¨¿Puedes hablar mas despacio, por favor?¨

Resuming where I left off last time...I was feeling pretty frustrated with my teaching. Thursday night I was at work until 8 p.m. trying to figure out what to do for my business finance class early on Friday morning. I am supposed to prepare them to talk about the financial state of businesses and prepare them to give a presentation about a business. I decided that the best thing to do was to teach them how to read a 10k report...probably the least interesting thing to do possible. And I got to class, and most of them were pretty disrespectful, and the one I yelled at last time for texting was still texting, and I left class as frustrated as ever.

That afternoon I had a class that I was meeting for the first time. The first two hours consisted of them giving me presentations with the differing financial policies of John McCain and Barack Obama as I graded them. The presentations were wonderful. The kids had obviously put lots of work into it, and some of them had memorized their speeches, and most of their English levels weren´t that high, but their motivation level was. One group had a mock debate between the two candidates, complete with an angry audience member whose house had been foreclosed. During the last hour I was supposed to talk to the students about the election (now see all of this time I´ve spent on cnn.com, www.fivethirtyeight.com and watching the Daily Show has not been in vain...) and then to start some debates between the kids. I told them about the elections with all of my ¨insider¨ info. Then we debated some issues like gun control and finally we had a debate of McCain vs. Obama for president. My goal of doing this was to actually create some political dialogue about the election because over here in Europe, there is no dialog--everyone supports Barack Obama and no one understands why anyone would vote for John McCain. (This is not to say that in America, there is a fruitful political dialog--what with all of the personal attacks that have been going on...) But in an ideal world, this election would produce such political exchanges. At the end of the class, I told the students they could leave, and they didn´t want to--even though it was 5pm on a Friday before a vacation. They all stuck around to ask me a few more questions. This was a breath of fresh air I needed in my teaching. The students were motivated, engaged and best of all (for my ego) interested in what I had to say. I know that what I need to do is spend less time working on the classes where the students don´t care. English is a very low priority for them--a requirement to graduate, but something they dont care about.

So Friday night I headed to Metz to spend the night with Helen so I could catch my shuttle. It was sort of weird to be back, but it was great to see Helen, and we went out with Claire. I need to make more of an effort to see my friends in Metz...it is only a 30 minute train ride, and it´s so nice to see old friends. It is bittersweet to go back to Metz though because even though I was only there 7 months, it really became home, and it is weird to go back when I don´t live there, and when most of my amazing friends don´t live there anymore.

My trip to Almeria was long, but I had no problems. The trip has been a little low key but nice. I have been enjoying lots of Spanish food--especially tapas. Carlos and I have just been bumming around town eating tapas, walking on the beach etc etc.

My Spanish skills are pretty bad. I mean, they are not bad considering that I have never had a formal Spanish class in my life, and that I only started learning a year ago. But considering how much time I will spend in Spain with all of my vacations this year/how little I like feeling like an idiot when talking to people here, they are awful. "Are you deaf?¨ Elena asked me in all seriousness when I didn´t understand something she said. The other day the maid was here and said, ¨You will only speak Spanish while I am here,¨ a command I ignored because why would I want the maid to eavesdrop on my breakfast conversation with Carlos? Anyway, just after that we went to get my hair cut because I figured that it would be better to take a native with me than to risk any ambiguities in France (last time I got a haircut in France, I left the parlor with an enormous, horrible afro....). Well, the hair dresser was the daughter of the maid, and the maid ended up there, and there everyone stood around and started talking about how bad my Spanish is. i.e. "If she wants to learn Spanish, she´d better start talking." ¨How long has she been studying? And she still isn´t talking?¨ The hair dresser was a little more optimistic, ¨I think she understands more than she lets on...¨ Anyway, it was pretty awkward for me that everyone was standing around criticizing/speculating about my language level. I didn´t quite understand enough to interject and was also a little shy/intimidated by the situation. I have been studying a lot since then and things are improving. I am discovering however, that the accent here in Andalusia is much harder to understand than other accents, with lots of abbreviated/mumbled words and dropped letters. I am getting really good at saying, ¨Can you speak more slowly please?¨

Elena has not left me alone for more than five minutes since I arrived. She is a good language teacher for me. We have a game where we go through all of the actions of the day. First, we get up; then we go to school; then we shower, etc etc. Or else she will say, ¨Draw a sun. Now a house. Now some grass.¨ It is working, and my vocabulary is growing thanks to her and thanks to the illustrated children´s dictionary that Carlos found with his old toys. "Kiiii-eeeeeeet! ¿Dondé estas?¨ she says every time she gets home and can´t find me. She does not seem to understand why Carlos gets to spend more time with me than she does, and gets jealous if he sits next to me. ¨She belongs to me!¨ Carlos finally told her. I am taking to playing with her every day while Carlos is in class. I do enjoy it, of course, especially the thousands of hugs and her telling me how much she loves me.

This weekend Carlos and I are going to celebrate our anniversary (it was yesterday) either by going to Cabo de Gata, which has some of the prettiest beaches in Spain or by going to Mini-Hollywood, which is a theme park in some of the preserved movie sets of American Westerns that were filmed here.

Little known fact--John Lennon wrote ¨Strawberry Fields Forever¨ while he was here in Almeria.

That´s all. Hasta Luego

I did what I promised myself I would never do. I gave the teacher speech--the "I work so hard on fun lessons, but you don't appreciate them." / "You disrespect me when you talk and don't pay attention to me"/ "I don't get paid enough for this," and I almost made it to, "I'm not doing this for my health," before I stopped myself. Then and there I transformed into every teacher I have disliked (and a few of them I did). But the kids were really out of hand. Maybe it's because everyone's antsy for the vacation next week or because the first fun introductory lessons are over and now we are having to get to the actual boring meaty business finance (or whatever subject it is) English. One of my French friends told me that it is normal for French students to be disrespectful and to send text messages during class or sleep or talk or whatever, but I have been spending too much time and energy on my lessons for that. Anyway, all that's to say that I am VERY ready for the vacation next week, and even though I've only been working 6 weeks, I feel that I have earned it.

"I will teach Kate Spanish, and you can teach her English," Elena, Carlos' little sister, told me the other day. She's pretty excited that I am coming, especially because she knows I will be bearing gifts. I can't wait for the vacation--I have plenty of class stuff to do the next few days and plenty of things to do before I leave so hopefully the next few days will fly by.

My flight is on Saturday morning, but I will be leaving on Friday night to go stay with Helen in Metz because my shuttle leaves from there at 5 a.m. It will be nice to get to see her and to spend a little time in Metz--we will probably also get to hang out with some other friends who are still there. My route to get to see Carlos is pretty complicated--shuttle from Metz to Frankfurthahn, flight to Sevilla, 5 hour train to Almeria. My way home is a little simpler. Sort of. I fly from Almeria to Madrid and then fly from Madrid to Paris. What I didn't realize, though, is that the airport Ryanair flys into in "Paris" is actually 60 kilometers outside of Paris, and there is a chance that I will miss the last train to Nancy on Monday night. I was pretty stressed when I learned this, but I will just spend a night in a hotel in Paris if I have to and enjoy an evening in the City of Lights. My co-workers are prepared to cover for me if I am late to work on Tuesday morning. Right now, I am officially stopping worrying about the stress of getting there and back and simply imagining myself on the beach.

Ruth and I went to Sarrebourg last weekend, a small town near Germany to go see a Marc Chagall exhibit. It seems kind of random that this tiny city should get a show by such a famous artist. At the tourist office, I asked the woman if there was anything else to see or do in the city, and she said that there were Marc Chagall windows, but that the chapel they were in was closed for construction. I was pretty upset to hear this because, come on, when would I ever go back to Sarrebourg? The exhibit itself was good--it was mostly his paintings for a book called Daphnis and Chloé, and they were not as impressive as the huge oil Biblical paintings of his that I saw in Nice, but they were good. Ruth and I were left the exhibit and were conspiring on a way to disguise ourselves as construction workers to get inside the chapel when we saw someone just walk in. We snuck in backs-against-the-wall Mission Impossible-style when we realized that there was a tour group who had gotten special permission to enter and that we crept in behind them. And wow. It is just one window, but it takes up one entire wall in the chapel. Et voilà!



The consequence of sneaking into the chapel was that the we almost got locked inside--but we did successfully escape and live to tell the tale.

The weather here last weekend was gorgeous--just gorgeous--you definitely wouldn't have even known you were in Lorraine. Ruth and I went to a flea market, but I spent most of the weekend working on my classes. Things are finally settling down at work a little bit as I get into the swing of things. The finance class that I had to take wasn't that bad--the kids were actually receptive, and since another lecteur Arron and I switch groups every week, I only have to have two lesson plans a month. I've seen my schedule for next semester, and it looks less varied than this semester, and I will have fewer hours so it should be calmer.

Anyway, I was realizing recently that even though I get overwhelmed and stressed out easily, it is how I function best because if I am not busy, I am bored! Remembering this has made me a happier to be where I am. Living here is challenging, but when I am not challenged, I go nuts. I'm remembering all of the menial jobs I've been through in the past couple of years--hostess, daycare teacher, bookstore worker--and I am remembering how I was just pulling my hair out from boredom. I am definitely learning a lot being a lectrice, and there's never a slow moment.

On Monday I got into a pretty profound discussion which one of the teachers in my department which translated into me getting invited over to dinner to his house along with another teacher in my department and her daughter. We got there, and the house was kind of messy and there were kids everywhere running around and having fun, and everyone kept apologizing for how unorganized everything was, but was such a relief to see French parents who were not at all like the draconian family I spent the summer with. It was also just nice to be a part of normal family life and hopefully I'll be going back sometime soon or will at least do a little babysitting.

Today I had the medical appointment I need before I can get my carte de sejour. A week ago, I received a letter at school with an appointment that they had chosen --and of course it was at a terribly inconvenient time--during a class I have that only meets 3 times. The teacher pushed back the class an hour, but I got stuck at the medical appointment all afternoon so I had to cancel it. I will have to reschedule it later, but I don't care because all of the medical stuff went smoothly which is a huge relief. I was late to my appointment last year, and this caused problems with everything else, as a sort of domino effect. This year the appointments were out in the Middle of Nowhere, End of the Tramline suburbs, but my roommate gave me exact instructions on how to get there. They did the x-ray of my lungs, which was awkward but fine and I had a little medical examination, and now I am ready for my appointment in a few weeks to apply for my CDS.

It's an interesting time to be an American. Sometimes when I meet strangers (as with the doctor at the medical examination), people are interested in the elections and want to hear my opinion about it--which is good because I have a lot to say (and after checking www.fivethirtyeight.com I am always prepared with the latest poll results!) In my Spanish class, my teacher asked me to give a presentation on the elections. Carlos helped me beforehand, and I went up there and mangled the language in trying to explain the American system. I wasn't prepared for the students to be really interested in the subject, and they just kept asking questions--questions that I had a lot of trouble with with my Spanish vocabulary of simple words like "man/woman" "good/bad" and a few verbs conjugated only in the present tense, haha. I ended up switching to French, and I am not sure that they understand that a whole lot better, but the point is that everyone was very excited and interested to talk to me.

Other times, on the other hand, as with the man Ruth was buying something from at the flea market last weekend, the reaction is hostile, "This whole crisis is your fault! because of the war in Iraq!" I didn't know what to tell him other than that I didn't vote for Bush nor did I default on a loan. But there are definite hostilities towards Americans based on the financial situation, even though most people will admit that it was the fault of European banks for investing their money in the American loan system.

In my classes, since I have a lot of business and finance classes, we are discussing the crisis a lot, and it's interesting to discuss how the un-regulated capitalism (of which the United States was so fiercely proud) failed and how systems like France's, which seem so complicated to me, are doing better. We also got to some interesting discussions about how different countries' cultural values affect their economies. Although, before I sound to keen on France's political/economic system, I must note, that after the comparative economics I have been looking at, I think it's really crazy how France is unable to make progress because people go on strike every time one is proposed. I've read that a lot of businesses have been driven out of this country as a result of how expensive it is to do business here. This is all stuff that I have had a lot of trouble understanding, and hopefully being able to get the perspective of the students will help shine a little light on it.

Everything in my apartment is good. My building is between 100-150 years old, and sometimes when I am going up the narrow wooden staircase, I can imagine some pensionnaires straight out of a Zola novel living here. The problem with living somewhere so old is the bad acoustics. On my street all of the buildings are the same size and height, and so the result is just two (sound-trapping) walls with a street in the middle--so basically I can hear every single tiny thing that happens in the street. It's funny because people walking down the street think they have more privacy than they do--I (and everyone else on the street) can hear every word they say. It's the same with the people in the building--I can always tell what room my neighbors are in, whether they are watching television, when they flush the toilet. It's weird--all of this stuff should be private!

Tomorrow Ruth and I are going to a Marc Chagall exhibit in a tiny village near here. I am very excited!

Pink Floyds in a pond

Et voilà, I have been saddled with yet another class--two actually, but I took one of them voluntarily.  The first one is a business class, and it just really makes me mad because that just adds another discipline to my courseload (and a different campus in the city I have to run back and forth to), making me feel even more schizophrenic and unorganized.  The other one is another Phonetics 101 class--and since I already prepare for that class, having another hour of teaching won't make to much of a difference--and I figured that I might as well make the overtime pay if I was already planning the lessons.  The business class won't add any overtime pay because I am pretty sure that one of my sections of the English conversation class (the class with the speed dating lesson plan) is getting cancelled.  Last week there was a single student, which was just terribly awkward for the both of us, especially since the class is based on the students talking to one another and playing little games.  So I had to sit down with him and pretend that I was a hotel receptionist, and he had to pretend like he wanted to rent a room and blah blah blah it was two very long hours.  

"I didn't WANT to choose you for this course," my boss said about the new class, "You are just the only one I could find who was free on Monday afternoon."  I think this was an attempt to make me feel better about having to take the class?  But Carlos played Pollyanna and reminded me of some good news about the whole situation--that if I want to teach English in future, then business English experience is a really great thing to have.   

Anyway so that's school, and I haven't had a lot of time for other stuff since class preparations are keeping me busy.  I am going out twice this week with the other lecteurs and students to bars due to a mix up between the lecteurs!  Well, once was last night, and it was nice.  My friend Kat, a lectrice in a different university in Nancy was telling me how at her university, the teacher taught all of the students that flamingo in English was "Pink Floyd."  So when the students had to label drawings of animals, the pond of flamingos was instead a pond full of "Pink Floyds."

That's about it for now--class preparation is taking me a really long time and is keeping me busy.   Plus, well, I have a pretty bad election addiction which is preventing my class planning from going as efficiently as it should be(checking www.fivethirtyeight.com five times a day) And...tomorrow in Spanish class I need to figure out how to explain the electoral college in Spanish.  That's one that's not easy to explain in English...

When I told my friend Nathan to meet me by the statue of human hearts, I didn't imagine that we could have any confusion.  Outside one of the exits of the Nancy train station is a monument towards organ donation--a (grotesque) statue of human hearts in a sort of twisting shape.  Well, apparently most of the people in Nancy don't even notice the statue, even though it's next to the most central bus station--I guess it's just one of those things that people walk by and don't think about.  Because when he got off the train, he asked several people where it was, and no one knew.  Even the guy at the information desk didn't know and tried to Google it.  Well, we sat on opposite sides of the train station for over an hour before we found each other.

Nathan is one of my friends from Lebanese Convention who I've known for years, and in his backpacking trip through Europe he made a stop in Nancy to see me.  The night he arrived the other lecteurs and I had already committed to going to a pub with our students to give them a chance to speak English in a more relaxed setting.  I was a little apologetic for having to drag Nathan along, but it really worked out for him because on his trip he'd been wanting to have more contact with natives--and there they were a bar full of them, excited to talk to anglophones, especially one who lives in New York.  It was really a huge success, the night out.  I was pretty surprised based on how lethargic and apathetic my students are in class, but then I remembered that French students don't have clubs and organizations, and the students were excited for a chance to socialize, especially the ones who have just moved to Nancy.  It looks like this is going to be a regular event throughout the year.  The boss of all of the lecteurs warned us that the attendance to such evenings will wane, but it doesn't matter to me because I won't be bothered at all if there are no students there and just lecteurs!

Wednesday is my day off so I took Nathan around Nancy.  We had a lovely day and visited some museums, all of which I had seen before, but I still enjoyed them.  

This week was pretty busy, mostly so that I could make sure to have plenty of free time to show Nathan around.  And after not having had much time to prepare for my classes this week, I was kind of running around and floundering in a few of them (especially sociology!).  Hmmm...my plan is to work on it this weekend, but now that I have a little free time and internet, I am not exactly where to start, and I often end up getting distracted reading up on news from the presidential elections.  

Today I met up with Ruth, who is basically a friend of a bunch of my good friends friends and just arrived as an assistant here.  She is from Alabama and went to Ole Miss so it's cool because not only can we talk about being from the South, but we can reminisce about our specific friends.  Plus, I like being able to impart my wisdom seeing as I am a former assistant.

You will be proud to know that I sewed myself some curtains, and they didn't turn out half bad--the problem now is that my window is so tall that I can't hang them!  

My Spanish class is too advanced, but I guess that's good because I am learning a LOT in my classes...I will study in my free time if I can ever catch up on my classes.  I'd like to be able to pull off at least a few sentences the next time I see Carlos' family.  Only 3 weeks away!