Cold cold cold cold

We have had a bit of a cold snap (today it didn't get above 32 degrees) here in Mayenne. This has had the effect of shutting my brain off and making me want to sleep all the time. Apparently, I'm not used to functioning in these kinds of conditions: who'd have thought?

Nevertheless, I will try and persevere and write something that you all find mildly interesting, but in case this post isn't particularly good, I am blaming it on the cold, just so everyone knows.

Teaching
Someone told me that I hadn't been talking enough about teaching. I'm not sure why I avoid talking about this. I think it is because it is an experience that is hard to explain. I find it at the same time mundane and fascinating and sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between the two. In any case, I will try to give a brief description, and a synthesis of my experiences up until this point.
I think the thing that I find the oddest is that for the most part students actually listen to me. I will explain whatever I have planned today and then say "Let's go..." and they'll actually do what I ask, usually without complaint or comment. It's bizarre having such power and authority. Although I never taught in the US, I sometimes get the impression that students here are even more brainwashed than students back home. I remember when I first started with the classes here I had each person say something that they found interesting and I asked them to say something that they would maybe like to learn about. They were clearly uncomfortable with the thought of having to say what they were interested in and even more so at the thought of mentioning something that they might like to learn about. They are very much used to sitting and receiving information, which can make my position as someone who is mostly supposed to do spoken English challenging.
It's interesting and surprising to see what works and what doesn't work. There were a lot of factors at the beginning that I didn't think about--even now, things will work better or worse than I thought because of something I didn't think of. The two biggest factors  I have encountered have to do with the level of the class and the attitude of the class in general. At the high school, I only take juniors and seniors, and I started off with the assumption that the seniors would naturally be more advanced than the juniors. This has not been the case at all. The level of any particular class seems to be fairly random.
On top of that, the willingness of students to make an effort play a huge role. I have some classes where I feel like I have to force them to say anything, and there are other where I feel like I am only just barely in control. All of this pretty much means that a lesson plan that goes really well in one class can go over a lot worse in another class.
The lesson plans that work the best have been those that are somewhat interactive: for example, the ones I have done that involves games and songs. Even then though, my most rambunctious class can be hard to control and I still feel like I have to drag my most apathetic class into participation.
All in all, the beginning few months have definitely been a learning experience. The first thing I learned was how to perform. The first thing I lost was my sense of dignity (no regrets, it had to go anyways).

Which brings me to...

The number of times I have accidentally written, said, or handed something out with some form of the word "penis" on it...
This has happened more often than I certainly though it would. The problem lies in the fact that seemingly innocuous words in English that translate to not so innocuous words in French.

The first time this happened, I walked right into it. I sometimes start lessons by asking the students an icebreaker question that everyone has to respond to. On this particular day the question was "What is the hardest habit you've ever had to (or that you have to) break?". One very common answer to this question was "biting my nails". Here is where it gets tricky. In French, one say "manger les ongles" or "to eat one's nails". I was explaining to the students that instead of saying "to eat" in English we say "to bite'. Most of the students did not know the verb "to bite".  I usually write new vocabulary on the board, so I went up to the board and wrote "to bite". As I was finishing the e, a little alarm bell went off in my head, but it was too late. "Bite" in French (pronounced "beet") is like saying "cock". I had written "cock" on the board. I heard a couple students giggle, and then before I knew the whole class had started laughing, including myself. After I got control of myself, I crossed out the word and kept going with the lesson feeling a little foolish.

The other time this has happened to me, I had no idea I was doing it. I was handing out a handout with Christmas words on it. One of the words was "pine" because I had put a couple of the species of Christmas tree on the handout. In the first couple classes I heard some giggling, and went I over the words, everyone seemed really interested to know what "pine" meant (I hadn't put the French translations on the worksheet). Finally after having done 4 classes, someone finally said emphatically "ah ça veut pas dire ça en français..." and I finally caught on. Needless to say, I once again felt pretty foolish, and I just started laughing.

I'm pretty sure this will happen to me again, so I guess it's good that I've gotten rid on any dignity that I had, but it's still pretty alarming how easy it was to make these mistakes.

Anyhow, those are my anecdotes about teaching. I am very much looking forward to having some time off. Hopefully I will have time to recharge and to think about lesson plans that don't have to do with accidentally saying synonyms for penis. We'll see though...

My life could handle more giant mechanical elephants...

Bam! Check this picture out! Do you know what that is?

If you, through some incredible feat of intellect and insight guessed "giant mechanical/robot elephant" (not that the title of this post would give that away at all), then you are indeed correct. Good job.

You may be wondering where in the world I had the good fortune to run into such a fabulous creature. Those of you who know me (I'm guessing this is all of you, because I'm pretty sure this is not the kind of blog complete strangers read for fun), or those of you have taken more than 2 seconds to look at this blog would probably be astute enough to guess that this probably happened in France. Those of you who know where Mayenne is (I'm guessing this is, in fact, very few of you), might even be able to guess that it is somewhere in western France.

The answer is that I got to see this incredible machine in Nantes, a city which is not that far from where I live and which I got to visit this past week. A French teacher at my high regularly drives down to Nantes on Wednesdays because she does some work for the Musée des Beaux Arts down there. When I first got here at the beginning of the year she told me that if I ever wanted to see Nantes, she would be happy to take me with her sometime. I stored this information in the back of my head, but I did not take advantage of such an opportunity until this week. I have two friends in Laval who also happen to have Wednesdays off, so I invited them to come along as well and we all went down to Nantes.

When we got there, it was, surprisingly, raining (gee! Rain in the winter in France? How peculiar!). Although we walked through the city a bit, we decided to stick to the museums and we settled on visiting the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle and something called "Les Machines de l'Île".

I love Natural History museums. I especially love natural history museums in France and here is why: French natural history museums always seem universally to be the result of over-zealous 19th century French Naturalists. I think the reason why most of the museums exist is that in the 19th century a bunch of naturalists traveled the world over collecting and labeling rocks, killing and stuffing all manner of small animal, and pickling whatever else they could get their hands on all in the name of science. The problem was, that once they got back they realized that there was no where to put all of their carefully caught and labeled "specimens", and a national system of natural history museums was established to resolve the problem. In these museums everything was carefully arranged by genus and by the region that the specimen came from, carefully labeled by hand and then was promptly forgotten by the rest of mankind. I'm serious, in many of these museums the specimens still have the original labeling:

And this is what I loved about them--they have a slighty dusty and forgotten air, like things hastily stuck in drawer and forgotten about. It is as if they were remanants of some obsessive collection that you had years ago and that got placed in a closet somewhere and that you rediscovered while trying to find something completely unrelated. I love them.

Les Machines de L'Île held yet a completely different kind of exciting thing although this place too had a strange sort of 19th century feel to it which probably had to with the design and workmanship of the structure found within. It is the workshop of a company that makes giant mechanical puppets that are used around the work in spectacles and shows (here is their website). The cool thing about these puppets is they are a fusion of high tech machinery with old-school craftsmanship and attention to detail--the elephant can lift its trunks, move its eyes and eyelids, ears, etc.

Unluckily for us, the elephants was not working the when we went to visit, but we did get to see the workshop and some of the puppets that they were preparing for an a sea them carousel. You can see some of the highlights of the exhibit to the right. The coolest things about these machines is how much the builders paid attention to detail. For example, the tentacles of the squid have so many different points of articulation that when the do move they really do resemble tentacles. It is amazing.

You may wondering how it is that I know how these machines look when they are moving. This is because we had the good luck to be there when they were giving demonstrations of the way the machines work, and so we got to see them in action. We even got the chance to ride a couple of them ourselves!

Liz, a good friend of mine got the courage to volunteer first and as a reward for her boldness got to ride in this sweet Angler fish (right). The thing is actually pretty awesome when it moves--the light at the end of its antenna lights up and it can blow mist. In fact, you should check out the video of Liz riding the thing (or "wrangling the angler", as I like to say).
I was, on the other hand, slightly less bold than Liz. This meant that I nearly missed an opportunity entirely to ride one of the fabulous contraptions. Lucky for me, they were giving a demonstration of one of the machines that was designed for kids only, but they didn't have enough kids in the audiences, and so they aske for some adults to fill in. I leapt on the opportunity and volunteered immediately, the result being that it was me and a bunch of terrified small children on a ride that was somewhat less exciting that Liz's. In the pictures I look like some sort of giant interloper. Still, I am happy to have had the experience.

Anyhow, those were probably the highlights of my Nantes trips. The machines are well worth the visit, and I would highly recommend them to anyone who is in the area.

The rest my week went pretty well as well--the highlights were one of student saying that my hour of teaching English went by so much faster than their hour with their regular teacher (I wanted to do an air fist-pump, but I resisted) and managing to hang out with some more French people this weekend. I even got to watch the Miss France Pageant on TV! (In case you were wondering, Miss Normandy won--or I guess I should say Meees Normandie.)

Peanuts for Thanksgiving

So last week was Thankgiving. I almost forgot this because it is a hoilday that doesn't exist in France (obviously), and the only reason I remembered was thanks to dear old Facebook. Being the only American (as far as I know) in Mayenne, I wasn't really looking forward to this holiday, because, well, I didn't really have anything to look forward to. My host mom was working that night and I had to teach all day long. On top of that weather in France has become the way weather in France is supposed to be at this time of year--gray, rainy, windy and generally miserable. This is as opposed to November in Tucson which is glorious and soft and warm. Anyhow, in general it didn't really feel like Thanksgiving at all; by the end of the day, I was feeling very very homesick and all I wanted was to be with my (real) family.
My host mom is really very sweet. She knew it was Thanksgiving, and, as I mentioned, she had to work, but she decided that we would at least do a little apératif in honor of Thanksgiving. For those of you who don't know, an apératif is what the French call it when you have a little drink with snacks before dinner. So for Thanksgiving, I had peanuts and a kir (white wine +crème de cassis=yummy), which is not exactly conventional per se, but it's the thought that counts, right? Also, after dinner, my wonderful family called me from good old Tucson and simultaneously made me feel very jealous and very happy. It was really nice to hear from them, and really painful to hear in detail what exactly they were preparing for the meal.
The next day my host mom's cousin and good friend was coming to visit and she was very excited for him to come down, so she had got out these enormous cuts from a side of beef from that came from one of the happy cows that live in the region (she has friends who have cattle). I found this fairly unremarkable until she later explained that Pascale was going to cooks the cuts on the fireplace. For some reason, I was a little dubious this prospect--I'm a fan of barbecue, but for some reason the though of roasting meat on an open flame in the interior of your house seems positively medieval. Anyhow, the cousin came over but it was late in the evening, so we didn't really end up eating until about 10:30 or 11 at night, and the meat turned out to be excellent. Although, in typical French fashion, we didn't actually eat anything of vegetable origin with the meat. I don't know how much longer I'll be able to handle not eating vegetables on a regular basis. This is driving me crazy.
My family did, however drink copiously with meat and it was really fun seeing everyone let loose, except that after a certain point I have a hard time understanding without concetrating very hard and so I actually went to bed the first of anyone, including my 9-year old host sister. This is how I represent the US while I am here (party hard and briefly and then sleep!)

The towns here take Christmas decorations here really seriously. Since about early November I have slowly been seeing the preparations for the town Christmas lights go up all around town. I had mentioned to several colleagues and to my family that I was very excited to see them be lit and they said "ah but you have to go down to Laval to see their Christmas lights and their lighting ceremony, it is much better". Anyhow, realizing that my colleagues have lived in this region for some time, I realized that their advice was probably good advice and that I should probably go. The lighting was this weekend and I dutifully headed down to Laval to go and take a look.

As I was on the bus down to Laval, I was looking out the window and listening to music, and I thought to myself "Jesus, that rain is coming down hard. Very hard. I hope it's not like that tonight". It was probably one of the rainiest days we have had here yet. I arrived in Laval, and battled my way against the rain and wind to the Foyer, where the other assistants lived, and went and hung out with some of the Columbian Spanish language assistants for the afternoon. I kept an eye on the window and the rain did not let up. At 6:30 we bundled up to go outside and see the lighting, and the rain was pouring and the wind was howling just as much as it had been when I arrived. Unfortunately for us, we were all in that stupidly determined frame of mind where you are going to do something no matter what because you have been hearing about it for ages and it has to be good--right? Anyhow, about 12 of us left to walk to the bridge where they would be setting off fireworks and about 10 and 1/2 people's umbrellas immediately turned inside out. 5 minutes late everyone's umbrella who hadn't flipped inside-out the first time had turned inside out and about 5 people had had near fatal accident involving sudden umbrella collapse and those pesky metal poles that umbrellas are made out of. At no point did anyone suggest going back.

We finally got to the bridge where we going to watch the fireworks and huddled together for warmth. We had gotten there early to make sure that we were in a good place to watch (because this was really necessary given the weather conditions) and to freeze for a full ten minutes before the fireworks started, during which interval whatever remaining umbrellas were succesfully destroyed. This is how we looked:

The fireworks themselves were actually pretty cool. For starters, in France, they are much less concerned about liability issues such as people getting burned or lit on fire or damage to surrounding property. This meant that the fireworks were launched of a boat on the river that was right next to a row of house and probably about 50 feet from the bridge we were standing on. It was cool being so close to the action and seeing the nearby apartments and wondering vaguely if they were going to sustain any sort of fire damage. On top of this, the wind was so bad that all the fireworks were being blown around quite a bit as soon as they were launched. This meant that gold one that leave the long trails left really cool trails that tracked across the sky. In all, the show lasted about 20 minutes, which would have been great if we weren't freezing our asses off.

With the show finally over, we miserably trekked to O'Regan's, the local Irish pub, and started drinking large quantities of vin chaud to warm up. The rest of the night was pretty much your average night out except for one event, which may have been the highlight of my life (ok, fine, maybe that is an overstatement, but it was very cool). We had gotten a deck of cards from the bar and started playing a game where you had to guess the card that was stuck to your forehead. Anyhow, it was my turn and I said "8 of clubs?" and the others just looked at me and said ".... euh, ben oui, en faite..." (uh... yeah actually) (!!!!). Anyhow, how cool is that? I thought I was pretty awesome.

Besides that, the rest of my weekend was fairly uneventful. I stayed in Laval the next night as well and we went for a walk around town and the illuminations were even prettier when it wasn't rainy and windy (surprising, right?). We also went for a walk earlier that day and saw an adorable goat and some roosters co-co-ri-coing (this is how you say "cock-a-doodle-do").

This week I am teaching a song in my classes. It is Taylor Swift's "You belong with me". I will be lucky if it ever becomes dislodged from playing incessantly in brain.