seen as a God-given right here, and I can't help but love a country in which I can pay less than 10 euros for a two-course meal and a quart of local cider, and have that cider poured expertly for me by a guy who's probably got more qualifications than I'll have by the time I'm thirty.

* The French attitude to time infiltrates in other ways, too. While I was in Guiana, my boyfriend and I had an hour's gap between two of his lessons. He lives five minutes from the school, and I worriedly asked him if he thought we'd have enough time to eat lunch. He looked at me, shook his head, and replied, "You have become so French..."

Things I Never Knew About Teaching...

2010-03-25T16:17:00.000-07:00

... when I was still at school.

- Teachers know everything that goes on in the school, even if they don't show it. They do notice when best friends fall out, and when pupils date each other. Carefully Coiffed, a 16-year-old boy in one of my classes, used to be - let's be frank here - a little shit until he recently started going out with the most intelligent girl in his class. Now his hand shoots up at every question, just to impress her, and every teacher in the staffroom is rooting for that particular relationship to last, at least until the summer holidays. And they're both still convinced we don't know.

- Teachers can spot masticating teenagers a mile off. Do they seriously think we don't know the old trick of putting chewing gum under your tongue when you answer a question? Come on. It was only six years ago that I was still at school. The same goes for surreptitious texting in the classroom, no matter how subtle they think they're being.

- Teachers never seem to tire of discussing pupils in the staffroom; it's the favourite topic of conversation. All the gossip, and dissection of their fashion senses too. Honestly, they'd be mortified if they heard what their maths teacher had to say about their new skirt.

- Teachers also appear to sense no shame or irony in announcing that a pupil they have taught for the past five years knows absolutely nothing about their respective subjects.

- It feels really quite weird for a 22-year-old unmarried female to be called 'Madame' by her 19-year-old pupils. And yes, some of them do call me that, despite the fact that I introduced myself as Zoe. I imagine it's equally weird for a fifty-something woman with three kids and thirty years of marriage under her belt to be called 'Miss' in the UK.

Why It's Great To Be A Foreigner

2010-03-19T11:17:00.000-07:00

I have a little confession to make. I often abuse my status as a foreigner - as well as the general perception that the English are all monolingual - for my own good. When approached by some market researcher/charity collector/general annoying timewaster, I simply smile apologetically, tell them I'm English, and walk away. It works almost all of the time; I have only been challenged once, and then I just ran away before he could catch me.

What makes it worse is how I do it: to make it more effective, I say, "Pardonn, je sweez on-glay" in my best (that is to say, worst) British accent, and deliberately make the gender agreement error in order to reinforce my linguistic incompetence. I discovered the hard way that people are less likely to believe that you don't understand what you're saying when you reply, "Chuis anglaise," in a reasonably authentic French accent; imagine a foreigner trying to fob you off by saying, "Sorry, mate, don't have a scooby doo what you're on about," in an Eastenders accent.

Of course, that trick works less and less these days with the growth of globalisation. Everybody speaks English these days and it's getting harder to use as an excuse for getting out of talking to somebody. A few years back, I was in Paris with my boyfriend at the time, and we were constantly getting hassled by beggars. Telling them we were English never helped because they'd learnt their spiel in several languages for the tourists. In the end, we pretended to be German: as soon as they approached, he rattled off a list of phrases he'd learnt from playing Medal of Honour, such as, "Can I see your papers, please?," "Look out, he's got a Bazooka!" and, "The American has dog biscuits in his pocket." They usually went away fairly quickly; I'm not sure if it's because they didn't understand German, or because they did and they decided they didn't want to be near anyone with a Bazooka or dog biscuits in his pocket.

Still, I'm not sure if even German would work as a shield against being harassed any more, as we become more and more multilingual. Hopefully, my conversational Arabic will help for a few more years yet, although it could potentially get me into trouble as I've learnt most of it from Hakim songs so most of the phrases I know are just chat-up lines. And, you never know, learning Irish Gaelic one weekend when I was bored may well come in useful in this respect one day. At the very least, there's always the Latin - as long as I never get asked to fill in a questionnaire by a public schoolboy or the Pope.

The Good, The Bad, And The Homicide-Inducing

2010-03-18T12:11:00.001-07:00

I have a number of students who make me light up just by walking into the classroom. There's Sensitive, a lovely, quiet boy with a side parting and a propensity for wearing roll-neck jumpers; he blushes every time I talk to him, and after I recently found my name and a rather flattering cartoon of me surrounded by hearts in his textbook, I now know why. Then there's Sunshine, who won my heart in her very first lesson with me by telling me that her favourite hobby was, "smiling," - and she wasn't lying. There's Earnest, who works harder than any student I've ever known and always has her hand up, but regularly bursts into tears because it never seems to make a difference - she has an A* for effort and enthusiasm but an F for actual ability. There's Philosopher, a brilliantly imaginative boy who often teaches me things when he weaves in original ideas and information from books he's read or documetaries he's seen into his presentations, and who is desperately trying to cultivate a moustache in an incredibly endearing way. There's Mr Boombastic, a cheeky little so-and-so who tries to chat me up in class (in that very French, charming way) but who is all talk - he turns as red as a beetroot if I ever joke back to him.

And then there's Prima Donna*. She is a tall, willowy blonde who is naturally going to be a famous singer one day, so she doesn't need to worry about a silly little thing like English. Unfortunately, she's also the coolest kid in the class so everyone else follows her lead: when Prima Donna talks while I'm trying to explain something, so do all the others.

Every teacher has a student - usually more than one - who gets to them. I know various ex-teachers who, years on, still shudder when they say certain names aloud. My family and partner know Prima Donna's name well, such is the amount of dread and foreboding in my voice when I mention her - and I usually do have to mention her a lot. I will admit that her class have, on at least one occasion, driven me to tears - thankfully once they'd left the classroom - out of sheer frustration. One of the problems of being female is that it's difficult to be heard over lots of noise; if I raise my voice, it just becomes high-pitched and shrill. There's a reason Margaret Thatcher had to have training to lower the pitch of her voice if she wanted any hope of sounding authoritative in Parliament, or even of being heard at all.

So when you manage to finally get somewhere with a student like that, you could practically bottle the relief and euphoria that flows through you. There is a human child in that devil spawn after all!

It happened completely by accident. I'd planned a lesson on star signs and horoscopes, not expecting much, so I was amazed to hear Prima Donna say, "Ah, c'est cool, ça," when she read the sheet I'd given her. It turned out that she was massively into astrology, so she got stuck in to dissecting the character analysis for her star sign straight away. And where Prima Donna goes, the others follow and soon they were excitedly discussing their star signs and writing horoscopes for each other.

I couldn't believe it. I don't expect that it will last long, but it felt incredible when, instead of the usual pouts, churlish silence when asked a question and haughty looks, she even called me 'Madame' and asked about some of the vocabulary. God knows what'll happen in the next lesson - I obviously can't do the Zodiac every week - but I feel a little glimmer of hope at least.

As an added bonus, I asked them how many believed in their horoscopes and about a third did. Then I gave them what I told them was their horoscopes from the day before - in fact, I'd taken some from the internet over a month earlier and doctored them a bit. Almost all of them gasped about how spookily accurate they were; in the next vote, the number who said they believed in horoscopes doubled. I still haven't decided whether or not to 'fess up.

* Up until an embarrassingly late age, I had only ever heard this word spoken, and so I thought it was actually Pre-Madonna. It made sense to me: a wannabe diva who hadn't quite got there yet. It wasn't until I finally read the libretto of Phantom of the Opera that I realised my mistake...

What A Lot Of Gaul

2010-03-17T12:05:00.001-07:00

When I was in my first year of university, my classmate (the one who is now my partner) and I devised a mischievous plan as part of our ongoing battle against our jobsworth, oh-so-patriotic French tutor. For our oral exam, we would debate the motion 'The French believe that the world revolves around France'. We would do it completely over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek, and annoy her so much that she would give us 2.1s instead of Firsts, but hey, it's first year and the grades don't count, so it would be worth it for the sheer entertainment value. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons (of which cowardice was not one) the plan never transpired. Now, two years later, I'm discovering that our proposition was not quite as ludicrous as we'd once believed.

When it comes to taking undeserved credit for things, the French beat Gordon Brown hands down. It is absolutely incredibly just how many things - small, insignificant and thus all the more frustrating things - that they will claim as French without a hint of irony. It struck me how much this was the case when my housemate happened to play 'A Whole New World' from Aladdin one day. It was in French and I didn't know the words so, as I was baking in the kitchen, I began to sing along with the English lyrics. She looked at me, open-mouthed: "C'est quoi, ça?"

I smiled. "Well, it's the original lyrics. You know, from the original film."

She snorted with laughter. "What are you talking about? The original film is French!"

"You can't possibly be serious. Walt Disney was American! All Disney films are American."

"Quoi? Disney is French. He built Disneyland in Paris, didn't he?"

In the end, it took twenty minutes on Wikipedia and a number of YouTube clips of the same song in German, Hungarian, Chinese, Arabic and so on to convince her.

Something like that is so ridiculous that I can laugh it off. I can even cope when, after promising my housemates an authentic English dessert, I made them an apple crumble, only to be told, "Ah, but apple crumble is French!"

What I cannot allow to slide is the heinous violation of my heritage that comes from a Frenchman claiming that they invented the sandwich. I am not proud of what I did, but there are some things an English girl has to do to protect the honour of her country. I'll be packing my suitcases, but when the Rennes police find the dead body of a Frenchman with a picture of the Earl of Sandwich shoved up his left nostril and, "Show me another French word with a w in it!" scrawled on his corpse with a board marker, they won't need too many clues to find the perpetrator.

What's In A Number?

2010-03-09T13:27:00.001-08:00

As well as the variation in levels, another difference I noticed between schools in Guiana and Brittany is the demographic of teachers. The majority of teachers in my boyfriend's schools were around 35 or under; in my school, almost all of them are in their late forties and there's only one under 35. Bizarrely - and I think this is just a coincidence - a large proportion of them are in interracial marriages, that is to say, a white French woman married to an African, Arab or Asian man. I have no idea why all the non-racist people in France appear to have gathered together in one school, but there you go.

However, the age difference is unsurprising when you look at how teaching works in France. Unlike in the UK, teachers in France are actually civil servants: once they've passed their exams*, assuming they remain fit to teach and don't turn out to be paedophiles, they have employment for life. Hence why they go on strike far more often than their British counterparts.

The designation of French teachers works rather like the Army: instead of applying for jobs in individual schools, as we do, they instead get posted to schools by the government. They can choose the académie (academic region) or at least make a request, but they don't choose the school they are assigned to. In theory, each posting is a contract for a few years, but they can choose to extend it if they wish.

Unsurprisingly, the more experience you have as a teacher, the more clout you have when it comes to getting your preferred académie. NQTs almost always get the dirty jobs that no one else wants, while seasoned veterans can practically pick and choose. This is why so many new or new-ish teachers end up in the overseas départements. They know they're likely to get in because no one wants to go there due to the poor school results, but if they apply for anywhere better, they'll be lumbered with worse - ie the suburbs of Paris - so they hedge their bets and figure that at least they can get a tan. Or, if we're being less cynical, the teachers who choose to go to the DOMs are young, single and still looking for a bit of adventure and jungle trekking before they settle down in the south of France.

Brittany, on the other hand, is one of the most desired académies - supposedly due to its high school results but I'm tempted to believe that the amazing cider has something to do with it too. Which is why my school is populated with highly experienced teachers who have done their bit, slogging it in the ZEPs (Zone Education Prioritaire - basically ASBO Central), and are finally settling into probably their last posting in a cushy job in a nice Breton lycée, with kids who know how to spell Proust and who say, "Bonjour Madame," every morning to you.

I promise I'll stop blathering on about education theory and get back to the guess-what-my-students-said-this-week anecdotes soon.

* Which are competitive; in other words, if there are 50 places and 100 entrants, the top 50 will pass and the rest will fail, even if they get, say, 95%.

Wonderwall

2010-03-07T13:51:00.000-08:00

The other day, I used Wonderwall by Oasis with one of my classes, as music is generally a good way to get them talking without realising it. One of the follow-up activities was to get the students to read out some of the lines for pronunciation practice.

"And affter all, you're my wonderwall," one of them read.

"That's good," I replied, "You just need to think about that first vowel in 'after'. It's 'ah-fter', remember, like the vowel in 'aunt' that we practiced before?"

"Affter."

"Not quite - listen again. Ah-fter. Can you say that? Ah-fter."

"No, 'e said affter in ze song."

The student was so determined that she was right on this one that she made me play that section of the song again, grinning triumphantly when Liam Gallagher did, of course, sing 'affter'. And what could I do? I explained that he spoke a Northern dialect which does in fact use the short 'a', as well as dropping 'h's, which I'm always telling them off for doing. I explained that I spoke Standard English with at least the remnants of an RP accent*, and that was the dialect usually taught to foreign speakers of English. However, I couldn't actually tell them that what they were saying was wrong. Damn you, Liam Gallagher.

The UK has an amazingly high number of dialects - far more than most European countries, I'd wager, especially given its size. In France, there's only really Parisian, Breton, Ch'ti, Southern and Tours (the latter being generally accepted as the 'best' French) - there are more than that between Birmingham and Edinburgh alone. This makes life pretty difficult for teaching English because the majority of people don't have the standard accent; I do wonder how the Scottish and Mancunian assistants nearby get on. Should they try to change their accent for teaching purposes in order to avoid confusion, or just speak normally and acknowledge that they have a different but equally valid way of speaking?

Most of the time, it doesn't matter too much as I only really insist on certain aspects of pronunciation, such as 'h', 'th' (instead of 's' or 'z') and stress. I only picked on that particular vowel because it was a common mistake: my students tend to blend a lot of vowels together so that (because of the dropped 'h'), the words: 'hut', 'hat', 'hot', 'out' and 'ate' are pronounced almost identically - something a bit like 'put' but without the 'p'. Still, I've learnt my lesson and will never use Oasis for pronunciation exercises again. I can only thank my lucky stars I didn't use that song where they manage to somehow fit four syllables into the word 'sunshine'.

* Which moving to Suffolk, going to university, and dating a Northerner have begun to kill off.

Why Teachers Have High Blood Pressure

2010-03-05T12:26:00.000-08:00

During my trip to French Guiana (see previous note if you're reading this on Facebook), I had the interesting experience of helping out my boyfriend, who is also a language assistant, with some of his classes. I expected a lower level; firstly, he teaches younger students than I do, and secondly, Rennes is one of the best-performing academic regions in France while Guiana is one of the worst-performing. However, it was still a hell of a shock.

In one troisieme class (equivalent of Year 10 in the UK), I asked one girl if she had any pets. She thought about it for several minutes before mustering all the efforts of at least four years of learning English to reply, "Me dog."

In a seconde class (Year 11), we revised the simple past and got them to write a single sentence describing what they did in the holidays. After extensive revision on how to form the past with regular verbs, a game to practice their formation, the words "play -> played" written on the board and ten minutes of writing time, one boy still managed to produce "I play football".

What the hell is an assistant meant to do with a kid like that? Now, I realise that my experience of language learning was very different to that of these children; plus, as someone who loves languages and finds them easy to learn, I know it is important to remember that not everyone will pick things up quite as quickly. But there is no way to achieve the oh-so-lofty British Council ideals of 'cultural exchange' and 'aiding spoken fluency' when the students' level of English is so poor that you are reduced to revising basic grammar every lesson. Frankly, in those situations, it is difficult to see the point of having an assistant at all, aside from the fact that some of the real teachers don't even speak particularly brilliant English either.

One of the problems stems from the lack of setting in the French education system; thanks to good old liberté, égalité, fraternité, almost all lessons are mixed-ability, an idea I have always detested. At best, this means that the strongest students are bored (or pretend not to be strong so as not to get bullied)so they mess around, the weakest students don't have a clue what's going on and are embarrassed about it so they mess around, and the average students don't stand a chance of learning anything among all the chaos. At worst, you end up with extremes like one seconde class in which my boyfriend is expected to be able to teach the same lesson to a girl from St Lucia who is practically bilingual, and a boy who can't read the sentence, "Where did you go?" off the board.

One more particular bete noire of mine: just about every ESL/TEFL resource will tell you to pair weak students with strong students during groupwork activities because they can help each other. No, no, and no. As someone who had to put up with this for years at school, I can tell you that it doesn't work. I just got incredibly frustrated at the other person and at never being able to stretch myself by being able to have a discussion at the level I wanted. Then, when I got to university and suddenly wasn't top of the class anymore - far from it, in fact - I got to experience being the weaker student in the pair. That's no better, because I just ended up tongue-tied and not wanting to say anything at all for fear of embarrassing myself in front of a peer who was so much better than me.*

Segregation in education has its problems, sure, especially when you take it to extremes, as in Germany. But there are times when I get sick of all this twaddle about everyone being the same, and this is one of them.

* The fact that, two years later, I ended up dating that very same peer I was too terrified to speak French to is irrelevant. *grin*

Foot in Mouth Disease

2010-02-06T09:09:00.000-08:00

And the nominations for this year's "Please Just Let The Ground Open And Swallow Me Up" award for most embarrassed student are:

- The student who, when I asked for an example of a song that uses franglais, piped up without thinking, "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?". To which I simply grinned and told her it was very kind and we'd talk about it later.

- The lad whose so-called friend had told him that the English word for soudeur ('welder') was, in fact, 'blowjobber'. He had just announced to the class, during a discussion on future careers, that this was what he wanted to be. I'm not sure who was more embarrassed, me or him, when I had to explain to him what the word actually meant...

- The student who told the class that his biggest complaint about his parents is that his mother is a dominatrix. Another of those occasions where it's difficult to decide if it would be worse to explain what he just said, or not to...

- The lad I saw this afternoon in the lingerie section of a large department store in Rennes. My students always seem amazed enough as it is when they see me out of school - as if I sleep upside down from the rafters like a bat when I'm not teaching - but the look on his face was priceless when he realised he'd been caught traipsing round looking at bras and enormous knickers with his Mum. That's the last time he'll be asking for my phone number in class.

French Drivers

2010-02-03T03:09:00.001-08:00

It's common knowledge that the French regard zebra crossings and pelican crossings as pretty stripes on the road that are there for decoration and little else. Even when the green man is lit up, cars are still allowed to drive over the crossing if they're turning right, so they're fairly pointless. You can't rely on any car to stop for you, regardless of whether you have right of way or not.

Of course, there are exceptions. I almost always have cars stop for me if I'm wearing a skirt; I have done several experiments and my findings are consistent on this one. Also, when my mother is in France with her walking stick or in a wheelchair (she's disabled rather than old, I hasten to point out), the cars always stop courteously for her. You're treated well in this country if you're disabled or a young female; everyone else can va se faire foutre.

Which brings me on to the single most French experience I've had in my four months of living here. Having finished teaching this morning (long live the French system of no school on Wednesday afternoons), I was on the bus back to Rennes when I saw a little boy, about ten years old, hovering at the side of road next to a zebra crossing. Holding two French baguettes, he was clearly trying to decide whether to cross or not. The bus driver had no intention of stopping - indeed she seemed to speed up - and she tutted, moaning, "Bloody pedestrians!" Then, suddenly, she noticed the baguettes, slammed on the brakes, saying, "Oh, wait, he's got bread," and smiled at him as he crossed the road.

I swear this is true. Only in France do vehicles stop for bread, not people.

Bisous

2010-01-28T18:11:00.000-08:00

Let's talk about kissing.

The French do it a lot. An awful lot. No amount of swine flu paranoia can sway that near-stranger's lips from their inevitable path towards your defenceless cheek. It's just what's done.

I can safely say that I have kissed more people in the last four months than I have in my entire life up to my arrival in France. In fact, I probably broke that record in one night at a birthday party I bellydanced at just before Christmas, where I was shepherded round to meet everyone, complete with bisous.

I don't have any personal space issues but all this physical affection for people I've just met does jar a little with my English sense of restraint and propreity. There are people I saw almost every day at school for seven years of my life with whom I have never had any physical contact, and yet I'm expected to embrace every Jacques, Pierre and Jean-Claude that my housemates bring back to the apartment. Sometimes I'll forget, and when a random friend-of-a-friend is introduced to me as I'm chopping onions in the kitchen, I'll simply look up, smile and say, "Salut," then carry on with what I'm doing. Then I'll notice them hovering, a fixed smile on their face in an attempt to mask their thoughts about the rude, cold English, and remember where I am, before going over to faire la bise.

I hadn't realised just how important this was for establishing relations until today. Normally, when I meet friends/lovers/fuckbuddies of my housemates, it's very casual and we start off on 'tu' terms. This suits me down to the ground, because I hate the tu/vous distinction; I never know which one to use and generally end up talking in roundabout sentences to avoid having to say the word 'you' until I've worked out where I stand.* But today, I was in the middle of the delicate process of baking a banoffee pie when I was introduced to a housemate's friend, and so I simply greeted her from where I was. This was the first person I haven't kissed, and I don't think it was a coincidence that she was the first visitor to vouvoie me. I can only assume that she decided I'd set a certain level of formality between us by not doing the bise. The problem is that I refuse to offer tutoyer because of my age; I've heard too many horror stories about young people saying to older people, "Et si on se tutoie?" and receiving the crushingly civil reply, "Comme vous voulez". And so we ended up with awkwardly formal small talk until my housemate laughed, told us not to be so ridiculous and tutoie one another. All because of one bloody kiss.

Except, of course, that it isn't just one kiss; it's two. And that's just with reasonable people - it can be three or even four with some. It's incredible how much time this takes up, especially at work. I have to arrive in the staffroom at least five minutes early each morning in order to have time to do the rounds of kissing before classes begin. And if, on my way to a lesson, I happen to spot a pack of as-of-yet ungreeted 4-kissers (because they always seem to group together, like wolves), it's actually quicker to take a detour and go the long way round to avoid them. Then hometime comes, and it's the same kissy-kissy business again.

Bisous, everyone.

Update: according to Combien de Bises?, two is the average for my département, but if I go any further East, I'll be in dangerous four-bises territory...

* A while back, I was walking along the street in Montfort and met a woman who clearly knew me. I recognised her from somewhere, but couldn't think where. That would be an awkward enough situation in any language, but it was made worse by the fact that I had no idea if we were on 'tu' or 'vous' terms! The irony is that so many French people I've met must think I'm incredibly rude because of the strange way in which I speak and avoid asking questions, which is all due to my cringing fear of accidentally offending them...

FAIL

2010-01-27T04:57:00.000-08:00

Double fail for me this morning, in the same class.

I was working on pronunciation, and in one activity, focused on the incessant and downright irritating 'h'-dropping that is so common among French people speaking English. No matter how many times I tell them, or how clearly I explain it, they always leave out 'h's where they're needed and then, bizarrely, insert them where they're not; "Ow hold hare you?" is pretty common, for example. I'm reliably informed by a linguist (a real one, not a poser like me) that this is because they know there's an 'h' in there somewhere but they just don't know where to put it. I can see this, though personally, I would have thought that the spelling was a pretty damn big clue. And while we're on the subject, Americans, go look up the word 'herb' and tell me what it starts with.

Anyway, in this activity, the students had to read aloud short passages of text, while the rest of the class listened closely to their pronunciation. If they spotted a dropped 'h', they had to yell, "Ha!" and scored a point (and, of course, if they dropped the 'h' of the 'ha', someone else could call them out too!). I should point out that this is a small, cheeky group of about 8 with whom I have a really good rapport, before anyone accuses me of bullying my students.

The game went well, and we moved on to something else. A little later, I read out some instructions that they had on a sheet in front of them. As I said the word 'hour', one of the boys yelled triumphantly, "Ha!" Twenty minutes of, "Look, I know what I said but... yes, I know it doesn't make sense but... no, there isn't any way of telling..." later, I concluded that English is a bloody stupid language.

The second fail (or epic win, depending on which way you look at it) came towards the end of the lesson. I've mentioned here before that my school doesn't have a traditional bell to mark the end of each class; instead, there is a short burst of music (usually classical, but not always), chosen by the headmaster and which changes every half term*. At the moment, it is a Mike Oldfield song, but unfortunately not 'Tubular Bells' - I have a couple of students who are demonic enough to warrant it. No, it's "Talk About Your Life" - the section where the woman sings:

"Talk about your life, I'd like to know
It's not easy going where no one goes"

A bizarre choice, but there we go. Anyway, one of the boys has a gift for mimickry and has managed to get her voice down to a T, as I discovered when I almost dismissed the class ten minutes early; I was saved only by the fact that none of them could keep a straight face.

* My suggestion of the theme tune from The Great Escape has so far been ignored.

Zoe 1, Bureaucracy 0

2010-01-25T06:52:00.000-08:00

Hurrah! After putting it off for four months, I've finally managed to organise social security, and it was relatively painless.

I'd been avoiding it for as long as possible, since my previous experiences with French bureaucracy threatened to end up with a bodycount that would make the average episode of Midsomer Murders look tame, and just about every French person I've met had warned me that civil servants were much, much worse. They have complete job security, which is not related in any way to job performance, and generally regard themselves as demi-gods. The fate of us mere mortals depends totally and utterly on whether or not they are in a good mood, which means it is wise to choose your moment with care.

Fortunately, I didn't get my first wage slip (which is necessary for an application) until mid-way through December, and I decided it would be best to wait until after the holidays because they would not like to be disturbed so soon before Christmas. Then January came, and I had no excuse to put it off any longer.

Now, the CPAM (which deals with social security) is, in theory, open from 8am to 5pm every weekday, which is, frankly, incredible; most essential administrative services are open for a 2-hour window once a fortnight, and always while you're at work. But the problem is that you can't just turn up at any old time, unless you want to make life difficult for yourself. For example, Friday afternoons are right out - they'll be looking at their watch the whole time and hoping to be so unco-operative that you'll quickly leave the office in despair so they can bugger off home early. Any day between 12 and 2pm is also not a good idea; whoever is on duty at that time will be so annoyed that they're not having lunch that they will be in no mood to be helpful. Eventually, I plumped for 2:30pm on a Monday afternoon, figuring that the Monday morning blues would be over but the midweek depression not yet set in, and that they would be in a good mood after a lunchtime glass of wine or two, but not clock-watching to go home yet.

Walking to the CPAM, my terrified brain was still trying to justify turning round and going back home. Was I really that bothered about being reimbursed for my doctors appointments and jabs for going to French Guiana? Did I really want that 200 or so euros off my rent, paid for by the CAF? Would any sum of money really be worth this amount of hassle? Somehow, I kept going.

My heart sank when I realised that there was an 'exceptional' closure that day, at 3pm, and I'd arrived just half an hour before - not good. Still, I was there now so I took a deep breath and went in. I'd made an effort to look nice, with a fairly figure-hugging skirt, in the hopes that if all else went wrong, I could maybe seduce the guy. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and only those of you who have dealt with French bureaucracy will understand just how desperate you can get.

I was called into the office and saw instantly that my skirt was for nothing - it was a woman. Still, unperturbed, I smiled my best look-I-know-I'm-foreign-and-this-is-going-to-make-your-life-complicated-but-please-I'm-begging-you-be-nice smile and said, "Bonjour".

Oh, wang. I forgot to call her 'Madame'. She hates me already.

I don't know if it was my half-decent French, despite being English, or if she'd just had a really good bottle of Bordeaux at lunchtime, but she deigned to help out the poor foreigner. It helped that I had come well-prepared with my passport, driving licence, birth certificate, European Health Card, NHS number, RIB (certificate of bank details) Arrete de Nomination (work contract), wage slips, certificate of financial help from the SLC, P45, Attestation Professional, Attestation de Domicile, Attestation d'Etudes, Attestation de Couleur Préféré, love letters from every boyfriend I've had from the age of 5, and a receipt from 1998 for a tin of baked beans, just in case. All photocopied in triplicate, naturally.

And now it's done. I have a social security number, and I can sleep easy, knowing that I don't have to deal with French civil servants again for a very long time. Well, at least until I have to apply for CAF and medical reimbursements next week. Sigh.

The Bare Necessities

2010-01-21T02:19:00.000-08:00

I noticed recently that, when you go into a bakery to buy a cake (something which I am now very, very experienced in doing), instead of asking, "Qu'est-ce que vous voulez?" ("What would you like?"), they often ask, "Qu'est-ce qu'il faut?" (roughly, "What do you need?").

Now, either I look like I'm only a réligieuse or two away from murdering someone* or the French have definitely got their priorities right. Damn straight il faut. None of this messing around with wanting; I need a cake. It takes a properly hedonistic country like France to recognise that pleasure - particularly pleasure with chocolate sprinkles on top and filled with chocolate custard - is a requirement and not a treat.

Plus, tomorrow I'm going to attempt the joys of social security (!) and dealing with French civil servants (!!), and if that's not a task that needs a damn good cake in order to tackle it, then I don't know what is.

* And at 6pm on a Thursday, after a long day culminating in my nightmare TSTG class, this is often the case.

Grapple For The Teacher

2010-01-16T02:54:00.001-08:00

I'm going to put the usual 'isn't-it-funny-how-the-French-do-this?' blogs aside for just a moment while I talk about teaching styles. No, wait, don't go!

Fine. Well, it's much cosier with only the two of us left in any case. Anyway, teaching styles. French children are used to a very old-fashioned, teacher-sitting-at-the-front-lecturing-and-students-taking-notes-all-lesson approach. Your reaction to that last sentence is a good determiner of age; if you just thought to yourself, "And what's wrong with that? Never did me any harm!" then I'm afraid you're officially old. Sorry.

Now, I'm sure that type of teaching has its merits, and I'm equally sure that when I've been teaching for twenty years and have had every last drop of enthusiasm wrung out of me by league tables and brats who don't want to learn, I will also become one of those teachers, eschewing carefully-prepared lesson plans for, "Turn to page 53 and do exercises 1 to 14, and no talking while I try to catch up on sleep". But, fortunately, I'm still in that incredibly annoying (to everyone else, most of all world-weary teachers) phase where I'm naive enough to believe I can 'make a difference' and actually care about whether or not the students like me. Couple that with the fact that I grew up with the modern, more dynamic, varied style of teaching, and you get a bunch of lycéens who don't know what's hit them.

Firstly, I refuse to sit at the desk at the front, droning on about some grammatical point or other, or to be glued to the blackboard. Instead, I walk around the classroom a lot as I'm explaining things; it means that there no longer is a back row where they can pass notes among one another, because half the time, I'm right next to them. It also means that my confused students end up accidentally listening to me, because they're turning round to watch me, wondering what the hell I'm doing over there. Maybe it's the bellydancer in me, but I like to perform among my audience, up front and personal, not up on a pedestal somewhere.

Secondly, something as normal and unoriginal as pairwork or groupwork is an unfathomable concept for students who are used to silent, individual work and occasionally answering questions. The first time I tried to get my classes to split off into pairs and work on something, it took me ten minutes to explain what I meant, and that was before I'd even mentioned the activity. They simply could not get their head around the idea of being allowed to confer with someone else, much less being asked to turn their chair around and, shock horror! face the wrong way to work with the person behind them. Even now, when they're more used to me asking them to work in groups, they still whisper as if they're doing something wrong, no matter how many times I tell them that I want them to have lively discussions with each other (as long as it's on the subject matter, in English, or both).

I like to use music in my classes because pop and rock songs tend to be a great way to sneakily practice certain grammatical structures and pronunciation, or just to get the students thinking about a particular issue. Some classes have taken to it more than others, but almost all of them were initially bewildered and horrified by the idea of singing in the classroom. And that's with the relatively safe option of singing along to an MP3; I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when my boyfriend first brought out his guitar in his classes in French Guiana... But it's paid off, because they think they're having a fun lesson, and they don't generally notice how much work they're doing. My favourite clandestine pronunciation activity was on the last day of term, when I left some music playing while they were doing a Christmas crossword as a treat. Without realising it, most of them starting singing along to the ones they recognised (carefully chosen songs that I knew had been hits here), yet just thought it was cool to be able to listen to music at school. Mwahahaha!

I also like to be extremely physical when I'm teaching - again, something which I'm sure I'll grow out of, but good for the time being. A while ago, I was trying to explain the word 'cliffhanger'. First I told them what it meant, and talked about soap operas and books, then I decided to show them why it's called that. I climbed up onto a desk and pretended to be running, telling them a story about a man who was being chased by people who were trying to kill him. As it got to the part where he tripped and fell over the cliff, I jumped and grabbed a heavy door-frame next to the desk, hanging from it. My feet were only dangling an inch or two from the floor but I played up the story, asking whether he would be rescued by a helicopter or would lose his grip and tumble into the sea, to be eaten by sharks. Then I stood up and declared, "I'll tell you what happened next week. And THAT'S a cliffhanger." I'd definitely get in trouble if my headmaster found out about it, but hey, that class will never forget the word 'cliffhanger'.

Now, I know it can't be like this all the time. I know that when I'm a qualified teacher, I'm going to need to put in the spadework, drilling verb conjugations and the like. I know that when I sit on desks, I lose a bit of authority, and when I play the clown most of the time, it's harder to make them sit and work on something quietly when I need them to. At the moment, I tell myself it's okay because I can leave the boring but necessary stuff to their real teacher, but one day, I'm going to need to work out how to incorporate both styles of teaching. My informal approach - coupled with my age and the fact that they call me by my first name - leads to a few difficulties, like getting hit on fairly frequently. Still, I'm assuming that's karma, a result of the hell I put some of my male high school teachers through by flirting incessantly with them - Mr Higgon, I hang my head in shame.

Woah, I'm an alien...

2010-01-09T07:34:00.000-08:00

Despite it being a truth universally acknowledged that the French and English hate one another, I have mostly experienced bewilderment and curiosity rather than blind xenophobia. I have somehow acquired the reputation, among friends, colleagues and housemates, of being 'the eccentric English girl': amusing, confusing, but mostly harmless. The general French attitude towards me, and therefore my country since they generalise just as much as we do, can be summarised by the reaction that my housemate-cum-landlady Laure gives to just about everything I do, cook, eat, make or say: "Ah, c'est marrant, ça..." This translates literally as, "Ah, it's funny, that..." but is used in the same inadvertantly-patronising way as we would use, "Oh, how quaint..."

So, because I like listing a lot at the moment, here are just some of the reasons that they all think I'm mental here:

- The fact that I drink a hell of a lot of tea. They just don't tire of pointing this out; it's as hilarious to them as a Frenchman actually wearing a beret would be to us. But the fact remains that this stereotype is, generally, true - there is no situation, no crisis, that cannot be solved or at least improved by a nice cup of tea. Sometimes, after a particularly stressful day, I walk in and flick the kettle on before I've even taken my coat off, put my bag down or, on one memorable occasion, closed the door, much to my housemates' amusement.

- My longing for bread that isn't a baguette. They simply cannot understand why I go into dreamy reveries talking about sliced Hovis bread or bagels when I can buy a nice flutelle from the boulangerie down the road. And let's not even mention the night I made naan breads in the oven.

- British biscuits. Have you ever seen one of those nature documentaries where they give a monkey a mirror and it examines it with a mixture of horror, confusion and a perverse sense of curiosity? That's exactly what it looks like when you introduce a French person to a ginger nut biscuit or a custard cream.

- Pasta bakes. None of my housemates had heard of the practice of cooking pasta in the oven, which takes twice as long and makes no real difference except to ensure that the cheese forms an impenetrable crust on top and half the pasta is still crunchy, and none of them could understand it either. Poor, unenlightened things.

- Cheesecake. This was my great success. After initial confusion and reluctance to try it (imagine Peter Kay's "Cheesecake? A cake of cheese?" routine done in French), they ended up loving it, and only today, one of my housemates swallowed her pride and actually asked for the recipe, admitting that it had become her favourite dessert. I think the main problem is that, when you mention cheese here, people immediately think of roquefort or a really stinky camembert. Still, score one to Zoe for improving the reputation of English cuisine.

- The concept of fidelity. I can't recall if I've already told this anecdote on here before but I'll tell it again anyway. I used to regularly go to a particular shop when I first arrived here, and after a few visits, the guy that worked there asked me out to dinner. I was flattered but replied with a smile, "Thanks, but I have a boyfriend." This seemed to make as much sense to him as replying that I had a hamster, so he looked confused, asking, "Yes, and?" It took a second for the penny to drop and I explained, "No, you see, I have a boyfriend and I intend to remain faithful to him." Only in this country do you need to clarify that you don't want to cheat on your partner.

- Continuing on this theme, the concept of platonic friendship between men and women. Before Christmas, I met a guy, a friend-of-a-friend, I got on really well with but, despite my repeated mentions of my boyfriend, we ended up falling out because he kept on trying to hit on me. The next day, I discussed this with a female housemate, who admitted that she couldn't understand why I was so angry with him, or why I still wanted to hang out with him if I wasn't going to sleep with him. She was totally bemused when I told her that, in the UK, more than half of my friends are male and the question of me sleeping with any of them just doesn't arise.

- Toad-in-the-hole. 'Nuff said.

There's No Place Like Home

2010-01-06T09:11:00.000-08:00

I got back to France a few days ago, revealing my utter lack of foresight and cleverness because, unlike just about every other language assistant in Brittany, I managed to be delayed due to snow going home, and perfectly on time coming back. Yes, my boyfriend and I had to wait for six hours in Dinard airport, which is the size of the average Scout Hut and boasts, in terms of catering facilities, a single vending machine which grew steadily emptier as the night drew on until, finally, some brave soul caved in to hunger and actually ate the Snickers bars out of sheer desperation. There was a distinct lack of panic or dissent among the stranded passengers which would be surprising were it not for the fact that the tannoy announcer, either deliberately or through incompetence, gave different translations in French and English. The French announcement explained that our plane was still stuck in Stansted and could not take off, so there may or may not be a flight that night; the English version simply stated that there was a delay. Given that the vast majority of the passengers were English, I'd wager that we were two of very few who actually knew the full story. Still, the time passed pleasantly enough, with my boyfriend and I exchanging Flanders & Swann and Tom Lehrer songs, to the ~~bewilderment~~ ~~utter irritation~~ delight of those around us. Eventually, some enterprising teenage boy called his friend, who evidently worked in a pizza takeaway restaurant in Dinard, and began taking orders, with twenty or so delicious pizzas being delivered shortly afterwards. When in a crisis, you can always rely on the French to ensure that, whatever else, everybody is well fed.

Anyway, I digress; we got home eventually and, though I love being in France, it felt marvellous to be home. Aside from the obvious things like friends, family, and my partner, here are just some of the things I've missed about the UK:

- Tuna and cucumber sandwiches on thick, white, sliced bread. In fact, sliced bread in general.

- Lucozade

- Pringles

- Boost bars

- A decent curry. After months of only being able to find the odd pot of Korma or, occasionally, Tikka Massala, how I longed for a Balti, a Madras, a Rogan Josh, a Biryani, a Jalfrezi, a Pasanda, a Saag Dal, a Dopiaza... How I would have given my right arm for a poppadom.

- The Suffolk accent. I never thought I'd miss this, but I couldn't help but smile as I listened to my grandad and his wife singing (Suffolk people don't talk; they sing) about the local gossip.

- Christmas crackers

- Mince pies

- My Dad's home-made Scotch eggs

- Christmas stockings

- Good old-fashioned English hypocrisy. People are just so damn honest here. One of my French housemates was looking at my Facebook profile picture and cooing over the lovely costume, when she remarked casually, "Of course, you were much thinner then. Or were you sucking in your abs?" There was absolutely no malice or ill will intended in this; she was merely speaking her mind and, of course, she was correct, although I hold the local boulangeries almost entirely to blame for this. I took no offence, knowing full well that none was intended, but couldn't help but feel a twinge of nostalgia for English false politeness.

- Topical, intelligent comedy, such as Have I Got News For You and The Now Show

- Radio 4 altogether, in fact

- Trivial Pursuit

- The words 'wretched', 'codswallop' and 'numpty'. (I clearly keep good company)

- Impromptu dancing with my Mum in the kitchen

- Corner shops that you can dash to at 11pm for a bag of ice for your Baileys

- Kahlua

- Milk in tea and coffee

- Honey Nut Cornflakes

- Self-deprecatory humour

- Christmas carols (especially my favourite, It Was On A Starry Night)

- Shoes that cost less than £100

- Primark. Yay for child labour.

- Auld Lang Syne

- Being trusted enough as an adult to buy aspirin from a supermarket instead of having to go to a pharmacy

- Words only my family use, like wallies (for pickled cucumbers), sniggies (for nail clippers), hum-hums (for those small Dairy Milk chocolates you get in tins of Quality Street) and spoinks (for Daddy-Long-Legs)

- Not having to kiss everybloodybody you meet

- Not having to make an effort when listening to a conversation or the radio

- Santa's Grotto, as my house becomes every Christmas

- Muntjack deer and foxes in the garden

- And, naturally, that English dish which caused the French to nickname us after it, roast beef.

Yo Ho

2009-12-13T16:08:00.000-08:00

I have a class that contains a few budding thespians, so I was looking for an English play that they could work on. I couldn't find anything suitable - everything was either too difficult or too childish - so then I had the idea of using a film script. I found the transcribed script of the first Pirates of the Caribbean film on the internet, selected a few scenes from it, edited them a bit where the language was too esoteric, and gave them to the students to act out in groups. They went to work and soon the room was filled with cries of, "But why 'as zee rum gone?", carefully-choreographed swordfights with rulers and set squares, and students being forced to walk the plank off the tops of tables. In other words, a most successful method for waking up 17-year-olds at 8:30 am on a Thursday morning.

Before the grand performance at the end of the lesson, I did a bit of warming up to get them into character (being rather experienced when it comes to treading the boards, dontcha know...). I taught them a number of classic pirate phrases, such as 'me hearties' and 'avast, ye landlubbers', and discovered the hard way that, while there is great entertainment value in getting French teenagers to try to pronounce the word 'swashbuckling', it generally backfires when one of them asks you to explain what it means. I also learnt some French pirate phrases of my own and have since added to my staffroom reputation as the eccentric English girl (more on that in a future post) by exclaiming, "A l'abordage!" as I go off to my next lesson after the end-of-break bell.

Instead of taking a normal register, we fill out a special form noting any absences, which is normally left in a box in the staffroom at lunch and the end of the day. However, there is a separate form for the first class of the day, at 8:30 am, which is collected by whichever admin staff member is free, or has been naughty, about halfway through the lesson. Which is how the headmaster himself - who thinks I'm a retard, remember - came to open the door to my classroom, only to find the whole class on their feet and me at the front, yelling, "Yarrrrrrrr, ye scurvy dogs!" at them in my best Cap'n Barbossa accent. I'm expecting the restraining order any day now.

Rule Bretagne

2009-12-13T09:02:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday, I woke up feeling rather grumpy because the world had conspired to give me a boring weekend. I had wanted to go to Jersey for a day, but couldn't get a bus or train to St Malo in time to catch the ferry*. Then, my plans to go out with friends on the Saturday night were scuppered by my body's last-minute decision to be ill, so I ended up staying in by myself. So, on Sunday, I decided I was going to bloody well do something, which is how I ended up at the bus station later that morning, picking some random place to visit on the off-chance that it might be interesting. I plumped for a town called Bécherel, thinking it sounded like a cool name, plus I vaguely remembered someone mentioning in the staffroom that it was pretty.

That turned out to be an understatement. Becherel is a medieval town which has kept its cobbled streets and narrow snickleways, as well as its hobbled-together, topsy-turvey buildings for a quaint, eccentric look. Best of all, it is the French equivalent of Hay-on-Wye; apparently, it was France's first book town. Twenty-odd second-hand bookshops in a town the size of Stowmarket** - absolute heaven.

It managed to be sunny - that fantastic crisp-but-sunny weather you only get in winter - for the first weekend since I've been here, and so I had a blissfully ~~nerdy~~ cultural day, wandering the town, gradually filling up my rucksack with piles of books, and reading in a cosy café, in front of an open fire, with a steaming mug of hot chocolate. Life really doesn't get better than that.

While it's perhaps easy to be jealous of my peers who have swanned off to La Réunion, French Guiana or Nice for their years abroad, I am still glad I chose Brittany. There's just something about the communal spirit and the regional pride here that you don't get anywhere else. It really struck me that day when I was sitting in a crêperie for lunch, drinking Breizh Cola. It costs about twice the price of Coca Cola and is nothing special, but people still buy it here because, apparently, Breizh is best. Later on, in one of the bookshops, I discovered a collection called Breizh Noir, by a writer named R. G. Ulrich, who writes murder mysteries set in different towns in Brittany. I couldn't help but grin as I flicked through Peur Sur Dinard, Requiem A St Malo, and, my ultimate favourite, Fric-Frac A St Briac. I knew perfectly well they were going to be rubbish but in a place like this, it doesn't matter. In spite of, or perhaps even because of, France's past attempts to stamp out minority languages and cultures, the strong Breton identity is alive and kicking today.

And it's amazing how far this regionalism - tribalism, almost - goes. I was most amused to discover that the little town of Montfort (which is the same size as Bécherel, which is the same size as... well, you know the rest) has not one but five Christmas trees: one for each quartier of the town. As part of a tradition so wholesome and idyllic that it could have come straight out of one of Monsieur Ulrich's books (that is, before somebody poisons the mayor's galette complête), each tree is decorated by the people who live in that particular area, resulting in quite a bit of unofficial competition between the different quarters. Aside from the fact that this could never happen in England because somebody would nick all the baubles before you could say 'Tannenbaum', what I most love about this is that this micro-regionalism extends even to a fifth of a town with a population of 4,000 people. Which means that, not only can I say with a suppressed smirk and an unexpected sense of pride that I am Montfortaise, I can specify that I am Centre-Mairie Montfortaise. Y'know, just to separate myself from all those Tardivieres Montfortais oiks.

* French public transport is a lot like Fawlty Towers: it's absolutely brilliant, but there isn't a lot of it.

** Or, for my Brighton readers, Lewes. Or, for my Cambridge readers, Bar Hill. Everyone else can go get a map and work it out for themselves.

Feelin' Good

2009-12-02T06:26:00.000-08:00

Today, I taught a lesson using a wonderful song by Renaud, It Is Not Because You Are, which is a marvellous demonstration of Franglais. The students listened to the song, then worked through correcting and improving it, first in small groups and then as a class. I thought they might enjoy it - it's an amusing enough song and self-deprecatory humour always goes down well - but I was surprised by just how much of a hit it was with them. Like most STG classes, they're not normally massively interested in learning English and their level isn't particularly brilliant as a whole, but suddenly, the whole class was really getting into translating the song, suggesting various different ways of expressing phrases that cannot be translated directly.*

One of the high points was informing them that what they call 'rouler a pelle'** is known in the UK as 'French kissing', which led to a quick swapping of nice and not-so-nice phrases involving the other country, such as 'French letters' and 'French leave' versus 'la vice anglaise' (sodomy) and 'les anglais ont débarqués' ('the English have landed' - a pleasant way of referring to a woman's period). Eventually, one boy decided that we call it French kissing because the French are clearly the best kissers; when I replied that I was in no position to be able to comment on that, he decided to try his luck and offered to show me himself. I drily assured him that I would somehow manage to resist the temptation.

There were only four lines of translation left to go when the bell went. I turned round from the board, expecting the usual instant scraping of chairs, and said, "Thanks for a great lesson, guys - you did really well today. See you all in two weeks!"

One of the girls protested, in French, "But we haven't finished the song yet!"

Confused, I replied that the bell had gone and the lesson was over. I was amazed to see her actually pout.

"But we want to stay and finish it!"

I smiled and replied, "That's very touching, but you'll get into trouble if you're late for your next lesson."

She answered smugly that it was now break-time, so they wouldn't get into trouble. Amazed, I looked around the class, asking, "Do you all really want to stay behind for a few minutes to finish the song?" They all nodded, even the boys. I shook my head, laughing, and so we carried on.

That girl wasn't the class geek, just a normal seventeen-year-old teenager who had probably spent at least 45 minutes that morning picking her outfit and making sure she fitted in properly. That class wasn't the high-achieving Littéraire group, just ordinary, stroppy adolescents who had somehow managed to get fired up over this particular piece of work. It was the most incredible feeling I've ever had and, while this is a potentially dangerous soundbite to coin, it made me realise that teachers are basically like crack addicts. You get that amazing buzz, that wonderful moment of euphoria just once, and then you put up with whatever crap keeps getting thrown at you day after day, just to feel that high again one day. Whenever I ask myself what the hell I'm doing here, that lesson will be the answer.

* Such as 'chialer comme une madeleine' - to cry like a cake.

** Which translates literally as 'to roll a shovel' - a wincingly accurate mental image.

Why I Have The Best Job In The World

2009-11-26T13:47:00.000-08:00

When I was at school and sixth form, it was quite normal to discuss the various teachers: who was good-looking, who was a dragon, who had bad breath and who had an annoying voice.* It never occurred to me that the teachers might do the same in regards to the students, but obviously they do. Today, one of the maths teachers posted up on the noticeboard a particularly funny piece of homework from a student of his, an event which isn't uncommon. It was the solution to one of those "If one train leaves Station A at ...pm, travelling at x speed, and another train leaves Station B at ...pm, travelling at x speed, where will the two trains cross?" problems. The student wrote that they will cross when the first train is 35 km from Station A and 65 km from Station B, and the second train is 25 km from Station A and 75 km from Station B, and so we all had a good laugh about how the normal rules of physics apparently don't apply to the world this child lives in.

But I think that teaching ESL has far more scope when it comes to laughing at the students' expense, and I'd like to explain why. And before you tell me I'm cruel for making fun of my defenceless pupils' mistakes, I'd like to point out that only last year, due to a mispronunciation, I accidentally told my French lecturer that my mother had had a penis transplant** and I'm sure he dined out on that one for a while.

So, without further ado, I present the top 5 reasons why I have the best job in the world:

5.
Student: "I do my muzzer."
Me: "You do your mother? If you say that in the UK, you're going to get funny looks from people."
Student: "I do my muzzer eat?"
Me: "I'm not sure what you mean. Can you try again?"
Student: "I eat my muzzer?"
Me: "OK, if you say that, not only are you going to get funny looks but you're also going to get arrested for cannibalism. Can you think which verb you need to use?"
Student: "Oh yes! I cook my muzzer!"
Me: "That's better, but you're still going to get arrested. What little word do you need to add?"
Student: "Ah! I cook for my muzzer!"
Me: "That's right, well done. Now do you believe me when I tell you prepositions are important?"

4.
Student: (describing a picture of a Masai woman) "She is knickerless."
Me: "I'm sorry, can you repeat that? I'm not sure I heard you right."
Student: "Ze Masai woman is knickerless."
Me: "OK... Well, I suppose it's possible that the Masai don't wear underwear; I'm not an expert. But can you tell me why you think that?"
*confused student points to part of the picture*
Me: "Ah. I see. OK, the sentence you're looking for is 'She is wearing a necklace'..."

3.
Me: (discussing a text on the new scanners at Manchester Airport which see through clothing) "Why is the man uncomfortable about using these new scanners?"
Student: "Because you can see his knackers."
Me: *chokes* "Well, that's one way to put it. I think in this context, it's better to say 'genitalia', though."
Student: "Genitalia? Zat means the same thing as knackers?"
Me: "Er, more or less, but it's a more formal way of saying it. Just out of interest, where did you learn that word?"
Student: "[Teacher] told me zis word. It is not ze right word for nue?"
Me: *long pause while I try not to laugh* "Ah. Yes. I think what you were trying to say, in that case, was 'because you can see he's naked'."

2.
Student: (discussing holidays) "On holiday in a hot country, I like to sit in shit."
Me: "I'm sorry?"
Student: "In shit? I like to sit in shit?"
Me: "I'm pretty sure you don't mean what I think you just said. Can you write the word for me?"
*student does so*
Me: "OK, now this is very important. The word is pronounced 'shade'..."

and my favourite of them all, which happened tonight:

1.
(During a role play about a teenager arguing with his mother)
Student: "What ze fuck? Shut up, you crazy bitch!"
*class laughs/gasps*
Me: "OK, I'm not going to tell you off for that because it's something that English people do say. And you got the grammar right, too! But it's important to think about context. Would you say 'What the fuck? Shut up, you crazy bitch!' to your Mum in real life?"
Student: "No, of course not."
Me: "Good. And why is that?"
Student: "Because she don't speak English."

That kid could not do a thing wrong for the rest of the class.

* Since this blog gets imported into Facebook, where I am friends with a number of my previous teachers, I'd like to point out that I am not above bribery and am prepared to talk if the price is right.

** 'Coeur' = 'heart'. 'Queue' = penis. Almost identical in sound aside from a slightly longer vowel and an 'r' sound at the end.

Finalement: Je Suis Rennaise!

2009-11-24T12:27:00.001-08:00

I should probably mention, for those of you who weren't already aware of this by other means of communication with me, that I now have an apartment in Rennes. I went from being spurned by a French guy I never met (see previous post on this topic; I'm too lazy to find it and link) to having to choose between two offers. The first was from a very sweet guy who lives in an enormous flat in the Poterie quarter. I knew from the second I saw him that he used to play D&D as a kid and probably still kept his CDs in alphabetical and probably catalogue number order. In short, he was a geek, and that was fine by me. He quite clearly hadn't been this close to a female since his balls dropped and he was sweating nervously, but seemed nice enough. We ended up talking about the EU for an hour and a quarter, and he couldn't get over the fact that I was a girl who was interested in politics and actually had an opinion on important issues. I didn't dare mention the fact that I'm a bellydancer in case he jizzed his pants right there and then.

But in the end, I went with another apartment which was much closer to the town centre, already furnished and about 70 euros a month cheaper, plus with bills included. I thought dear Mr Geek was going to cry when I rang him up and told him, but it turned out to be the right decision. My housemates are awesome. I live with a bubbly* girl from Morocco, a French woman who likes to mother me and do my washing up for me, and a girl who's training to be a patissier and has to make tarte au chocolat for her homework, which obviously needs to be tested by all-too-willing volunteers.

Last weekend, they took me out to say welcome and I got to properly see how the French do Saturday nights. First, we went to a karaoke bar where I was surprised to find that half of the songs being mercilessly murdered** by the clientele were actually English. You haven't lived until you've heard Tom Jones' "Sex Bomb" done in a terrible French accent.

Later, we went on to a nightclub and, being much more of a pub person by nature, it was the first time I'd really enjoyed myself on a night out clubbing. The differences between French and English clubs are just incredible. Firstly, the most obvious difference is that the women are actually dressed; there are no fat chavettes bulging out of too-tight tops, who have clearly forgotten to put on a skirt and decided that a belt would suffice. Sure, the girls in the French club had clearly made an effort to look sexy, and they achieved it without looking slutty at the same time.

I also noticed that there was a greater variation in age; I saw several people in their mid-to-late thirties, whereas anyone who was too old to watch the Teletubbies when they first came out is likely to be thrown out of most British nightclubs. I was assured by my housemates that this is pretty normal.

The bouncers are much stricter in France than in the UK. Sometimes, this is a pain because they appear to take great pleasure in striding around with their important-looking Earpieces of Power, telling you to take your bag off the floor***, but it can come in handy, too. A few times, while I was dancing, guys would come up and attempt to dance behind me, their hands on my hips. This happened far more often that it ever has in British clubs, possibly because French men seem to be more confident. Most of the time, a smile and a firm, "Non," did the trick and they would back off without a fuss. One guy didn't seem to get the picture, but before I even had to repeat a word, one of the bouncers was already there, asking him to leave me alone. The situation was quickly and painlessly dealt with before it got out of hand, and there were no ugly scuffles.

All in all, probably due to a combination of these factors, the atmosphere was much more pleasant than in the British clubs I've been to, even despite the fact that they played Lady Gaga at one point. No wasted chavs bitching and fighting on the dancefloor, or giving random strangers blowjobs in the toilets for half a bottle of Lambrini; instead, just a lot of people having a great time on a Saturday night. Top that off with a fresh baguette, hot from the oven, from the local boulangerie on Sunday morning to soothe the hangover and you've got a damn good weekend.

* In the sense of having a colourful and extroverted personality, as opposed to the usual sense of being a polite way of saying 'fat'.

** The French might not binge-drink as much as we do, but they sure can't sing any better.

*** I'm English! I have to dance around my handbag - it's what we do!

A Zoe By Any Other Name...

2009-11-16T08:33:00.000-08:00

I hate being asked my name here. Not because of any struggle with the words je m'appelle, but because I never know how to pronounce my own name, and that's a problem that one doesn't come across very often.

For some reason, with almost no exceptions, just about every foreign* person I've ever introduced myself to has had difficulties in saying my name. I had no idea that 'Zoë' was so difficult, but apparently it is. After years of being called 'Joey', 'Sophie', 'Zor' and any number of variations by the Fijian and Gurkha chefs I used to work with, I've got used to just answering to pretty much anything now.

Despite the fact that the name 'Zoé', with a slightly different pronunciation, exists in France, the same problems occur here, which means that I am presented with a dilemma. Do I say my name properly, knowing full well I'll have to repeat it three or four times before they understand it? Or do I pronounce it in a weirdly fake French way**, risking looking stupid or worse, patronising? I'm reminded of a Chinese student I used to live with at university who used to infuriate me by telling me I could call him 'Ken', and refusing to tell me his real name, insisting that there was no point because I wouldn't be able to pronounce it anyway. My protestations that I was studying phonology and possessed all the same vocal equipment as him fell on deaf ears.

Then, once I've decided that, I can work on whether or not to put a gutteral French 'r' in the word 'Brighton'. Sigh.

* That is, foreign to me. I'm well aware of the fact that I'm the bloody foreigner here.
** More or less, 'zor-WAY', as opposed to 'ZOH-wee'.

The REAL Oldest Profession

2009-11-12T05:17:00.000-08:00

I've now been teaching - properly teaching, as opposed to hovering in the corner with a nervous grin on my face while the teacher introduces me to the class - for just over a month and am starting to properly settle into it. My ego is more than sufficiently inflated after having been told by the teachers in charge of me that I'm a natural, and I'm still at that naively enthusiastic stage of genuinely enjoying creating overambitious lesson plans. The buzz I get when I enter the classroom to see rows of bright young students eager to learn (oh, all right then, slack-jawed teenagers who are no less stroppy than their anglo-saxon counterparts) is the same one I get when I step out onto a stage to act in a play or onto a dancefloor to perform.

High- (and low-) lights of teaching so far:

- The weird not-quite-a-teacher-but-not-a-student-either status I have that comes from being only three years older than some of my pupils, which means that I can enjoy a bit more banter with them than a proper teacher. Such as, for example, the cocky teenage boys who think they can chat me up in class. One asked me if I had a boyfriend and when I replied that I did, he asked, "Is he as handsome as me?" The phrase In your dreams, sunshine was swiftly added to vocabulary books...

- Along the same vein, not being sure whether to be flattered or suspicious (or both; I've learnt quickly that cynicism is rarely inappropriate in this profession) when during a task in which the students had to describe their ideal boyfriend/girlfriend to a partner, who then reported back to the class, one kid explained with a grin that another boy's ideal girlfriend was, "English, with long brown hair, green eyes, and good at dancing..."

- My attempts to instill a bit of rebellion in the students. While conducting short one-on-one interviews with them on the book they've been reading, about life under a dictatorship, I asked them whether they thought it was important to rebel against oppression, assuming that they would be all for protecting the values of free speech. I couldn't believe it when more than half of my students - in a country that loves to boast about la résistance - voiced the opinion that it was far too dangerous and better to just do what the government tells you.

- During a lesson on the fashion industry, attempting to keep a straight face while a class of fifteen, six of whom are wearing the same harem-pant-style trousers and the rest with carefully-coiffed trendy emo fringes, swear blind that they are all individuals and don't follow the crowd.

- Discovering that French kids get most of their English vocabulary from American TV shows, and that the George Clooney Nespresso advert is extremely popular over here, so it's best not to ask, "What else?" when pressing a student for further answers if you don't want the class to collapse in fits of giggles.

- Mourning the waste of the Suffragette's efforts after a poll on various household tasks (cooking, cleaning, paying bills, looking after children, DIY, earning money etc) and whether men or women should do each task. I was expecting these trendy young things to say that both should share all or at least most of the chores but no, the vast majority (including a large proportion of girls) voted for women to cook, clean, wash up, look after children and so on.

- Learning that it's not a good idea to teach French kids the phrase "Dos and Don'ts". After nearly six years of having it drummed into them that they must write 'does' with an 'e', this is likely to blow their little minds. I lost count of how many of them tried to correct me, no matter how many times I explained it was a noun.

- Being completely wrong about pupils sometimes, no matter how well you think you know them. I had prepared a lesson on the song Dedicated Follower Of Fashion by The Kinks, and was rather worried about using it with a slightly troublesome class, fearing blank stares and refusals to sing along. But to my surprise, they started singing all by themselves, well before I'd asked them to (during a gap-filling lyrics exercise), and appeared to love the song so much that I could still hear the refrains of, "Oh yes, he is!" floating down the corridor as they went to their next lesson.

- Trying to learn the names of the 200-odd students that I teach in total (some of whom I only see once a fortnight) and seeing how quickly they work out that it's bad for them if I know their name because they get picked on to ask questions more often. Having a difficult-to-pronounce name also helps because even if I know it, I usually avoid saying it where possible.

- Being secretly impressed at the lengths that even the most apparently apathetic student will go to, in terms of cheating, in order to win a game. For example, I like to wake them up in early-morning lessons by playing a running dictation game: in pairs, one partner has to dictate a short text to the other, but the catch is that the text is at the other end of the room, so they must run back and forth, memorising as much as possible each time. I noticed one boy had stopped running; assuming he had decided to give up, I went over to investigate, only to discover he had somehow managed to type out the text in a message on his phone without me seeing and his partner was now copying it out long-hand. While I had to disqualify them for cheating, I couldn't help but privately admire the sheer ingenuity and audacity of it.

- Learning that you can get almost any class enthusiastic about a task by turning it into a competition, even if the prize is only the glory of winning. Even the most uninterested stroppy teenager will start yelling out bits of vocabulary to his team-mates if it means they might beat the girls' team.

- Trying to decide which is worse: the noisy class who won't stop talking when you're trying to explain a task, or the zombie class who look at you with blank, glassy stares like dead fish and won't utter a word. And then realising that you're prepared to endure either because that one kid who comes alive during your lessons and is genuinely enthusiastic about learning English makes it all worthwhile.

- Worrying that I'm starting to dress like a teacher.

Vive la Différence?

2009-11-09T06:18:00.000-08:00

One of my students asked me a few weeks ago what I missed about the UK. At the time, everything was still new and exciting so, aside from my partner, family, friends etc, I couldn't really say that I missed anything.

Having had time to settle in now, I'm starting to miss little things about my homeland. At the moment, what stands out most is the lack of multiculturalism here. Oh, certainly, there are plenty of Arabs and Africans but all immigrants here appear to undergo an obligatory gallification process and they end up as clones of the indigenous people, only with darker skin. There is nowhere near the amount of real diversity, the diversity that comes from being assimilated into a new culture while still retaining important aspects of the old one, that is rightfully celebrated in Britain.

This difference only really occurred to me yesterday, when I was forced to trudge a couple of kilometres in the pouring rain to find the sole boulangérie in town that was open on a Sunday. I quietly cursed this ridiculous remnant of an apparantly catholic country which prevented the large number of muslims, jews, agnostics, atheists and other infidels from being able to nip to the shop for a pint of milk on a day which they consider to be no more important than any other.

When I finally got there, the selection of goods available only emphasised the problem. Row upon row of French baguettes of different lengths, patterns and thicknesses (which are all basically the same) - but I really fancied a bagel. If anyone knows of a place you can buy a bagel in the whole of l'Hexagone, then please tell me, do. Their complete non-existence here is just absurd: bagels are, quite simply, the best thing since sliced bread. Except, oh wait, no, they don't have that here either, and that tells you just about everything you need to know about a country. No, in even the biggest supermarkets here, you will never find a bagel, nor a naan bread, nor pitta bread, and it really is a great loss for this country.

Sometimes, the French-is-best attitude can have its advantages, of course. The burgers in McDonalds here are all made of 100% beef, by which I mean actual meat from named parts of the cow and not the ground-up hooves, lips and sphinctre gristle that we've come to expect in the UK. And I recently ate a kebab while sober for the first time*,thoroughly enjoyed it, and wasn't even ill the next day.

Yet I still feel that Britain's multiculturalism trumps France's nationalism. I have never been more proud of my country than when I watched a group of my fellow Brits unleash a flow of scorn and disgust upon Nick Griffin before handing his rather lardy arse to him on a plate on Question Time. How ironic that it was the homogenous French who came up with the phrase vive la différence.

* Not counting a holiday in Istanbul, of course. Kebabs in Turkey are delicious and totally different to the ones you get served in greasy fast-food places at 3am on a Friday night in the UK.

Halloween

2009-11-02T06:59:00.000-08:00

The French don't really celebrate Halloween, so I decided to spend the weekend in St Brieuc with the other anglophone assistants who were equally determined to bring yet another American, highly commercialised* custom to rural Brittany. Maybe it was all those souls walking the earth, but it made for a surreal experience.

It all began at the train station at Montfort. I was sitting on the platform, waiting for the train, when I saw an elderly man carrying a guitar who attempted to cross the track (see L'amour et La Haine). The light had turned red, indicating an approaching train, but he decided to run across anyway. He tripped on the rails, sprawling on the track and I screamed in horror as the high-speed TGV to Paris came thundering towards him. He managed to get up and onto the platform the other side just in time; the train missed him by a gnat's crotchet.

For a man who had just been almost killed, he recovered remarkably quickly and explained to me that God had saved him. He began to tell me the story of Job and how it showed that God tests us but is merciful in the end. Though he spoke in an eccentric, singsong style, I had the feeling somehow that he wasn't just a drunk, religious crackpot and decided to talk to him. I'm glad I did; it turned out that he was, in fact, one of Senegal's most successful musicians, Seydina Insa Wade. After a personal serenade on the train, he gave me a hug and a CD - which turned out to be very good indeed - and I watched in bewildered amusement as the man who had just been playing his guitar for me went off to perform at a concert in front of thousands in Paris.

Shortly afterwards, I found myself killing time in an internet café in Rennes. Another elderly gentleman - South African this time - sat at the computer next to mine and was clearly struggling with the technology, so I helped him connect and log on to his emails. I couldn't help but smile when he complimented me on how good my English was; there is no praise higher than being mistaken for a local.

As for the Halloween celebrations themselves, I knew from watching Mean Girls that, in America, the rules for costumes are as follows:

1) Girls must reveal as much flesh as possible
2) It's so passé to actually dress as something scary

The only costume I had was one of my bellydancing outfits and since it adhered to both these rules, I decided to wear it. At the very least, it meant that I got served immediately in the bar. We went to an Irish place which had got into the spirit of things with even the bar staff dressed up, and ended up being entered into a costume competition. The results are to be announced next week but seeing as the five of us constituted over half of the dressed-up entrants, it's likely to be one of us. Watch this space.

The rest of the evening passed equally bizarrely, with a brief session in a disco where I ended up bellydancing to French techno music and a meeting with a man wearing an (apparently) traditional Breton kilt. Our group generally attracted strange looks followed by an, "Ahhh, l'Halloween," as the cent finally dropped. This being France, I got none of the leers and catcalls that a girl in traditional cabaret garb expects in the UK; instead of cries of, "Get yer tits out for the lads!", I was complimented on my dancing, told I was beautiful, and asked about my classes. British men clearly have a lot to learn about the art of seduction, which is probably why I'm dating a German.

* Even more so than in the UK. They even send greetings cards over there, apparently.

Do You Hear The People Sing?

2009-10-30T09:25:00.000-07:00

In the local weekly newsletter, Montfort Hebdo, it was announced that the municipality was about to commence a lutte contre les pigeons. Yes, you read correctly: a fight against pigeons. I'm not sure if this involves a physical encounter and fisticuffs* or something more longterm - a sort of avian war on terror, if you will.

In any case, I'm absolutely for it. And, as a Brightonian, if the revolutionaries are prepared to extend the recipients of their ire to include sea gulls, they can count me in.

"Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricades, is there a world you long to see?
Then join in the fight that will give you the right to be free!"

* Or possibly talonicuffs. Actually, I have no idea what 'fisticuffs' are supposed to be.

Additions to 'La Haine'

2009-10-29T08:23:00.000-07:00

- The fact that everybody is always late here. Always. I am, by nature, one of life's 'late' people* so to counteract against this, I always have my watch set to be at least five minutes fast, in the hopes that I might actually get to places on time. But there's simply no point here. Every French person I have arranged to meet at a particular time has been late - shamelessly, unapologetically late. No perfunctory made-up excuse about the traffic being dreadful, delivered in the customary fake breathless fashion in an attempt to make it look as if they ran to the meeting. No, they arrive with a casual hello and not a hair out of place nor an explanation for their tardiness. I'm not sure if I find this lack of hypocrisy charming or disturbing.

- The fact that you cannot check your bank balance at ATMs here, not even with a French carte bancaire and bank account. Is it too much to ask to be able to have a quick look at how much money I don't have before I attempt to withdraw it?

* In the sense of unpunctuality, as opposed to the sense of being dead, naturally.

L'amour et la Haine

2009-10-23T07:24:00.000-07:00

So, it's almost one month in, and the effects of living in France are starting to show. I'm now a total convert to black coffee; I've already started to forget certain English words; I've stopped being surprised or even offended when other people queue-jump*; I've even caught myself making the Breton oy-loy-loy noise of exclamation. But the Anglo-Gallic pendulum is still swinging between love and hate.

What I Love About France

- The phrase je t'invite. It solves so many awkward money issues right from the start. If someone tells you, "Je t'invite à prendre un café," they mean, without being so crass as to actually say it, that they're paying for it. "Tu veux prendre un café?", on the other hand, means you're probably going to split the bill. Fan-bloody-tastic, in my opinion.

- Their strong sense of regional pride. Montfort is a tiny town, which probably wouldn't even be featured on a map if it didn't have a museum, yet the people refer to themselves as 'Montfortais' with no sense whatsoever of its utter absurdity. Someone asked me perfectly sincerely, "And how long have you been Montfortais?" and wondered why my mouth twitched with stifled laughter as I solemnly replied, "Oh, I've been Montfortais for three weeks."

- The word connerie. Not only does 'c***ery' not exist in English, but you'd never hear old ladies at the market say it. Only in France, my friends, only in France.

- The total lack of Health and Safety hysteria. At my local train station, there is no subway or footbridge to cross to the other platform. No, you simply walk across the track. There are no barriers or lights telling you when to cross; instead, it works on the ingenious mechanism of asking oneself: "Can I see a train coming?" and if the answer is no, then it's safe to cross.

- The fact that public transport is so efficient, disregarding the regular strikes. The train to Rennes was five minutes late the other day, and a man actually used the emergency telephone to ask what the hell was going on. In England, if a train is only five minutes late, we congratulate the company for its punctuality.

- The fact that harem pants are in fashion here; I can walk around town in half of my bellydancing costumes and actually look cool.

- Men actually do say, "Enchanté," when they meet you here. I know it's just a phrase, but I love the idea of someone being 'enchanted' to meet me.

- Schoolkids greet one another with a kiss on each cheek. I still haven't got used to this; it is so strange for me as a Brit to see stroppy fifteen-year-old boys gallantly faire la bise with a group of girls in the morning and again at hometime. When I was that age, if a guy nodded hello at you, it was practically a marriage proposal.

- Self-checkouts at supermarkets that don't say, "Unexpected item in bagging area," every thirty seconds.

- The hearing aid shop in Montfort whose owner has deliberately, I suspect, installed a light outside it which buzzes faintly. A stroke of genius.

What I Hate About France

- Bureaucracy (see various previous posts)

- The fact that most rude words also have perfectly clean meanings too, which results in me being absolutely terrified of accidentally swearing at old ladies or the headmaster. You have to choose your words carefully when talking about jumping the queue, for example, when 'sauter' also means 'to screw' and 'queue' also means 'dick'. Plus the strongest phrase I know includes the word 'branler', which means 'to shake'. If you're English, you can figure out for yourself what the rude word is, and if you're French, you can tell me if there are any worse ones out there...

- On the subject of ambiguity in language, the fact that copine/copain means both 'friend' and 'girlfriend/boyfriend'. Recently, a girl introduced me to another girl who she described as her copine and I still have no idea whether this means they're sleeping together or not. Surreptitious attempts at discovering whether either of them possess a pair of dungarees have so far been unsuccessful.

- The whole vous and tu thing. It causes so much stress because I never have any idea which is appropriate, and I don't want to be over-familiar or over-polite. I recently joined a local theatre group and they actually spent ten minutes deciding whether to tutoie or vouvoie one another.

- The fact that nobody eats on the hoof here. Go into any bakery and you'll find an array of the most drool-worthy cakes and muffins you have ever seen. How can they possibly expect you to wait even five minutes to find a place to sit down and eat it, let alone the time it takes you to get home? I simply don't have enough willpower and so I always provoke looks of disapproval as I walk along, happily devouring some delicious thing, usually with lots of chocolate in it. It's sacrilegious to the French, who really do seem to view food as a religion, but I don't care.

- Following on from that, the fact that everything closes for lunch. Not only that, everyone from banker to shopkeeper apparently requires two and a half hours for lunch. How the hell do they eat enough to warrant taking two and a half hours every day and not look like Nick Griffin's lardier big brother?

* But I haven't gone so far as to actually queue-jump myself, of course. There are some mortal sins that no amount of cultural immersion can make me commit.

A Complete Banker

2009-10-21T07:12:00.000-07:00

It's no coincidence that the word 'bureaucracy' is, by origin, French. Sometimes, the power of the local municipality and the existence of far too many people with nothing better to do that push bits of paper around can be useful. A phonebox in Montfort was vandalised one Saturday night; by Monday evening, it was as good as new. The roadworks near where I live actually progress at a pace visible to the naked eye, whereas in England, one of those slow-motion cameras they use to film the growth of plants is needed to see any difference. Yet most of the time, the bureaucracy here is just plain irritating.

For a start, when you open a bank account here, they don't send you the debit card through the post. Oh no, that would be far too easy. No, you have to wait ten days and then go back to the bank to collect it. Figuring this was probably actually not a bad idea, given the number of postal strikes they have here, I did as I was told and turned up at the bank.

The banker had clearly watched too many episodes of Who Wants To Be A Millionnaire as he taunted me by showing me my shiny new bank card, before telling me that he couldn't give it to me as there was no money in my account. I protested that I had been told that I didn't need to deposit anything when I first opened it. He conceded that this was correct, explaining that, one my salary went into the account on 20th October, I could have the card.

Still relatively calm at this stage, I told him that I wouldn't try to use the card before my salary went in; I simply wanted to collect it now to save me having to wait a week or so before being able to come back into Rennes, and also to save me having to trek all the way over that side of town again. Could he not give me the card now, trusting that I would somehow, with my 1500 cc of fully-evolved human brain, remember not to try to take out any money before it was in my account?

Apparently not. It would appear that, in an attempt not to discriminate against the brain-dead - and by this point, I was beginning to wonder if he was included in this class - it was the bank's policy not to give out cards to customers with no money in their accounts.

Taking a deep breath, I asked whether I could, in that case, deposit some money now and thus be allowed to have my card.

"Mais bien sûr, mademoiselle", came the reply, and in my naivety, I believed that it really was as easy as that. I looked in my purse, found a twenty euro note and triumphantly held it out to him.

What a pathetic fool I was. It turns out that this bank also has a policy of not allowing personnel to handle money, for security reasons. How could I have been so idiotic as to assume that a person working in a bank would be allowed to actually take my money? With all the glee of a man who has just sent his bishop to F3 and smugly declared, "Check," he informed me that I could make an appointment with someone who was authorised to take my money - presumably someone who actually learnt to count at school or something - in about three weeks' time. It was at this point that I realised the futility of yelling at this imbecile how ridiculous that was since my salary would already be in my account by that time. He already knew that, of course, and he was loving every second of it.

I must have looked absolutely crestfallen because he decided to throw me a lifeline. "Of course, you could always deposit money into that automatic machine over there," he suggested. I nearly kissed him.

My euphoria didn't last long, however. I returned and explained through gritted teeth that the machine wouldn't let me deposit money without a card.

"Ah oui, c'est vrai," he replied, with only a hint of a smirk.

I enquired as icily politely as possible whether he might deign to give me my card so that I could deposit some money in my account. I cursed having never been very good at chess as he informed me with some delight that he couldn't possibly give me my card if I didn't have any money in the account. Hundreds of beautiful images involving this idiot and a variety of large, spiked objects flitted through my mind as I patiently explained that I've always hated the book Catch 22, and that if he liked, he could personally escort me the three metres across the room and watch while I deposited the money.

As it turns out, I now have the card. And if the cops find the battered, bloody body of a banker in Rennes, then I admit it. I did it, in the Crédit Agricole, with the debit card.

Colocation

2009-10-21T06:53:00.000-07:00

The search is currently on for a house-share in Rennes, ideally close to the train station since I'm too lazy to walk too far at eight in the morning, but not too expensive. One of the biggest hurdles I've come across so far is finding someone who's prepared to live with a bloody foreigner, and an English one at that. Entente cordiale be damned.

Whilst perusing the small ads, a certain number of them can be crossed out straight away. A 57-year-old single man asking for a young lady between 16 and 25 to come and live with him? I think not. Anyone who specifies that they woud like a heterosexual housemate is suspicious in my books, too; either they're homophobic or hoping to get lucky, and neither appeals to me. As for the charming young man who decided it would be prudent to put up a naked photo of himself in lieu of one of the actual house, I thought it wise not to go there.

Eventually, I found one that seemed perfect: right next to the station, spacious, and best of all, they were asking for an English-speaking, female student! Let me just check a moment... Anglophone? Aye, aye, sir. Degree? In the pipeline. Two x chromosomes? Packed and ready to go. We have lift-off!

I arranged to meet one of the housemates, a Spanish guy, and he showed me around the apartment. It was absolutely perfect: decent rent, enormous room, clean and well-equipped kitchen, and brilliant location. I was over the moon.

He offered me a glass of water, and I panicked. He would read all sorts of things into it if I refused, surely: that I was too snobbish to drink from the tap, that I suffered from an eating disorder so acute that I refused to be seen even drinking water, or worse, that I was some kind of vampyric creature who did not imbibe the drinks of mortal men but instead would prey on their very life's blood during the night, sneaking into their rooms to feast upon their sleeping, defenceless flesh. I mean, you do get some real weirdos coming to look for house-shares.

In fact, the real problem was that I had always had it drummed into me never to drink the water when I went abroad. I have been on holiday to France every year since I was a baby, even if only for a few days sometimes, and not once have I drunk the tap water, except in tea or coffee. Avoiding it had become as normal and habitual as avoiding red light districts or bagpipe players. But suddenly, it struck me how ridiculous it was that the second biggest economy in the EU and home to 65 million people might not have clean water. I smiled, accepted, and drank the glass in one long gulp. And guess what? I'm still here.

I went home with a massive grin on my face, pleased that I had got on well with the two housemates I'd met so far. I was to meet the third one a few days later and then, assuming all went well, look into signing papers and moving in. And then... nothing. He never turned up at the meeting. I called, he promised to call me back, and never did. Texts, calls and emails went unanswered. Finally, yesterday I saw that the advert had been reposted on the website. I still have no idea why. Maybe I shouldn't have told them I'm learning to play the drums...

Bon Marché

2009-10-17T06:46:00.000-07:00

Every so often, most cities and large towns in Britain will have a visiting 'French market'. These events give British people the chance to wander around a small number of brightly-coloured stalls, cooing with delight over baguettes, cheeses and crêpes, all at hyper-inflated prices, and giggling as they try out their best, "Murky bucket" or, "Sivoo-play" on the slightly smug French merchants.

Real French markets are nothing like this, as I discovered today in the Place des Lices in Rennes, which is home every Saturday morning to an enormous, sprawling collection of stalls spilling out into narrow streets and snickleways. I shall take this opportunity to apologise to the several hundred people I nudged, trampled and walked into today, because I was far too enchanted with the sights and smells around me to concentrate on something so tedious as looking where I was going. Along a road almost a mile long were stalls selling fruit and vegetables of every kind; many I'd never seen before in my life, and one stall sold no less than thirty different kinds of garlic. There were courgettes and marrows of all shapes and colours, many twisted and misshapen - the French, fortunately, do not share our prejudice against ugly fruit - but all irresistably fresh.

The market was huge and labyrinthic but simple to navigate by simply following one's nose, as a myriad of smells leapt out with each turn of a corner. First the cheese-sellers' quarter, a testimony to the French belief that the smellier a cheese, the better it tastes. Then the fishmongers, selling just about every edible creature that possesses gills or a shell. Suddenly, I turn a corner and the street bursts into bloom, announcing that I have reached the florists' quarter.

My stroll also brings many surprises, in the shape of the best buskers I have ever seen, even in London. The sound of accordions float through the streets, creating a wonderfully French ambiance. In one clearing, three talented young men, each dressed as Zorro, play twelve different instruments between them, switching several times per song while never losing their funky jazz beat.* At the next block is a group of young people dancing leroc to smoky blues music. I stand watching for almost half an hour, absolutely mesmerised. They're not busking - no hat is passed around - and they don't even seem to be advertising their dance school as there are no signs, no sales patter. They appear to be showing off their dance skills in the street for the sheer hell of it, and their obvious enjoyment is infectious.

The market has a charm to it that is missing from the typical English market with its cockney grocers yelling, "Gitchoor laaahvvly strawbs ee-ah! Paaahnd a punne'!" and burger vans selling lukewarm instant coffee in polystyrene cups.

Maybe it's the fact that the cobbled streets and half-timbered houses of Rennes are particularly beautiful in the sunshine. Maybe it's the fact that I've been mistaken for a local and thus asked for directions twice now - and have been disproportionately pleased about being able to give them. Maybe it's the fact that I am now on first-name terms with the people in the France Telecom shop because I buy so many phonecards, and also with the waiters in the Cafe Leffe near the station, where I sit, dipping a madeleine into a coffee Proust-style, and using their free wifi for hours on end. I don't know what it is about this place, but I'm starting to feel like this could be home.

* I was so impressed that I actually bought their CD, something I've never done with a busker before. If you're interested, they're called Guz II and can be found on MySpace.

Those who can...

2009-10-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

The timetable is (mostly) sorted, I have thousands upon thousands of documents/lesson plans/pupil lists, and I'm beginning to finally feel like a teacher. Walking into the familiar surroundings of the lycée, I beam as pupils call out, "'Ello Zoé!" in their tell-tale French accents, and I can hardly believe I am in the same building that seemed so labyrinthic and terrifying only two weeks ago. I love the camaraderie of the staffroom banter, with hundreds of different conversations going on at once, punctuated with typically wild gallic gestures and singsong delivery. I love the way in which the other teachers revel in teaching me risqué French phrases with wicked schoolboy glee. I love the genuine delight they take in deadpan British humour; when someone asked me if I'd like to play Gaelic football and I replied with a straight face that surely it was just like ordinary football, only you drink Guinness first, you would have thought I had made the funniest joke in the world. I love the fact that everybody drinks at least six or seven very strong black coffees every day. I love the way that it is de rigeur to greet everyone you see, no matter how many times you see them in a day.* I love the private joke of keeping a straight face when male pupils tell me with apparent sincerity that they have husbands or that they serve icecream at customers. Oh, and being able to jump the queue in the canteen isn't a bad perk, either.

The icing on the cake, however, was the ultimate tool of a professeur's trade: my very own magic key which opens every classroom in the school! Ah, the power. Sod long holidays and warm fuzzy feelings - this is why I want to be a teacher.

* This has got to be one of France's most charming qualities, and a habit I'll have to learn to shake off when I eventually return to England if I am to avoid funny looks. Even in the streets, you greet everyone you pass with some form of appropriate salutation, no matter how bizarre it might seem. Bonjour. Bonsoir. Bon journée. Bon weekend. Bon dimanche. Can you imagine a Brit or an American stranger wishing you 'happy Sunday'?

Silver Screens

2009-10-14T07:23:00.000-07:00

The French are renowned for their fine achievements in the world of film* so the next step in my quest for self-gallification was to visit the tiny little cinema in the town of Montfort. It really is rather adorable: it shows one film a week (usually an old one) and only at the weekends, one screening per night. I decided there and then to pay it a visit, not caring what the film was. It made for an interesting experience...

I buy my ticket from the woman in the box office – ‘box’ being the operative word – who also has a small selection of Haribo sweets beside her for purchase. No popcorn or little tubs of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream here. Then, the usher – who is standing so close to me in the tiny foyer that he could have actually reached over and taken the ticket straight from the cashier – carefully inspects the ticket that he’s just watched me buy, rips half of it and directs me to the single screening room. Fortunately, it wasn’t busy enough to warrant a lady with a torch to show me to my seat because I don’t think I would have been able to suppress my laughter for that long. Still, with only nine of us in total in the cinema – me, my friend and two families – we were rather spoilt for choice when it came to seating so naturally, we found the two shortest people in the room and sat directly in front of them.

The film turned out to be 'Julie & Julia', a fairly recent American film with Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, based on the true story of a woman who decides to cook all 524 of Julia Child's recipes in a single year. (Jen, you would love this film!) So, as if it wasn't weird enough for me already, I got to watch an English film dubbed in French, as subtitles are rarely used here. Everyone should, at least once, have the experience of hearing Meryl Streep dubbed by a crazy, drunk-sounding French woman.

A combination of France's love for American and British entertainment imports** and their reticence when it comes to subtitles means that most French people have no idea what many anglophone actors actually sound like. One student gushed breathlessly about the general loveliness of Johnny Depp, but in fact she is in love with Bruno Choël, his French voice-over double. She told me that she'd heard an interview with the famous Pirate once and didn't like his 'fake' voice - by which, of course, she meant his real one. I laughed when I read in The Kite Runner about two Afghan boys who thought that John Wayne was Iranian because he always spoke Farsi in the movies, but it seems that it is closer to reality than I believed.

* Namely, the ability to persuade an audience to sit through two and a half hours of 'characterisation' of characters they neither like nor identify with, and no discernible plot.

** And I'm not exaggerating this. In one of my classes today, I asked my students to tell me their favourite French television programmes, hoping to pick up a few tips about what might be good to watch. The answers I got? Friends, Desperate Housewives, Skins, The Simpsons and The X Factor.

Fest-Noz

2009-10-14T07:12:00.000-07:00

This weekend was my first real taste of Breton culture: a Fest-Noz at St Brieuc. Fest-Nozes (or quite possibly Fests-Noz) are evenings of traditional Breton music, dancing, food and, of course, drink. And, my do they do it well. I’ve yet to find a people who can ferment apples better than the Bretons.

I was delighted to find that the large hall which hosted the Fest-Noz was absolutely packed with hundreds of people of all ages, from tiny children in their party frocks to elderly couples, and all manner of variations in between. Too often, the word ‘traditional’ actually means ‘only practiced by old fogeys’ but, happily, this tradition appears to be alive and well even among the young and trendy. Since this particular part of Bretagne is by no means the most ardent of purists – hardly anyone speaks Breton here, for example – this came as rather a welcome surprise.

The music ranged from old-school a capella renditions of old Breton folk songs to Irish-style accordion playing to a full 12-piece big band who interspersed jazzy sax solos with traditional local songs and even a guy in an Ali G-style tracksuit who rapped admirably in Breton over the top. The dancing, however, remained true to its roots: lots and lots of circles of people linked by pinkie fingers, shuffling, bobbing and kicking in a series of simple yet engaging steps. Oh, and every so often, an incredibly energetic couple dance involving lots of swinging around and switching places, rather like modern jive. I earn a living through dancing and yet even I was exhausted after approximately thirty seconds.

We didn't stay quite as long as I would have liked as the people I was with decided that they'd much rather investigate in depth the culture of the local Irish bar. So we abandoned the delicious smell of cakes and galettes and set off down a small country road. Suddenly, a car came round the corner towards us and the group instantly split into two: all the British girls automatically moved to the left and the Americans to the right. We Brits quickly righted ourselves (obviously, as I’m currently here typing this and not an interesting stain on the winding roads of St Brieuc) but laughed afterwards at our lack of adjustment to living in a country where the cars drive on the wrong side of the road. And yes, I refuse to pretend to have any kind of impartiality when it comes to traffic regulations; after all, we invented the car so we damn well know what side one is supposed to drive on.*

* Ed: Actually, I think you’ll find it was the Germans who invented the car and they drive on the right.
HUL: …
Ed: And don’t you think it’s rather sad that you’re pretending to have an editor solely for the purposes of humourous exchanges like this one in a rather sad attempt to gain the affection of your readers through the use of self-deprecation?
HUL: …
Ed: And worst of all, this editor you’ve invented is actually more quick-witted than you.

Did You Hear The One About The Stupid Englishman...?

2009-10-07T06:17:00.000-07:00

Communication with the teachers is improving, unsurprisingly at the same rate as my general level of French. Just about everybody tutoies me now, and my big success of the day was when the headmaster shook my hand and asked me how I was, as he does every morning, and I managed to reply with a confident, “Ca va bien, merci!” instead of my usual terrified, indecipherable squeak. I was rewarded with a broad smile of relief.

I’ve discovered that self-deprecation is definitely the way forward when it comes to befriending the French, at least as an English person. They adore Britons who acknowledge their country’s funny little habits and can laugh at themselves. For example, when it rains (which is often), a guaranteed way to get into their good books is to grin and announce that I feel at home and that I deliberately chose the wettest region of France because all the heat and sunshine of the South would be too much of a shock. And they never tire of the joke of offering me tea and staggering with surprise at an anglaise who has coffee instead*.

In the canteen – oh, and that’s a whole story of its own. My, but the French know how to do lunches. It’s no wonder they allow an hour and a half for le dejeuner when there’s so much of it and it’s so good. For 2 euros, you get a hot meal (with meat, veg etc and of restaurant standard), a salad course, French bread, a selection of cheese, and a dessert or fruit. For the same price in most British canteens, you can get a slice of cardboard pizza and some limp, lukewarm chips.

But I digress, which is easy to do when it comes to food over here. The other day, in the canteen, the special of the day was assiette anglaise, or an English platter. I’m not sure how they figured that out since it was in fact salmon fillet with hollandaise sauce, potatoes and broccoli, but it was delicious nevertheless. My colleagues asked me if it was what I considered to be an English meal. I took a mouthful, chewed it thoughtfully, and then swallowed, before replying no, because it wasn’t burnt. And voilà: how to make friends in France.

* My usual response is that we save tea for crises instead. Your husband’s leaving you? Your grandma just died? The house is on fire? I’ll put the kettle on, then. The French, of course, prefer the far more effective remedy of cognac in these cases.

Zoe: Maîtrise De Crime

2009-10-07T06:14:00.000-07:00

Oh God. Five days in, and I’m already a felon. Don’t come to Rennes or you’ll surely find my face plastered on ‘wanted’ posters on every wall.

After a stage d’accueil – an induction course run by the académie but in practice, another great opportunity to speak English – I decided to follow a group of Spanish assistants who were taking the métro into the town centre. Rennes isn’t actually big enough to warrant an underground system, but apparently it decided it wanted one anyway, so as a compromise it built just the one line, largely overground, from one side of town to the other. The distance was walkable (at least by my standards but then, as a friend once pointed out to me, I see Brighton to Chichester as walkable so you can draw your own conclusions) but I figured it would be part of the French experience so I tagged along. They all chattered away in Spanish, one of the languages I don’t speak*, but it didn’t really bother me; I ambled along behind them quite happily.

As we got to the station, I was surprised to see that there weren’t any barriers, nor ticket machines; just a machine for swiping the equivalent of Oyster cards (which also have their counterparts for trains and buses; a very efficient system). I didn’t have a card for the metro but the Spanish girls didn’t appear to have one either so we all walked through and boarded the train. I figured that maybe we could buy them on the train or at the other end or something.

Five minutes later, as we approached our destination, I started to get a bit worried, so I asked one of the girls in French where we could buy our single-journey tickets. She gave a broad, conspiratorial smile and replied, “C’est impossible. Nous prenons la risqué.”

My heart stopped. We were taking the risk? I don’t do risk! In fact, the only risk I want in my life involves rolling lots of dice and trying in vain to keep hold of Asia. I felt my cheeks flush and my face take on a guilty expression against my will as we walked through the barrierless station the other end, certain that I would be arrested at any moment. Fortunately, the ticket (well, card) inspectors at the station were French and so naturally seemed more interested in complimenting each other on their shoes and discussing their next strike than actually doing their jobs, so we passed through sans histoires.

In other news, I’ve decided that the gift horse does need a dental check-up after all. I’m seriously considering renting an apartment or shared house in Rennes. It’s not the quality of the studio flat – I can live with a tiny space, an oven that’s too far away from the wall to be plugged in, and hundreds of faucheux**. It’s the fact that Montfort appears to be entirely populated by old people and children, so it’s extremely difficult for me to make friends here. There isn’t much to do in the evening; put it this way, when I asked one class for suggestions of fun activities available in the town, the first thing they came up with was the Eco Museum. And I can’t even go into Rennes because the last bus back is at 19h15. As for clubs and societies, I’ve been rather disheartened after discovering that the local badminton club requires a signed medical certificate before they let you join, even just for a knock-about. For crying out loud, I shake my booty for a living; do they really think a light bit of the sport that was designed for people who are too girly to play tennis would hurt me?

I’m here to improve my French, and the only way I can do that is by speaking it. If I stay in Montfort, I can see myself buying a mobile broadband connection, sitting in my room on Facebook every evening for want of something better to do, and occasionally going out into Rennes with the English crowd and crashing on someone’s floor. What I need is to share a house with some French students so that I can truly immerse myself in the culture – including the grottier side of it.

* And, strangely, on the list of languages I have no intention of learning. I can just about understand written Spanish from my knowledge of French, Italian and Latin, and what I know of it, I dislike. I distrust any language that is so disrespectful to its punctuation as to turn it upside down at will.

** Daddy-long-legs, or spoinks as I’ve always called them. The French word literally means ‘reapers’ (as in the Grim persuasion). You may draw your own conclusions from this.

Desolée...

2009-10-07T06:12:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I’ve cheated already. I found out about an informal meeting of all the Anglophone assistants in Rennes and decided to tag along. My, but it was paradise. I wasn’t sure exactly where the rendez-vous was, so I simply traipsed around the general area, one ear cocked for any sign of English, until finally, hurrah! It was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.

There were thirty or so of us, mostly American but a few British, and all chattering away excitedly. After three days of hearing and speaking nothing but French, it was the first time (aside from an extremely short phone call to my dad on the first night, and an even shorter and incredibly expensive phone call to my copain in French Guiana) I’d been able to hear the dulcet tones of the language of dear old Blighty. I hadn’t realised just how much of an effort it had been up until that point; it certainly explained why I’d barely been able to keep my eyes open past 10pm through sheer exhaustion. It felt as though I’d only just realised that I’d been standing on tiptoes for the last few days and finally let my poor aching muscles relax into a normal standing position. It was so liberating to be able to natter away without having to worry whether there was a subjunctive or what order the pronouns were meant to go in. Even better was the ability to prove that I do have a personality, that I can be interesting; I’m fairly sure that most people in my school know me only as the timid little English girl who smiles a lot but never says anything. If I didn’t think it would get me sacked instantly, I’d turn up in full bellydance costume, working on the principle that shaking your booty transcends all linguistic barriers when it comes to making friends.

So, after an afternoon of sitting in the one Irish pub in Rennes, talking about Monty Python and Yorkshire puddings, I feel like an ex-smoker who’s just had her first illicit cigarettes after having given up for six weeks: a little ashamed but not quite enough to forget just how good it felt. And it was an educational experience, at least. I learnt two new colourful terms from the Americans: to be on the ‘shit-list’, and to ‘bitch someone out’. It’s not quite what I had in mind when I decided to come to France to improve my language skills, but it’s a start.

Lessons Learnt The Hard Way So Far

2009-10-07T06:10:00.000-07:00

1. Pascale is not a man’s name. (See previous entry)

2. In a coffee shop, if you want to order the same thing as your companion, use ‘le pareil’ (‘similar’), not ‘la même’ (‘same’). My colleague and the waiter looked equally horrified when I apparently asked to drink from the same cup as her.

3. In France, the first answer is always ‘no’. The proverb may suggest that le client est roi, but in fact, most French people in the service industry value only two qualities in their customers: deference and tenacity. The same man who swears blind that all the tellers in the bank are busy until Saturday week will miraculously find you an appointment to open an account within the next ten minutes – but only after a long and unavoidable ritual of genuflection, sob stories and sheer doggedness.

4. It takes an incredibly short amount of time to have one’s brain hijacked by the French language. When typing the previous paragraph, my British spellchecker harrumphed at my gallified words like ‘inavoidable’ and ‘obstinence’; it appears I’ve already forgotten several English words. And I’ve even started talking to myself in French from time to time; only this evening, I was walking through town, mumbling to myself under my breath, “Où est ce foutu truc, eh? Où est ce salaud?” before I realised what I was doing. And this is only my second day here.

5. However, it takes a very long time to lose one’s British puerile sense of humour. The road where I bought my mobile phone is called Rue Le Bastard. I nearly had to be escorted off the premises when I discovered that while in the shop.

6. The French are solely responsible for at least half the world’s deforestation. Everything you do requires a dozen photocopies of each of the thousand or so documents you have to sign. Then, to make things even more complicated, you have to get it stamped by Monsieur So-and-So, but he only works on Fridays from 11h to 12h30, and then when you’ve tracked him down, he tells you that you have to get it validated by his secretary but she works in an office in a completely different building down the street which is only open on the fifth Sunday after Pentecost for an hour in the afternoon, and what makes it worse is that nobody thought to tell you this in the first place. Ah, la France: liberté, egalité, bureaucratie.

The Adventure Begins...

2009-10-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Brittany, my new home for the next year, on Saturday and, frankly, the omens weren’t good. An eerie mist curled around my feet, rolling across the desolate countryside and snickling through narrow cobbled streets. Across the deserted street, I could see a driving school, ominously named Abyss. And at that moment, I swear the church bell chimed the devil’s chord itself, a diminished fifth.

But the day brightened; the sun sneaked out from behind the clouds and I discovered that Montfort-sur-Meu is, in fact, a beautiful little town set on a picturesque river. I was also pleasantly surprised by how modern the lycee I’m teaching at is: large, airy and generally welcoming.

My arrival at the lycee was not without hiccoughs, of course. Firstly, my attempts to make a good first impression with the headmaster were swiftly scuppered by the fact that his accent is completely incomprehensible and so I spent our entire brief meeting smiling and nodding in all the wrong places and asking him to repeat everything:

Headmaster, with a big fake smile: “*mumblemumblemumble* autres professeurs?”

Right, Zoe. Let’s try not to look like an idiot. Maybe he’s asking if I’ve met any of the other teachers yet. “Euh… non.”

The broad smile faded instantly.

Merde. I think he meant ‘do you want to meet the other teachers?’. “Euh, je veux dire oui…”

In the end, he passed me over to another teacher, asking her with a sigh, “Do you speak English?” Brilliant. So the headmaster thinks I’m a retard.

Second faux pas was that my responsable, whom I’d addressed in all my carefully-crafted-using-lots-of-typically-French-flowery-arse-licking-language-so-as-not-to-offend emails as ‘monsieur’ turned out to be a woman. Hurrah. Thankfully, she appeared not to hold it against me and was incredibly lovely, inviting me and my family to her house for tea and even complimenting me on my French. At least I don’t have to worry about being hit on.

As for my lodgings, I have a small studio flat on the school premises. It is fortunate that I have no cat, nor a desire to swing it; however, it is provided free of charge and that is one gift horse whose mouth shall certainly not be looked in.