It's Not Just Me!

Because I’ve done a horrible job keeping up with my life so far — I blame actually living life, and then relaxing from it, and, believe me, I need an excuse not to write — I’ll try from now on to post whenever something interesting happens, or a particularly profound thought sprouts in my head.  That puts less pressure on me to “catch up,” and therefore I feel less of the stress which makes me want to write less.  I will post “flashbacks” to the vacations I have yet to relate, so don’t worry; there will be ample opportunities to laugh at the troubles into which I’ve gotten myself.

So.

Since the weeks leading up to Christmas vacation, Catherine has been taking Verity and me to the yoga class she teaches in Luché-Pringé, a tiny nearby town.  We help each other out: we help her stay on time (it’ll be a miracle when that actually happens), and she tortures us so we still ache three days later.  I had never done yoga, and I knew it was more difficult than it seemed, but my expectations still hit woefully low of the reality.  The class is mostly populated by older women, but Catherine speaks clearly, and we only paid €26 for three months’ worth of classes — a steal even with the conversion rate.

There.  Scene set.

She drove us home last night, and she apologized for taking so long to leave, but one of the yoga students has two girls who attend Estournelles de Constant, and they are both extremely unhappy.  “One, in terminale S, was forced into that section by her teachers in seconde because she was bright and got good marks.  But now, she hates it.  And her sister in seconde chose wrong as well.  She wants to be a dental hygienist.”  I still don’t understand all of the acronyms (and I’m convinced the French don’t really know them, either), but high schoolers aren’t only separated by age but by what their chosen subject is.  For example, this girl was in her last year of high school (terminale) in the science division.  The sections I know of are ES, STG, L (litérature), and BTS, which is further divided into domotique and MUC.  Again, not quite sure what exactly they all mean literally; however, I do know that they all mean that their subjects are weighted differently when they take their bac.  Anyways.

“Well, can’t she just change?  She’s only in seconde.”  Since there are only three years in French high school, I’ll say she’s 14 and equate the grade to a frosh/soph mix.

Catherine shook her head.  “No, it’s too late; she’s already chosen.  She would have to switch to the lycée pro, and all the classes are full.  I just feel so bad for them both.  They wouldn’t be treated like this in America or England.  You have to determine your future so early in France.”

“I agree.”

Whoa.  I thought I was far and away ahead of my peers when I knew what I wanted to major in when I entered college.  If I’d had to continue studying what I thought I wanted to do, or what I was good at, at the ripe old age of 14, I would either be a very poor musician because she played very poorly, or would have been forced to be an extremely unhappy mathematician.  At 14, you’re still adjusting to a new body, a new school (regardless of country), and a constantly shifting world view.  How the hell can you decide your future in the middle of all that?  Better yet, how can anyone else expect such a decision from you, let alone require one?!  I know of many people who ended up staying in college for five years (or more) because they spent the first year or so figuring out what they wanted to do with their lives.  At 18, they don’t know what to do with their lives.  Granted, I thought I knew what I wanted to do with my life at a young age, but I was wrong: while I loved being a musician (both singing and playing), and I was good at math, it took some time before I grew into myself enough to realize that my heart really lay in the written word.  Thank God, ‘cause now even calculating a tip requires drawing on my palm.

“It’s not fair,” Catherine concluded, pout firmly in place.

Understatement of the year.

Then the conversation turned towards “The French System” in general.  Catherine has lived and taught in France, England, and the United States and as previously mentioned, her husband David is English, so their family has had to deal with multiple governmental systems multiple times.  Her conclusion?  France is convoluted and confusing and needlessly strict.  “When I returned from England, they made me go back to university to get my teaching degree despite the fact that I had just spent eight years in English-speaking countries.  When I was in American — hup!  I was immediately in a classroom.”

I did a little nod-headshake combo.  “Well, I understand why they’d make you get a teaching certificate.  In the States, you have to be certified in a certain state if you want to teach there.”

“No, no,” she corrected, “it was an actual course.  I already had my degree; I had to go to university again.  It was like I had to pass a loyalty test.  I’d been outside the country for so long, and now I came back.  They wanted to make it difficult for me.”

Preaching to the choir, my friend.  I told her about my First Rule of Being in France: “Yes, But . . . Or, There’s an Exception to Every Rule,” which was proven true during the whole debacle with the OFII officials.

She laughed and added, “It should be ‘No, But;’ usually the French will immediately tell you ‘no,’ no matter what.  If you keep pushing, then they will give you another choice.”  Preach, sister.  “They like to make decisions for you.  It’s been very hard for David in the French system.”

As much as I absolutely love France and its people, just like America, I’m not blind to their glaring faults.  In fact, France seems more and more real the longer I live here.  It’s no longer that pie-in-the-sky country you see on postcards and horrible romantic comedies with bright pink hearts floating like clouds in the sky and accordion music playing in the background.  (Though that’s kinda true; but in La Flèche, it’s more likely to be really bad 80’s music.  Or LMFAO.)  But making France real has in no way diminished my love for it; the dark side of the moon doesn’t make it any less dazzling.  I guess it’s like family members.  They can be crazy and annoying and God-awful sometimes, but dangnabit, you love them all the more for the imperfections.  Though when Crazy Aunt Betty gets a little shnockered and loosens her tongue about experiences in the 60’s best left untold, you may forget that tiny fact.

As I wrote this, I saw a news report about terminale students choosing what to do after they (hopefully) get their bac, which is how I would directly translate the French phrase: they don’t ‘pass’ their bac, but they ‘achieve’ it.  (Side note: a couple years ago, when the government learned that the number of students achieving their bac had risen dramatically, instead of patting the country’s children on the back, they made the test harder.)  One of the featured students aired her concerns, saying that at 17, she felt a little young to be making these big decisions.  The report had a heavy but anxious air to it, like bubbles in the stomach caused by performance anxiety, as if hinting at a collective covert societal norm that puts all the students’ eggs in one choice’s basket.  As an American, I have a hard time fully wrapping my head around such a feeling towards choosing post-high school plans.  In my brain, the conversation would go something like this:

“So what do you want to do after high school?”

“Meh.  Not quite sure yet.  Maybe I’ll try psychology.  If not that, ceramics sounds fun.  Or maybe marine biology.  I’ll see what I like after a year of gen eds.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Done.  Well, not ‘done,’ but more like ‘done until I figure out what done feels like.’  What the French conversation would be follows something like this:

“DECIDE.  YOU DECIDE NOW.  UNDERLINE, UNDERLINE, EXCLAMATION POINT.”

In French society, you can’t hit the undo button.  As much as upward mobility — that bootstrap mentality — may be a myth in the U.S. for the majority of Americans, the fact remains that it is, at the base, entirely possible.  I’m not saying that it’s not possible in France; just that it’s definitely a lot harder to do.  And you get judged not a little bit for doing it.

Ah.  Well, that was pretty serious.  How about a funny tidbit from one of my classes today?  I was in a BTS MUC class, so the students who had already passed the bac, and they were watching a CNN video on Snuggies (I know: WHY) for oral comprehension.  Catherine asked whether they thought CNN was an English or American channel.  Answering at the same time, two students each answered differently.  Catherine and I glanced at each other, smiles dancing around the corners of our mouths, and she asked, “Really?  Well, let’s listen again to his accent.”  She played the intro to the news report and asked again, “Now what do you think?”

The entire class answered in unison: “English.”

I couldn’t help it: though I covered my mouth hastily with my hand, I snorted.  By this time, Catherine was openly grinning.  “Becky, can you say something?”

“Do you guys really think he’s English?”  They all answered in the affirmative, eyebrows at the ‘yep, she’s an alien’ angle.  “Does his accent match mine?”  Silence.

Catherine finally took pity on them and corrected that CNN is an American channel with American journalists.  Sadly, that was the saving grace of the period, as they then refused to summarize the video.  Again, it was on Snuggies, so I could understand their refusal.

And now . . . a flashback!

10/16/2011

Vacances de la Toussaint

Our first vacation of term approached rather quickly and without warning: right as I was getting the hang of this teaching thing, it got interrupted by one of the four vacations I receive as a cute little side perk to this job.  The French schools receive about a week and a half for All Saints (Toussaint), or the day after Americans celebrate Halloween.  It’s a religious holiday, and I am not quite sure why it requires such a long break, but there you have it.

Of course, my first instinct was to pack it (too) full of vacation destinations, places I wanted to visit out of the country, mainly.  When I approached Amy with my self-planned vacation of Vienna, Prague, and Budapest, she quickly nixed it both on its length requirement and its cost.  She would rather have stayed in France and tour the country a bit.

Um, okay.  I knew my ideas were expensive, but if you wanted to go on vacation anywhere, it was going to cost money.  I thought everyone knew going into this gig that making money would be a pipe dream.  But the more I thought about it, and the more I cried over my checking account balance after I paid my bills for the first time, the more I realized that it might be a good idea to put off the more expensive vacations — until we at least got paid.  So, since I couldn’t go where I wanted to go, the least I could do was plan out three vacations I found acceptable and have Amy choose from them.  She offered the idea of spending a week in the southwest of France, an area neither of us had visited before.  I nodded and began planning.

Vacation #1: chateaux of the Loire Valley.  For anyone who doesn’t know, the Loire Valley features literally hundreds of castles, built by anyone from random nobles all the way up to the French kings.  They’re mercifully linked by a giant bike path that stretches from Nantes in the west all the way past Tours in the east, as transport chateau to chateau is not an easy feat.  I’ve seen the big ones, sometimes visited them multiple times: Blois, Chambord, Chenonceau, Angers, and Saumur.

Mah Blois staircase. Back. Off.

I lived in Chambord in a past life. Be jealous.

I don't think it's ever sunny around Chenonceau.

Familiar? Yes, it's Angers!

Saumur. That's all I can say, 'cause we weren't allowed inside.

But the crazy person that shares my body wanted to somehow attempt biking at least part of the castles.  We would station ourselves in Tours and branch out from there.  Tour minibuses left daily from the Tours office of tourism, and I listed all of their routes, times, and prices.  None of them offered an ideal plan, of course; some would pair a chateau I really yearned to see with one I had either grown bored of or could access through public transportation.  Another negative: the weather.  In France, the end of October into early November could be anything from gorgeously mild Indian summer to a hellishly cold and rainy winter preview.  For this plan to work, I would need to make daily sacrifices to the weather gods.  And maybe invest in a poncho.

So while I really (read: super, uber, holy God yes please) wanted to visit the chateaux of Ussé (the inspiration for Sleeping Beauty), Amboise (last residence of my past husband, François I, and one-time home of Leonardo DiVinci), Villandry, Cheverny, Chinon, and why not Chambord again, Tours and the chateaux were close enough that I could take a couple weekends and do them by myself.  Maybe when I learned how to drive stick. . . .

Vacation #2: south of France, including Bordeaux and Toulouse.  It sounded très appealing before I researched.  It would be new but relaxing, a complete antithesis to everything the chateaux tours represented, and it would be like a true vacation.  But, oh wait, there was nothing to do but wine tours.  And while French wine in France is less expensive than French wine outside of France, only foreigners go on those tours, and therefore they cost all limbs currently available.  Also, while I enjoy wine, I don’t enjoy it that much.  I would be spending money to be in a different place with nothing to do.  Oh, and spend all non-available limbs to get there.  No.  Thanks.

Clearly the more I researched that one, the more I hated it.

So that means . . .

Vacation #3 (!): Lyon.  I had never been to Lyon, but as it is the second largest city in France behind Paris and ahead of Marseille, I figured it might have some sort of appeal.

Just a little bit.

It is the “gastronomic capital,” and when we’re talking about France, they mean business.  Fine dining that I can’t afford aside, ancient Rome chose Lyon as Gaul’s capital, so Roman ruins and museums teaching about those ruins abounded.  Silk weavers took over part of Lyon in the Middle Ages, and some ateliers, or workshops, still survive today.  There was an aquarium, a printing museum, a museum of the first movie ever made, a museum for the guy who created something to do with light, a basilica, and a cathedral.  But the main draw in Lyon?  An American store.  Technically, a store-slash-restaurant, but I would have settled for just the store.  According to the website (yes, it’s that popular), it sells American products they deem iconic or . . . “special” like bacon-flavored dental floss.  They offer Dr. Pepper, Fruit Loops, hot dogs (kosher, too!), relish, Hershey’s syrup, marshmallow fluff, Crisco, and pumpkin.

I immediately guessed most of my souvenirs from Lyon would be American products. However, I could totally pass it off as lesson planning, right?  And if I could pass that off, maybe I could even write it off as a school expense. . . !

(Too much?  Yeah, well, I tried.)

So we’d decided on Lyon.  Now where to stay?  A hostel seemed the obvious choice, and in a city so large, one would think that Lyon would be overflowing.

Not so.  In fact, only one youth hostel exists in Lyon: the Auberge de Jeunesse Lyonnais, and though it had the best prices, its cleanliness review coupled with its inconvenience from the train station and the fact that it charged for storage lockers and requires a Hosteling International membership made it a last-straw option.  But nothing else seemed inexpensive enough!  Every room I found cost at least €50, and that definitely wasn’t happening for a week and change.  People on the Facebook group suggested couchsurfing, but as I quite enjoy life, I wasn’t willing to take that risk.  Finally, on my third tour of hopeless Google searching, I came across Hotel des Savoies, a budget hotel in a rather decent location that only cost €32ish a night per person.  Not horrible, and we would get our own room to boot.

Then I had a stroke of genius: why not mediate the cost by heading to nearby Annecy for a couple days?  It would get us out of the city and into a countryside that still offered history and something to do.  Plus, Annecy was famous for its lake, and while I visited it once about seven years ago for one day, I didn’t think I got the whole Annecy experience.

There.  Decided.  Amy and I Skyped to hammer out the details, including her brief stay with me in La Flèche to start out the vacation, and we had a plan!