"Do you have a gun?"

After a few months off of teaching and a lot of initial paperwork confusion, stepping into a classroom again instantly felt like home.

The downside to my teaching schedule is the number of classes I work in.  English is the most popular foreign language for students, and as a result, there are more English teachers and classes than there are for other languages.   I would have had plenty of work to do just at le lycée every week being shared between five English teachers and twelve classes total, but l'académie decided to divide my time even more by placing me half-time at un collège (a middle school) in the nearby town of Aizenay: that means five more teachers and twelve more classes.  One difficulty is remembering how each teacher wants to use me in his or her class and what I need to plan - some teachers want me to take half the class and teach a short lesson; others want me to speak individually with students to build their speaking and listening skills; others want me to co-teach with them in front of the whole class.  I get Wednesdays off, but I'll be spending those days studying mes trombinoscopes (my class rosters with pictures).

My first full week of teaching was at Collège Soljenitsyne in Aizenay...the middle school whose name no one can pronounce.  Getting there is a little complicated; it's fifteen minutes away by car and the buses only run once per day in the afternoon, so several staff members who live in la Roche take turns driving me as it fits with their schedules.  (This week, on my day off, I attempted the bike trail between the two towns.  It weaves through lots of small, cute farms and you have to be careful not to hit horses and other cattle.  I made it, but without a proper distance bike, it took four and a half hours round-trip...and I wasn't able to move very much in the days after.)

Collège Soljenitsyne

After my first fifteen minutes at the collège, I knew I was going to love it.  As teachers started filing into the salle de profs (teachers' lounge) in the morning, they all greeted and welcomed me, some giving me a tour of the school and talking excitedly about their classes.  The students were, if possible, maybe even more friendly, excited, and curious.  Most students come from farming communities in the area.  Most of the English classes had prepared questions to ask me about my life and family, Minnesota, and the United States; I brought lots of pictures and maps to help explain.  Since this region of France is not a popular tourist destination for the average American, people from the U.S. are considered exotique...and a true rarity.  It was fascinating to discover the things that surprised students and I was taken aback by some questions - "Do you have a gun?" and "Have you shot someone?", for example.  They were very interested to learn about immigration from Mexico into the U.S. and to discover that Spanish is a very common foreign language for American students to learn.  Some were also floored to learn that the U.S. has more than Hollywood and the Empire State Building, that I've never bumped into George Clooney (or any other celebrity) wandering through the woods of northern Minnesota, and that I've never seen a caribou.  They ogled over the picture of St. Paul streets covered in snow and the picture of an "average-sized" house in the U.S., and wanted to know if I ate hamburgers for every meal.

Streets of Aizenay;
St. Joseph, a small chapel;
inside St. Benoit des Landes

Teachers and staff are also curious and friendly; the staff lounge is always a welcoming, lively place to relax and chat.  There are several five- to ten-minute breaks throughout the day when everyone congregates there to have coffee, and of course everyone stops for at least an hour at lunchtime to eat together.  I've had a hard time explaining the "time is money" mentality of the U.S. to students and teachers alike here.  In English, we say that we "spend" time; in French, the translation is to "pass" time.  This also pertains to work time too - in class, there is no real rush to learn too much too quickly - but students learn at least as much since they aren't as stressed.

I had no morning classes on Thursday, so I explored the town of Aizenay on foot.  It's very small; at the center, there's a large, beautiful church surrounded by small shops (many boulangeries and patisseries, of course).  I stopped for a coffee at a brasserie which, it turned out, is owned by a father of one of my students, and I made friends with several people on the street who were happy to show me around and chat for a few minutes.  Small experiences like that melt my heart; people are so happy to "pass" time talking with strangers.

Lycée Edouard Branly

My second full week of teaching was at Lycée Branly, where I live.  It's definitely a different environment.  High schools are bigger and have many more teachers; the community is not as close-knit, so it's difficult to get to know everyone.  Lycée Branly is also a lycée professionel - the American equivalent is a technical college or trade school.  The stereotype of LPs is that students are not very motivated or intellectually inclined; while I can see where the stereotype comes from, I found that students' motivation really depends on their teacher.  I have some classes that will be a joy to co-teach and others where the teacher just wants me to take over so he/she can have a break.  Either way, it will be interesting and fun to teach specialized lessons using culinary, business, and shopping vocabulary.

After only two and a half weeks of teaching for the assistants, it's already time for les vacances - two weeks off!  Time for more travels!

Most of the foreign language assistants in la Roche-sur-Yon:
representing England, Germany, the U.S., Canada, and Spain

"L'auberge espagnole" - me, Julian, and Laura - roommates at Lycée Branly

Paperwork.

You can't break a promise to a four-year-old.  That was why, during one of my last days in the United States last August, I could be found perusing postcards at Como Zoo.  Almost every Sunday last year, as part of my job with Berlitz, I taught Daniel and his dad, Kevin; Daniel loves animals and loved the zoo, so I told him I'd send him something from Minnesota when he and his family moved back to Shanghai last June.

While teaching with Berlitz last year, I remember having adult students come to their lessons in a panic over things like bank accounts, mortgages, and car payments.  While I always made sure to answer their questions, define words, and practice any conversations they requested, I didn't fully understand at the time how they felt or why they would often thank me profusely for what seemed like the smallest bits of information.

My first two weeks in la Roche-sur-Yon were a humbling experience.  While I've now started to find the town very charming and rich in unexpected ways, my first days were truly a struggle.  I've been attempting to s'installer (settle/move in) in several ways: opening a bank account, getting a phone number, completing housing and immigration forms with the French government, enrolling in social security and health insurance, figuring out my apartment/roommates/facilities...oh, and getting trained in on my actual job, too.  I'll tell you the story of just a sliver of the paperwork cauchemar (nightmare) so you can get an idea: the following is a piece of the bank/phone saga.

I thought I had a great plan before I left the U.S.  I had asked a CELTA friend, Katie, for some phone plan advice, and she gave me a few companies to research.  While I was in Paris, I stopped by the Virgin Mobile store to see if I could get a plan started.

You can have very strong language skills and still have no idea how to explain yourself in a phone store, I discovered quickly.  While I was able to perfectly describe what I wanted in a roundabout way, I did not have the exact French language for words like "plan", "no contract", and "unlocked".  For the record, I have now learned these useful mots du jour:

un forfait - plan
sans engagement - no contract
débloqué - unlocked

The man working at the store tried very hard not to laugh at the extravagant phrases I was using to describe what I needed, and then explained that it was necessary to open a bank account before I could buy a French SIM card.  He also noted that there was a Virgin Mobile store in Nantes that I could visit once I'd arrived in la Pays de la Loire.

I needed to open a bank account for several other purposes as well, so it was my first priority when I arrived in la Roche-sur-Yon (aside from buying a toothbrush, but that's another story).  On my second evening in la Roche, I met the only other American here, Elyse, and she recommended a bank that she's used before called LCL.  After asking her some questions about her experience, I decided to open an account there as well.

In order to open a bank account in France, you need a few documents: your passport, of course, and une attestation d'hébergement - a document that proves that you live in France.  For that, I needed to find la gestionnaire, Madame Baudry, au lycée (at the high school) where I'm living.  While Mme Baudry lives in the same building as me, I couldn't seem to track her down for two full days; finally, I went to her office first thing in the morning and told the other two women who worked there that I didn't mind waiting - I had brought a book and was going to stay until Mme Baudry returned.  I had nothing else to do until I obtained the document.

I thought the two women were going to have a nervous breakdown with me sitting there; despite my protests, they fervently searched for Mme Baudry's whereabouts and kept asking if I wouldn't rather repasser plus tard (come back later)? - but when I asked for a specific time, they said they didn't know.  It took all morning, but Mme Baudry returned, met with me, and I left with my attestation d'hébergement in hand.

Later that day, armed with my identification and paperwork, I showed up à la banque LCL, fully expecting to have an account opened by lunchtime so I could get a phone plan in Nantes the following day.  I learned my next phrase du jour beforehand, thinking it was basically sufficient enough to explain myself:

Je voudrais ouvrir un compte bancaire. - I would like to open a bank account.

Of course, I embellished the phrase for the man at the front counter, explaining a little more about my situation.  He looked at me as though he would die of fright, and promptly led me back to a couple of offices where he spoke very rapidly in French to the two women working there.  One, Hélène, asked if I could make an appointment to come back later.  I said, "Of course; when?"; she responded, "Next Tuesday?"; I must have looked absolutely horrified...Hélène was sympathetic and met with me right away.

In the U.S., you can go to the bank and do transactions anonymously or meet with any available banker to discuss the specifics of your account.  In France (at least, in small-town France), no.  You are paired with a banker who is responsible for you and your account; you have to go to that person anytime you have a question or want something changed.  That is why, normally, you have to schedule a rendez-vous with your banker - he or she needs time to research your situation and needs in order to best help you.  Luckily, Hélène had just guided Elyse through the process of opening an account and was familiar enough with it to bend the rules for me.

Hélène was the first person in la Roche-sur-Yon who went the extra mile to be incredibly patient and help me out.  She also made me realize exactly how much it means to foreigners to have a native speaker who is patient enough to allow me to use my French but who is also willing to explain things several times so that I understand, and slow down her speech when necessary for me to comprehend.  While I understand basic bank lingo in the U.S., I felt completely stupid and a little scared at first not fully understanding the phrases for things like "monthly credit card charge", "security charge" (in case the card is stolen), "minimum account balance", etc.  Now, after the initial shock, I can use my frequent trips to the bank as learning experiences to obtain more French vocabulary.  Hélène explains things very calmly and simply.

Unfortunately, my luck stopped there.  I traveled to Nantes the next day to be told by Virgin Mobile that il faut absolument avoir une carte bleue (you absolutely have to have a bank card) to get a SIM card.  So I had to wait a week before a couple of bank codes were mailed to me: first, my internet code; then, my PIN for my card.

While waiting for my card and PIN, I stopped at nearly every phone shop in la Roche, comparing prices and requirements.  When I finally received the card and activated it, I thought I had everything figured out (again):  I went to Crédit Mutuelle on a recommendation.  This time, I expected to have to schedule a rendez-vous later, but they took me without a problem.  Another new ally, Vincent, was ready to break a couple of rules for me to get my phone up and running sooner rather than later...mais alors, he was hit with a computer error message while trying to input my card information.  After much ado and a few phone calls, he gave me the bad news.

You can pay for your French phone plan however you like; however, to pay for the French SIM card and phone number with that particular company (which costs as little as one Euro.  One.  Euro.) you have to use a MasterCard - not VISA - connected to your bank account.  Of course, my bank card is a VISA.

In the end, I was able to order my SIM card online through a different company and pick it up a week later at a store about twenty minutes north of centre-ville; after some scary moments attempting to navigate automated messages in French, my phone is up and running.

Around the same time, I received an email from Kevin - Daniel received my postcard and was so excited to tell his teachers and classmates that he received a letter "from the other side of the world".  I'm happy to now better understand how their family, and many others, felt moving across the world, struggling to establish themselves in a place with different systems and customs for things as "simple" as opening a bank account.

Excursions, excursions

Elyse, the other American assistant, and I decided it was obligatory to visit Nantes before the start of classes.  Nantes is the closest large city and the center of our académie (the equivalent of a school district, but it covers much more territory than districts in the U.S.).

Nantes on the Loire

Nantes is a lively city on the Loire river with a variety of things to do.  Since we know we'll be coming back several times throughout the year, Elyse and I weren't pressées (pressed) to see everything at once; we spent a lot of time walking and getting the gist of the city's layout.  One of the popular and more modern attractions in Nantes are their mechanical animals - la Roche-sur-Yon apparently stole the idea from them - which can be found on a carousel and a mechanical elephant that you can ride near the river.

Château des ducs de Bretagne

Shrubbery in les Jardins des Plantes

While we decided to wait for another time to ride the mechanical animals, we went to several other important monuments.  The Château des ducs de Bretagne is free and open to the public; you can roam the ramparts and picnic on the lawn just outside by the river.  Not far are the Jardins des Plantes, one of my favorite parts of Nantes.  The gardens are large, serene, and well-kept, with ponds, paths, birds (freely-roaming ducks and parakeets in a large cage), and elaborate shrubbery clipped in the shapes of animals.  I could move to Nantes just for the gardens.

Le Bouffay

Nantes also has a stunning cathedral...which, no surprise, was destroyed during the world wars, rebuilt, and then set on fire at some point during the mid- to late-1900s...and then rebuilt.  When looking at the outside, you can see the white stone used to rebuild the new sections and the grey stone from the old cathedral.

Our favorite area in Nantes is called the Bouffay, where the cobblestone streets narrow and fill with restaurants and outdoor cafés.  It's a great place for perusing menus and relaxing, and is especially lively in the evening.  Elyse and I found a perfect hole-in-the-wall restaurant for a Roquefort salad and moules frites (mussels and fries) before heading back to la Roche.

For the record: the best chocolate in Nantes can be found not far from le Bouffay at a shop called Castelanne.  It was so delicious, it made both of us cry.

A few days later, once we had met more assistants, we decided to travel to a town called les Sables d'Olonne.  Elyse, Henry, Laura, and I went together early in the morning.  About thirty minutes away, right on the Atlantic coast, les Sables is the Florida of France: a retirement town with a beach.  The town itself isn't much; there's a touristy cluster of shops, a church, and a seashell museum.  There's a nice port with lots of boats and a poissonnerie with very fresh fish.  The beach itself is wonderful, with soft, fine white sand...and the scariest, largest meduse (jellyfish) I've ever seen washed up on shore - I had terrible flashbacks of my jellyfish sting in Cannes.  After a lunch picnic, we walked north to one of two lighthouses.  A placard nearby told me that it's known as the little Tower of Pisa (apparently it leans just a bit, but I couldn't see anything). 

  

 

In the afternoon, we were joined by Jack and Kate, two English assistants from la Roche, and Christopher, an English assistant who lives in les Sables.  We spent most of the afternoon eating ice cream and dipping our feet into the ocean, and of course waving to America across the Atlantic.

After a day of beach and sun, everyone was tired and we decided to head back early to see if we could take an earlier train back to la Roche.  We all have cartes jeunes, or youth cards, which discount every train ticket we buy within France (by 25-60% each trip, so it's a fantastic deal); the problem is that we don't get the full discount if we travel during morning and evening rush hour.  In order two save a grand total of two Euros each, Laura and Elyse and I decided to keep our original tickets, which happened to be for a regional bus that functions like a train for ticket purchase purposes.  It was also the final bus of the day.

You can probably already see where this is going.  While I understood when the woman at the ticket counter told us to wait for the bus devant la gare (in front of the train station), we took it a little liberally and followed a sign to the bus station on the side of the train station, where we saw other regional buses and assumed we were in the right place.

6:30 came and went with no bus.  I started to get uneasy, and sprinted back to the ticket counter in the train station.  The look on the woman's face was a mix of horror, pity, and how-could-you-be-this-stupid-I-said-in-FRONT-of-the-train-station.  It seemed we were stranded in les Sables overnight...on the eve of our first day of work in la Roche.  Mortified, we scrambled to think of people to call - luckily, Elyse has a working phone - but none of us particularly wanted to phone our cooperating teachers to ask to be rescued before school had even started.  Finally, Elyse remembered our friend, Gwendolyne, a French university student who lives at the same foyer de jeunesse as Elyse and who has a car; Gwen was kind enough to drive down to les Sables after class and rescue us.  Un grand merci to Gwen!  We provided a picnic for her in la Roche last weekend as a thank-you.

La vie en pays yonnais

It's been almost two weeks since I arrived chez moi in the Vendée region.  After five days living the marvelous Parisian life, the slow, small-town pace of la Roche-sur-Yon was a bit of a shock to the system.

The Pays de la Loire region of France is divided into five sections; la Roche-sur-Yon is in one called the Vendée.  The town is, as I was told beforehand by several people, tranquille; calm and fairly quiet.  From my apartment au lycée (at the high school), it's about a ten-minute walk to the city centre.  On the way, you take a modern and unique red pedestrian bridge (the fifth and sixth pictures on the left) that links the outer area of the city to the center; the bridge is also the background image of this blog.  After passing la gare, you'll continue to the Place de la Vendée, the smaller of two main city squares, and Rue Clemenceau, the shopping street (last photo to the left).  La Roche has a good variety of stores, especially clothing and jewelry shops, as well as several banks and, randomly, opticians.  You can find at least a dozen opticians au centre-ville alone; the concentration of opticians here is like that of coffee shops in Seattle.  I was happy to also discover many boulangeries (bakeries) and patisseries (pastry shops) that are even open on Sundays - nearly everything else in town is closed, but people need their fresh baguettes.  My favorite boulangerie is called L'Imperial (second-to-last photo, with the green awning); they have a special baguette-like bread that is heaven on earth.  The first time I bought one, it was still warm from the oven and I decided to taste just a bit on my way home.  By the time I reached my apartment, it was half gone.

If you look at an aerial map of la Roche-sur-Yon, the outer perimeter of le centre-ville is shaped like a hexigon with the most important square in the middle: la Place Napoléon, or Place Nap for short.  Place Nap (top photo) used to be a parking lot, but is now a gorgeous park with plants, lights that sparkle at night, a nice café, music that is piped in through speakers at certain times of day, a snazzy statue of Napoleon riding a horse, and ponds with real fish and mechanical animals.  In the second photo, you can see a couple of the mechanical animals that are actually in the pools; in the afternoons, you can use control panels in the park to manipulate the animals and make them move in various ways, kind of like puppets.  They represent the menagerie of exotic animals that Napoleon brought back from Egypt in the late 18th century.

People here adore the slow, simple life; as quiet as the town is, there are cafés and brasseries everywhere and by mid-afternoon every day, almost every outdoor seat is full.  To be fair, the weather has been perfect for lounging outside; very foggy and a little chilly in the early mornings, but around seventy degrees and sunny every afternoon.

One of my other favorite parts of la Roche-sur-Yon is their covered Marché les Halles near Place Nap (third photo).  It's a decent-sized market with a variety of fruit, vegetables, cheese, meat, fish, bread, pastries, jam...and it's very highly rated in France.  I go almost every day for fresh produce - it's open every morning except Sunday - and have made friends with several vendors who love chatting and teaching people about their food.

The Vendée region is known for its extensive hiking and biking trails; the terrain is fairly flat.  One of the English teachers au lycée is going to loan me un vélo (a bike) for the year and most of the other assistants are trying to get them too so we can explore further on the weekends.

La Roche-sur-Yon is the perfect-sized town for meeting other assistants...and meeting French people!  If I taught in a bigger city like Nantes, there would be around one hundred assistants also working there; in some small towns, there are only one or two assistants.  In la Roche, we have a group of about fifteen or twenty (I haven't met all yet) from all over the world:  Spain, Germany, Venezuela, China, England, Russia, Canada, and there are just two of us from the U.S.

Henry (Canada), me, Laura (Spain), Elyse (U.S.)
Me and Laura, ma coloc
Henry, Kate (England), me, Elyse, Jack, and Christopher (both England)

There's always someone to meet up with for coffee, a meal, a walk, or a day trip to another city.  We all have slightly different living situations, so we share kitchens, laundry facilities, and household utensils.  I live with two colocs (roommates): Laura from Spain (Seville) and Julian from Germany (Bochum, not even ten minutes from Essen).  They both work at Lycée Branly part time and at different middle schools in la Roche for the rest.  Living with them is so fascinating; although Julian can speak English and Spanish and Laura can speak a little English, we all speak French at home.  It's great practice, but I think I'm picking up some Espan-français and Allefrançais: Spanish and German phrases that probably don't translate into French (or at least don't mean the same thing to native French speakers)...but we use them anyway.  As we continue to settle in, I'm excited for them to teach me some Spanish and German!  At the moment, we have the best-sized living space of anyone and the most-furnished kitchen and an old TV with several stations so we can practice listening to French; it's a lively place with friends coming and going frequently.

On the other hand, the logistical end of moving here has been a bit of un cauchemar (a nightmare).  As soon as I have a working cell phone, I'll write the abridged version of the bank account/phone plan saga, an incredible and mind-boggling tale that well illustrates the quirks of the not-so-logical logistical French way of life.  In the meantime, I have a few more stories to share soon about day trips in the Pays de la Loire!