Why I Have The Best Job In The World

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!

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...

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

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?

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

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.