Pseudo First Day

Monday morning, Muriel gave me two options: I could come with her to school and sit in the staff room all day until they could move me into my apartment, or I could stay at her house all day by myself.  Two factors influenced my decision.
  1) I hated being a burden to others, so staying at someone’s house and relying on them for everything made me feel more than a little burdensome.  I didn’t want to inconvenience Muriel and her family any longer than I had to.  Plus, I didn’t want to become accustomed to the relative comfort of being a guest in a French home too much before I moved into what, in my head, could only be a half-furnished cubbyhole in the recesses of the school grounds.

2) The Internet.  I hadn’t had a real Internet connection since McDonald’s three days previous, and I merely wanted to be able to tool around or check the news off the Chicago Tribune website.  (Stop laughing; I’m serious.)  To feel connected to the rest of the world means everything when you’re in a foreign country — or even your own.

So we loaded my bodyguards-cum-suitcases into the trunk of her car, installed Nina in the backseat, and bustled away to drop Nina off at her école maternelle.  (Super cute, mixed gender school in a typical French style: a courtyard playground surrounded by the buildings themselves and high metal gates.)

Then I received my first glimpse of my school.  In the daytime.  And for more than five seconds.  And through the front door.

The campus covered a lot of ground even though the buildings weren’t particularly large.  Technically, the school I taught at, Lycée d’Estournelles de Constant, was paired with Lycée Ampère, and until a couple years ago, both went under the same heading of Lycée Bouchevreau before the French Powers That Be split them officially.  Some signs around town still said Cité Scholaire de Bouchevreau.  (That doesn’t need a translation; it means exactly what you think it means.)**  We entered through the main gate, passed a soccer field ringed by a track and a gym before parking in the teachers’ parking lot in front of the main building for Estournelles de Constant.  It seemed like most other French high schools I’d seen: utilitarian, almost Communist-bloc architecture with very little character.  But honestly, I was thinking more about the reception I’d receive inside the building to worry much about aesthetics.

Muriel led me into the building while explaining why we were starting the day approximately 15 minutes late.  Since the school housed a great number of its students, and since they were not allowed to stay the weekend, the school had to allow the returning boarders the 15 extra minutes to move their belongings for the week back into their rooms.  “Plus, it’s nicer for everyone to start later on a Monday.  Less jarring.”

Well, if they opened up the dorms 15 minutes earlier on Mondays instead, they wouldn’t lose 15 minutes of class.  But that’s just me and my logic.

So the school was bustling with activity, and I didn’t know where to look first.  Kids with giant rolling suitcases hit a bit too close to home for comfort, so I turned my attention to the students trading homework on the hallways stairs.  Good to know some things never changed.  She led me into the staff room, and we had to wade right through a crowd of students by the door who talked animatedly with another professeur (teacher).  I cocked my head but kept moving.

The teachers’ lounge didn’t seem anything out of the ordinary, though I couldn’t claim to be an expert; the last lounge I had seen was in high school, and that was eons ago, so for all I know, teachers’ lounges in the States now came equipped with X-Boxes and plasma TVs.  However, this one seemed to offer the essentials: two photocopiers, a real lounge for lounging, tables for working, and a kitchenette complete with bar, where teachers chatted away over (probably their third cup of) coffee.  It seemed like every teacher in the school was in there, chatting, drinking coffee, grading papers, furiously rummaging through briefcases.  Oh!  That was right: French teachers didn’t have set rooms or offices, unlike most American high school teachers — they moved classrooms just like the students.  So of course the staff room would be an absolute beehive, and of course the students would have to come there to find teachers.

Right.  Okay.  I could deal with that.

Then Muriel showed me the four other rooms and a pretty rockin’ bathroom: one room for the casiers (cubbies/mailboxes), coats, and such and three other computer rooms.  Hot.  Damn.  Communist Russia liked technology space.

But I planted myself at a table and tried not to hurt myself while Muriel made herself a cup of coffee.  Seriously, people were sprinting from one room to another, gliding by each other with practiced ease that I could only envy.  All of the French hammered at my eardrums, and I began to feel the stirrings of a headache.

And then Muriel began the introductions.

I’m not too ashamed to admit I only managed to remember one name after the first day, and I ended up working with her for only an hour per week.  Clearly my brain had other priorities.  I think Muriel threw me in every English teacher’s path, all nine of them, and only one of them spoke English with me.  I was smoothing my skirt after I had risen for the 437^th introduction that morning when I felt a pair of hands on my shoulders.

“So you’re the new English assistant, then?”

I froze.  English!  But how should I respond?  I didn’t want anyone to think I needed coddling, but I desperately wanted to speak in English, if only for a moment.  So I went with French.  “Oui. Je m’appelle Becky.”  (“Yes.  My name is Becky.”)

“Ah.  And you come from the States, yeah?”  She had all the inflections of a British-English speaker and a twinge of an accent, but the slightly larger French twinge gave her away.  It was official: none of my teachers were natively Anglophone.

“Yes,” I relented, a hand on my bag, “I’m from Chicago.”

“Oh, Chicago!  Is that very far away, then?”  At my look of confusion, she added, “I’m sorry; I don’t know much about the States and even less about American geography.”

I nodded.  “It’s about nine hours by plane.”

Awkward silence amidst white noise.

“Well, if you ever need any help, just lemme know.  All the instructors and students here are really nice and helpful, so I’m sure you won’t have any problems.”

And then the first person willing to speak my native language walked away.

Muriel quickly swept me and my bag away again, though, to go to l’intendance or the people in charge of l’internat (boarding school) where I’d be staying.  I met Madame Rigolot (which means “funny” in French) who efficiently issued my ID badge — a slip of plastic with someone else’s name on it — and handed over my keys, explaining that I’d have to see someone else about an Internet code, copier code, and keys to my classroom and the armoire in the room.  Another man nearby added more rules: the other floors in my apartment’s building were forbidden, as they were booby-trapped with dull axes and my screams would set off alarms, or something like that — I may have gotten the translation wrong.  I couldn’t smoke in my room (‘there goes my budding smoking habit in an attempt to seem more French’), and he repeated it multiples times, as he said the other assistant set off the alarm the first week she was here.  Oh, and when I cooked, I had to open the windows in the kitchen for the same reason.  Winter dinners, I could tell, would be simple and quick.

Meanwhile, Madame Rigolot loaded money onto my badge to use at the Self, or the self-service dining hall on campus, and then offered to take me to my room.  Since Muriel didn’t have classes until the afternoon, we agreed, piled into Muriel’s car with Madame Rigolot, and drove clear across campus to my building.

My building.

The Self: the most modern building on campus.

My building!

We passed Lycée Ampère, the other part of the high school which was sometimes referred to as the lycée pro (professional): it was where the electricians, plumbers, and mechanics went to school, which was evident from the workshop classrooms we passed.  Madame Rigolot explained I shared my building with the infirmary, boys’ dorms, and some of Ampère’s classrooms. (Ah, that explained the alarms.)  From time to time, other professors who lived far away stayed there during the week but always went home on the weekends, so I could theoretically be entirely alone on campus then.

Whoo.  Hoo.

Madame Rigolot explained the keys as we drove: one for the campus’s side gate so I could go off campus at night (curfew for students was 7:30 PM) and on weekends; one was to get into my building after curfew; and one was for my room.  Not gonna lie, I almost expected one for my floor as well.  They assigned me to room 264; that meant hauling my extra bodyguards up three flights of stairs.

Whoo.  Hoo.  Encore.

Muriel and I glanced at each other; she made a comment about me becoming buff; and we tugged, pulled, and willed those suitcases up to my floor.

First thing I noticed: yeah, it was a dorm, not a true apartment, which was exactly what I had been worrying about since I received the post.  We entered the floor into an l-shaped hallway with light yellow and green doors, blue floors, and white walls.  To the left, Madame Rigolot gestured into the kitchenette, and Muriel snorted.

“It looks like camping,” Muriel said in English so the other woman wouldn’t understand.

My hallway.

The kitchen.

Yup.  Exactly.  A small fridge, a cupboard with utensils, plates, cookware, and other odds and ends, a microwave, a two-burner hot plate, toaster oven, electric kettle, tiny sink, table, two chairs, and — wait, what — a washing machine.  That wonderful appliance made everything else worth it.  I wouldn’t have to walk all the way into town every week with all my laundry and spend loads of money and time.  So at the time, every other bad aspect of the kitchen (no oven, no gas stove, whoa crap tiny) rolled off my back.  Next came the shared bathroom, complete with four sinks, one toilet, and two shower . . . let’s call them closets.  Not bad, until I caught a glimpse inside a stall, and — boo.  Just . . . boo.  I had heard about push-button showers before from Jay and had been hoping to avoid ever coming into contact with one.  No such luck.  You had to push a button in the shower, and the water stayed on for about 15 seconds before you had to push it again: the definition of annoying.

The sign on the door says that, in order to respect our downstairs neighbors, we can't take a shower or flush the toilet between 11 PM and 6 AM.

We finally trooped to my room.  After what I had seen so far, I hadn’t been expecting much, and good thing, because if I’d been expecting anything more than a standard dorm room, I would have been sobbing in disappointment.

A small sink with a mirror and light was separated from the rest of the room by an incomplete wall/tall cubby that housed a narrow armoire and that featured a bit of out-of-the-way storage on top.  Behind that area stretched the main space: tall white walls that extended toward a white ceiling, a twin bed, a mini table, desk, and two chairs.  On the wall opposite the entrance stood a tall door and tall windows with industrial curtains and — holy crap, a TV.  An LG, flat-screen, hi-def, HDMI-ready television.  I grabbed at the wall for stability.

Curtain sponsored by Karine, one of my teachers.

Rug sponsored by Karine.

Wall decorations sponsored by Manda!

Lamp, nightstand, and rockin' pillow sponsored by Karine.

Well at least I had two flat surfaces, even if one could barely house my computer and a notebook at the same time.

While Muriel continued making snide comments under her breath, Madame Rigolot showed me the terrace.  It linked all the rooms on my side of the building, and each room had a large window and two smaller ones that opened two ways (at the top or sideways) as well as screens to block out the light.  Madame Rigolot demonstrated how the clothes horse worked — apparently Americans were super dumb — but I was distracted by the fact that two TV boxes still stood tucked away in a terrace corner.  Hee.

Clotheshorse and TV boxes.

View from my window. That building is Ampère.

Muriel asked if I wanted to stay and unpack, and since there was nothing I wanted to do less in the world, we all piled back into Muriel’s car for the five-second trip back to the main part of the school.  But as soon as we and Madame Rigolot parted company, Muriel let loose a string of apologies for the crappy accommodations, and I quickly answered that as long as said accommodations remained free, I could live with them.  The room was less . . . homey than I had hoped, but in other ways, it surpassed my expectations.  The “apartment” came equipped with a washing machine, when I had planned on trekking into town; a TV, when I expected to do most of my watching online; and the Internet, when I was all set to buy my own access.  The only super-worrisome aspect seemed to be the lack of storage.  Because they furnished these rooms for the more transient teachers, they were less suited for those staying the long haul.  All of my clothes certainly would not fit in that tiny armoire with any personal food and escape wrinkling.  Or smelling like spices.

But I would cross that bridge when I came to it.  Muriel led me back into the lions’ den/teachers’ lounge just in time for lunch.  One of the English teachers — the one with the iPhone decked out in the British flag . . . Catherine!  Yeah, her — asked if I would like the elusive British assistant at Ampère to join us, and I jumped at the chance.

Dear God, I hoped she was easy to get along with.

(Ugh, I ended a sentence with a preposition.  I was already losing my English skills.)

My contact explained that she rarely ate at the Self, but she would today to help me out.  A group of English teachers walked together, chattering quickly amongst themselves and using totally incomprehensible acronyms, and we entered through a side door designed to expedite the teachers’ meals by launching them to the front of the line.  Muriel held my hand through the food-choosing process, even going so far as to introduce me to the staff, emphasizing my American-ness.  She made sure my tray was loaded up sufficiently with a salad-like concoction, a piece of cheese, a yogurt, a mini roll (the lunch line’s answer to the baguette), and a main course of meat with two sides.

See, the French have different meals than Americans.  I knew this, of course, but never did I really see it in practice before now.  The French eat small breakfasts and dinners and huge lunches; they don’t understand why our biggest meal is our last meal, and after experiencing this side of the coin, I must say I agree.

The small troop of English teachers and I filed into the small room reserved for teachers — I immediately deemed it a fish bowl in my head — and Catherine led us to a long table on one side of the room where, as I understood it, the Ampère teachers usually ate, and she shuttled me next a girl around my age with bobbed brown hair.  She presented us to each other, and then it seemed like they all sat back to watch the show: the real fish bowl.  I have never known how to act in these situations.  We both natively spoke the same language, but we were both in France around French people; the easy choice, therefore, would be to speak in English as all the teachers probably expected.  But then should we speak in French to prove that, no, we don’t need to speak our native language in order to understand each other, that we don’t need to revert to English and cling to one another, saying thankGodsomeoneelsespeaksmylanguage!

You guessed it: we went with door number two.

Our conversation stalled at first, as British-accented French was difficult for me to understand, but we determinedly stuck it out until the teachers seemed to focus on their lunches and side conversations.  Then we switched to English.  Because, really, our native language was English.  Verity, at the ripe old age of 20 years old, was from London and went to university in Liverpool, where she was studying French and German.  She said she started at Ampère through the Comenius program at the beginning of September and would be in the country until the beginning of March, when she would then head over to Bonn, Germany, where she would switch to Erasmus and become a student again.  She lived in the room next to mine at l’internat and actually needed to go to Carrefour (a grocery store) that night, would I like to come along?  Oh, and she could totally show me around town; since she had been living here for nearly a whole month already, she knew her way around.

Sweet.

So lunch went well.

Afterwards, back in the staff room, one of the teachers set me up with a code and password, and I communed with the Internet until what I thought was a suitable time before leaving for the day.  I said a general au revoir to the staff room (whenever entering the room or leaving for the day, one had to give a general greeting, even if no one responded, which happened often) and walked the five minutes back to my room.  God, my commute was going to be awesome.

And so began my tenure at Lycée d’Estournelles de Constant.  Though I wouldn’t start teaching for another week, I began popping up in classes and introducing myself so many times that I had a definite spiel worked out to a ‘t.’  I drew many oddly-shaped maps of the U.S. where Florida looked more phallic than it probably should; I explained Chicago-style pizza (“But why would you eat that?!”); I confirmed that while we’re not personal friends, I did indeed know of Michael Jordan; I learned that both Tony Parker and Joakim Noah have ties with France (Parker was born in and played basketball for France, and Noah has a French father/French citizenship); and, for the first time ever, I didn’t receive one mention of Al Capone.  In fact, I had to explain to a class full of French hipster-wannabes who Al Capone and the Mafia were.  Oh, how times have changed!

Muriel was in charge of my emploi du temps or schedule, and she obsessed over it relentlessly.  She broke every single existing rule regarding the French and technology; she was an aberration.  She hounded her fellow teachers about their own emplois du temps and complained liberally when her colleagues would not email her back nor give her a solid answer.  Their reticence led her to ask me what I preferred to work.  I, of course, said I didn’t really care, mostly because I had no idea what my choices were!  In the end, I asked that my courses be placed together so that I could (if you pardon the expression) get in, get out, and get on with my life/get some work done while secretly hoping I would get either a Monday or Friday off so I could have long weekends.  It wasn’t a big demand, because it could have been a possibility: what with teaching only twelve hours a week, chances were pretty good that Muriel could churn out an awesome schedule.

Or not.  After nearly a week of Muriel alternately tearing her hair out in the staff room and cursing her colleagues’ names, she presented me with my schedule.  Not very conducive to life, as it turned out.  Most stores in France closed around 19h00/7 PM, and if you worked until 18h00/6 PM, you couldn’t get anything done after work.  That left during the day to go food shopping or run errands.  Too bad there, too, as getting from the school to nearly anywhere and, gasp, accomplishing anything would be a feat and a half.  Oh well, I thought; like everything else, I would deal.

And so I had nothing to do until October 1^st; nothing to do but worry about what the hell I was going to do with the young brains placed in my hands.  I just hoped they would walk away from my class not wanting to declare war on America.

** Correction: Verity has schooled me in WTF is up with this strange school.  Since she's doing a project on Lycée d’Estournelles de Constant, she has informed me that, in fact, they are still technically the same school.  Before 2002, they were separated into the two schools, but the area was called Cité Scholaire de Bouchevreau.  Now, nothing is called Cité Scholaire de Bouchevreau, and both schools go under the heading of Lycée d’Estournelles de Constant, though everyone still refers to the lycée pro as Lycée Ampère because it's just easier.  Whew.  Believe you me, it took a solid five minutes for me to work all that out.  Only the French, guys; only the French. . . .