Congé de printemps, printemps des chaises

Two Thursdays ago the students woke up early, raided the chairs from the main building at the campus of letters and placed them all in park, which is situated in the middle of a roundabout beside the school (an act designated Printemps des chaises, and the students who did go to class were forced to get along without chairs.  The following Tuesday there was a blocage, which means that the students prevented anyone from entering the university, and there was another one on Thursday.  And well today I'd heard quiet rumors of blocage but not much so I thought there would probably be class until a teacher explained that sometimes the students don't announce the blocage so that the students who come to class and realize that there is no school go to the protest marches.  When they broadcast the blocages, many students just don't go to class at all. 

Luckily for me, I have a teacher who starts an hour before I do and calls and gives me a heads up when the campus is blocked.

I'm not exactly sure what's causing the strikes--one thing is that teachers who are doing research are going to be monitored more closely to make sure they're publishing , which I think is fair because I get the feeling that people were taking advantage of all of their paid research time and not producing.  But the teachers are upset on this one, and as a result a lot of departments withheld grades from the students, and some of the students are just upset and striking because they want their grades!  They're also changing the way you become a teacher, and some people are mad about this too.  

Semesters at my universities are already short at 10 weeks (a few are 12, though...), and assuming that they strike next week too, my Tuesday class will have only met 6 times before the exam.  What really makes me mad is that I discovered that I can only test them on the information that we covered in class.  This means that the incentive of striking is both that you don't have to go to class and then you get an easier exam...and then in the end you get the same diploma as people who actually went to class and learned stuff.

I've heard said that now because of the strike culture, the government makes the laws too strict originally and then when the people strike, which they inevitably will, the government can give them back something.  

Ok well last Wednesday I headed to Paris to catch up with Parks, Angela, and Mattie who were there on spring break.  It was great reuniting with them, and we had a great time.  Some highlights of the trip include a boat trip down the Seine, a trip the palace of Versailles, and a trip to the Musée Marmottan, which houses the biggest collection of Monet paintings in a single location, and yet another trip to the wonderful Musée D'Orsay.  

And now I am waiting for my deuxième congé de printemps, that is to say my second spring break, which might be coming sooner than expected as I just heard that a continued blocage might be planned starting Thursday, and that will likely last until the end of the semester!

Write up of me in the school paper

So we have an English newspaper at school called the "Anglomane", and one monthly feature is an interview with one of the lecteurs. My friend Meghan Harris wrote this biography of me...

Kate Brantley comes from Madison, Mississippi in the Old South of the United States. Her accent doesn’t give this away because she consciously strove to minimize it when her French students had trouble understanding her.

“I had to carefully pronounce words. Instead of drawing out vowels, I just say them quickly and stop,” she explained. Americans might not agree on where they think she is from based on her current accent, but it’s a mute point for French students who don’t seem to recognize the differences among American accents at all.

Kate spent her first year in France as a teaching assistant at a lycee in Metz during the 2007-8 school year. Going to France seemed a logical next step after completing a double major in English literature and French at Birmingham Southern College in Alabama. She added the French major toward the end of her studies because she thought she'd lose her language skills if she didn't continue. She was eager to go abroad because, she jokes, there’s not much to do in Mississippi. To illustrate the point, the summer before she came to France, she was working at the Barnes and Noble bookstore chain and had gained notoriety as the top loyalty card seller at the store.

A year in France would also help her improve her practical use of the language because her French classes were mostly literary in nature.

"I could talk about Zola and other authors when I first came to France, but not about everyday things."

Her literary interest came in part from having an intellectual family (her mother and grandmother were teachers) and perhaps from having a famous Mississippi writer living down the street from where she grew up. She noted that a lot of writers come from this state: “It’s a complicated place, so there’s a lot to say.”

She liked France and wanted to stay another year, so she applied for a teaching assistant position at the Université Nancy 2. Between teaching in Metz and Nancy, she was an au pair in Provence for "the worst family in France," in her words. That may be an exaggeration as it sounds like her creativity simply clashed with the mother's parenting style.

As for teaching, she notes that French students expect teachers to do everything. And her desire for creative discussions and participation again clashes with the students' desire for structure. She finds the students' perfectionism amusing. A great example is when they use correction fluid to cover a written mistake on their papers instead of just scratching it out.

In her teaching role in Nancy, she expected students to be stronger than those she taught previously, but said it has been mixed. Her students this year are studying in diverse fields—psychology and law, among others. It's more challenging than last year and she's learning a lot, but the hardest thing are bureaucratic hurdles that cause her to spend a lot of time to take care of simple things, such as making copies.

There’s nothing she particularly misses from home, but she said she watches the comedy program, ‘The Daily Show’, everyday via the internet. She has come to appreciate Mississippi more lately, however, because the usually dreadfully hot, humid weather seems like a welcome change to the clouds and frequent rain showers in Lorraine.

As for her future plans, they’ve been influenced by the Spanish boyfriend—an Erasmus student—she picked up while ditching her accent in Metz. She’s visited him in Spain this year, but will see him more often when she takes a post this Fall as a teaching assistant in Almeria on the coast. Professionally, it’s a step down, but because her Spanish isn’t quite up to par, it’ll make the situation less stressful.

I went to Paris, and I saw Jordan. My Jordan! As in, known each other since we were small, spent a million Lebanese conventions and bored summers together, lied and told people we were cousins or sisters... I think this was the first time in two years that we have seen each other for more than a few hours, and it was great. It was nice to see Jodain too, of course.

Seeing people I know from the States is sort of surreal, two separate worlds colliding. Even after someone from across the Atlantic visits, I keep thinking I see other people from home. The faces of passers-by transform into those of the people from home--people I played soccer with when I was a child, people I went to high school with, even family members. It's also times like this that I wake up and can't remember where I am. After a few minutes of crossing off possibilities--I realize I am on my mattress directly on the floor (RIP shitty Ikea bed) and that the sun is seeping in through the slightly uneven curtains I made myself, which means I am in Nancy.

Friday I took the earliest train (almost missing it and forgetting to bring their wedding present), and I got to their swanky hotel by 8:30. Jodain came downstairs and brought me up to the hotel room where Jordan was getting ready, which was good because if I had first seen Jordan in the lobby, I would have screamed and cried and hugged her in front of a lot of snobby hotel workers, and as it was, I got to do it in the privacy of their hotel room. After a big omlette-y English breakfast, we hit the Champs Elysees where we went into shops like Luis Vuitton and admired thousand euro keychains before hitting Sacre Coeur and enjoying lunch in Monmartre. We made it to the Musee D'Orsay about 30 minutes before it closed--why do they even let you in at that point? It's not enough time to see anything at all. This is where we said goodbye as Jordan and Jodain had a boat tour of the Seine to catch.

Boo hoo.

At this point, I called Sarah, who was just getting off work at her new internship, and we hung out for a few hours before I had to return to Nancy. Sarah's boyfriend is in charge of some refugee camps in the Sudan, and he has been evacuated to the capital of Khartoum due to political unrest in the country. And less serious though still frustrating is her hunt for an apartment in Paris--there is serious competition for housing in that city, and until she gets it resolved she's couchsurfing with friends. So...we had plenty to catch up on even after just a week of not seeing each other, and she walked me to my train.

Carlos measures the quality of my blog entries by the number of times his name appears so I have to mention him at least once in this one to cheer him up because he is sick with the flu.

I'm learning a lot about productivity lately.  Like how on the days that I have a bunch of classes, I get home and am super-productive--clean, cook dinner, exercise, but on my days off, I MIGHT get a single thing done, like getting down the street to do a load of laundry.  Maybe I should think about waking up before noon on days I don't work.

I'm counting down the number of classes I have left.  In one class I only have one class left to conduct--the maximum number of classes I have left in a single subject is 5.  And I'm managing to recycle activities from other classes and how to well make it relevant for whatever subject matter it is.  

I'm dealing with coffee addiction-and with headaches and sluggishness when I don't drink it.  

I'm thinking about how nice it would be to have just a weekend at home--a chance to spend a few hours with family and friends, make a Walmart run, and raid my closet for my spring clothes.

I'm freaking out--mostly about the future.  Thinking about plans and contingency plans--what ifs and what if nots.  Most of my frustration is based on restrictive EU labor laws, which I won't get into because of their simultaneous boringness and frustratingness.  I'll just take this opportunity to--once more--wish I were British.

And now I'm going to bed. And then tomorrow  I will try to figure out how to plan without worrying.