9 tenths of a century

beach

Today I arrived in Salobrena to see Brenda.15 minutes and a hug fest later, and I can officially say I have not been happier to see two single people than I have been in the last two days than to see Shannon and Brenda. Not that I don’t like Dieppe. I actually really like it. But in the end there’s nothing better than being enveloped in a giant bear hug by your friend after jumping up and down like a couple of 10 year olds.

Tomorrow my Abuelito turns 90. 90. NINETY. This seems pretty epic to me for a number of reasons. For one thing, my Abuelito is the most gracefully aged person I know. He does crossword puzzles daily. He dances valentao better than my 24 year old cousin. Scratch that. He dances Reggaeton better than anyone my age. He never gave a second thought in his life as to how he could live a healthier life so that he could live longer. Meanwhile, I try to be healthy and take my vitamins, but my hypothetical life scenario usually ends at the age of 25 with me living in a squatter residence.

About a month ago, my mom and dad told me they were going to Colombia to surprise him for his birthday. Laughing into the phone I remember asking my mom if this was a good idea since he was turning 90. NINETY.

I laughed then, but I would love to be nowhere else in the world tomorrow but on the patio of my abuelo’s sunny house, eating arroz con coco, and watching Abuelito, sitting at the head of the table, eyes crinkling and smiling at his years.

30 days of solitude

Every once in a while, my former 13 year old insecure self rears its ugly head, reminding me that no matter how much I like to think I’ve changed since adolescence, we’re all inevitably tied to some sort of inextricable need to be liked, no matter how much we like being alone.

I arrived in Sevilla yesterday to see Shannon, after spending 20+ hours on a bed and bunk train, that left at 7pm on Sunday evening from Paris. Bed and bunk trains are interesting, especially when going at it alone, because you are given about 4 square feet of cot space to share with three other complete strangers. After 13 hours, there aren’t many details you don’t know about these people. If they happen to be fighting with their spouse, you know. if their feet happen to smell, you KNOW.

Seeing Shannon and getting a chance to hang out and talk with her last night reminded me how nice it is to be somewhere (excuse the cheesiness) where you feel like you belong, to talk to someone who knows you and who doesn’t look at you as if you were a talking dog that up and walked into somebody’s living room.

And yet I woke up this morning, and as I watched the rain spatter down over the window pane, and heard Shannon slam the door to go to work, and watched as the apartment settled into early morning silence, I all of a sudden felt so completely alone, I thought my stomach was going to up and jump out of my body, and do a dance on the kitchen table. Sometimes I wonder why I decided to pack everything up and move away. I realize that the older you get, and the less finite your living space becomes, the less you can rely on the safety net of having people around. And I realize that much of the same feeling of lonliness and isolation that people will inevitably feel at some point in their lives, is not unique to me. Shannon and Brenda have had to deal with the same things I think. I think at some point in their lives everybody has to ask the question of “what do I have? and who do I have? and why is this important?”

Nostalgia is a bitch, especially when it sneaks up from behind you, through all all the ins and outs of everyday life, and sucker punches you right in the stomach. Some days I hear stories of first snows and pumpkin carving, and immediately want o be telertransported back to the states for just a day. But other days when nostalgia creeps its way into the cobwebs of my brain, I just end up thinking nostalgic for what, exactly? and then i can’t put my finger on what I’m thinking.

Even now, that I’m starting to establish some sort of life here in France, and will get regular text messages from Dom or Alli or Andrew, asking how my day is going, or filling me in on what happened over the weekend, I find myself feeling like I’m in some sort of transient state, like the life I have here is just a big fake (even though I know it isn’t), and I feel like I’m 4 inches tall, jumping up and down, waving my arms, and begging people at home to not forget about me. Dom and I were discussing the other day how funny it is to be in a state, where you haven’t completely established yourself in a new environment, and you almost hate to respond to the e-mails you receive because you know that as soon as you do, you’ll be waiting for a response.

And I know this attitude is completely unrealistic and narcicisstic, and most days I’m too busy to be bothered by small intricacies of my contact with home, and on the flip side, I know people at home are busy too with important things like classes, and work, and grocery shopping, I I often forget sometimes how faraway feels until I wake up unexpectedly one morning, and the only thing I hear are street noises of a culture that is still completely foreign to me.

And maybe you can chalk it up to the rain or daylights savings time, or what have you, or maybe it’s just my 13 year old self rearing its head, or maybe it’s the very real shock of slowly but surely realizing that you are completely alone, and the safety net is gone, and you’re finally on your own.

cross dressing the “cross”

runners

I woke up this morning to the disturbingly familiar sight of red and white tape being passed in front of my bedroom window to mark off the course for the annual race or the “cross” that marks the beginning of Vacances de Toussant. Walking to class, I passed groups of cheering students, who had started to gather along the marked course to cheer their friends along for the grueling 5k.

I remember running cross-country in High School. I remember the 5k. I remember walking to the starting line at meets as if I was on a death march, passing groups of oblivious and happy spectators, eating chips and cheering on their schools. I don’t remember it being a particularly pleasant experience, and watching the students jogging in place before they headed to the start, I realized how happy I was to be the one holding the camera this time around.

Even so, some people decided to take the festive route and dressed up as hula dancers and football players.

It’s vacation, and everybody today has been walking around with that glazed look that people get when they know they just have to show up and not do anything because in two hours they can get the hell out, and won’t have to worry about catching up tomorrow.

rain

Speaking of which, I found this picture of Brenda, while I was going through my pictures. I took  it while we were taking a rainy day walk in Dallas in August. Walking barefoot along the pavement, we had to hop around so we wouldn’t smash the little invisible frogs that seemed to appear out of nowhere. It was the day we got interviewed for the news because we were the only ones walking out in the “rain”, and apparently in Dallas this is of newsworthy significance, but we just ended up looking like we could be eligible for the AARP, using gems like “these cooler temperatures are such a welcome change” or “as long as you have an umbrella you’re as good as gold”. I don’t really have a good reason for posting this other than the fact that I just really like this picture.

PLUS I get to visit Brenda and Shannon in two days!

I’m a Bug in a Jar

beautiful light fixtures

It never ceases to amaze me how my life has passed from complete and total anonymity last year, to an object of scutinizing observation this year. Last year I was worried that if I happened to choke on something, nobody would notice until a week later when the mean cat lady’s cats wandered over to see what smelled so foul. Lately I haven’t been able to walk around Neruda without a hundred stares following me, and salutations of “hello!” or the more annoying version “hello girl!” The other day I was talking to another assistant named Andrew who said he realized how scrutinized our lives are as assistants  when he was talking to his professor, and she remarked, “the student last year used to wake up late, and drank a lot of wine. I wonder if he was an alchoholic.” ZING.

It occured to me that perhaps my behavioral practices were being equally scrutinized, and I’m starting to wonder if perhaps I’m more of a zoological exhibit here than un “experiment pedagogique”. Indeed, the appartment that I share with the Spanish and German assistants happens to be right outside the area where the boarding students gather at night to smoke, and you can literally see the eyes start to bulge out of their heads as they pass our windows. Seeing as to how wine here is cheaper than water, Mirium and I have amassed quite a nice little collection. This was fine, until two lanky students stricken with pimples walked by our kitchen, and staring into the floor to cieling window that we had left open, commenced to wave and make drinking motions with their hands.

Hey Mom, I promised you a picture of my room- I did the best with what I have...

All we need now is a plaque to put outside our door:

The language assistants are a reclusive breed, and one would be lucky enough to spot one in the wild. While generally placid creatures, the assistants are prone to bouts of stress. Please to not feed the assistants. While they tend to eat just like humans, their habits are erratic and varied.

I expect to be summoned for a talk with the headmaster next week involving my drinking problem that is spiraling out of control. Word gets around fast.

This bug in a jar syndrome of course was not made any better by the fact that last night I arrived home at the peak hour of student gathering, to find Mirium and Rocio helping the secretary bring in a makeshift couch, and some shelves, thereby piquing the curiosity of the entire student population of Pablo Neruda.

A place for dishes! Luxury!

The secretary’s name in Michelle, and she reminds me of my old piano teacher Mrs.Boatwright who used to wear crafty shawls and who made collages in her basement, and was never without her dog Mopsy, who was stricken with blindness in his old age, and would bump into walls.

As I made my way into the appartment among all the chaos, I suddenly saw Michelle all dressed in red in the middle of the living room, making grand hand gestures to the sullen looking attendant Monsieur Torrent. “It needs more color! It needs more character” she cried as if she were an interior designer who had been given a day to overhaul a room on trading spaces. And yet, despite all the big to do and the googly eyed high schoolers looking in our windows, and the sullen looking attendant standing in the corner- it’s effing nice to have some shelves for dishes and something to sit on that does not resemble the small plastic desk chairs I sat on in Elementary school.

I can’t even think about how nice it was for Michelle to go out of her way to bring these things for us after work. It’ll make my heart explode if I do.

comes to this?

Today I inadvertently screwed two people out of an apartment, simply by existing, and refusing to move.

I guess it doesn’t matter what reasons I had, and sometimes I wake up in the morning feeling like a big ball of selfishness, but that’s the way it goes I guess.

Sorry Alli, sorry Andrew, I’m entropy personified…

…but I’m well intentioned.

Scooby-Doo is Not the Answer. Just the Excuse.

Yesterday I had a James Bond moment of invincibility that came crashing down to a head today in a big flaming ball of inadequacy.

I am in the constant state of catching up to things. Some people are always two steps ahead of everybody else, whereas I seem to be the one scurring behind, leaving a trail of papers, trying to brush my teeth on the way to class. I’ve always known this, and so has everybody else, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody that yesterday I missed my bus to the train station that would take me to orientation in Rouen.

Arriving at the Delvincourt bustop just in time to see the tailights of my bus disappear down the hill and into darkness, I decided I had enough time to make the half hour hike to the train station, leaving me enough time to catch the 7:54 to Rouen. About half way to the train station I realized I had used waaay more than my alotted 15 minutes, meaning that I had about 10 minutes to get somewhere that was indeed a mile away. Sprinting down the hill in a ball of flannel I began passing buildings as they dissapeared behind me in a blur. 5 minutes until my train left. 4 minutes. Andrew, the assistant from the aptly named town EU outside Dieppe who was supposed to meet me at the train station and who was no doubt already on the train sent me a message reading “are you alive?” Barely. No time to respond. I ran into the station, legs giving out, lungs collapsed, just in  time to see the train start to depart from platform 2. Shit. “Allez! Allez!”, the uniformed SNCF officer yelled at me. “I haven’t composted my ticket yet!” I cried holding out my ticket which hadn’t been passed through the little yellow validation station yet. “Ca n’a importe de quoi!”, he cried again as I, in my head, swooped gracefully past the yellow validation machine in slow motion still holding out my ticket, which gave off sparks as it grazed its side. The conductor held out his hand. I grabbed it. Up he pulled me up onto the train, as I collapsed in a sweaty, tired mass in the conductor’s car, holding out my ticket so he could sign it.

Needless to say. I made the train. No, James Bonded the train.  Very Mission Impossible, Indeed.

I was riding on that little high until this morning, when I had the second task of presenting some information about Halloween to a class of 15 year olds. I jumped on a train. I could do this. So I carefully made out a crossword puzzle with words like “trick or treat” and “witch”. I also made up a sheet of of old Calvin and Hobbes comics on Halloween and included the requisite Linus and the Great Pumpkin stips from Peanuts. I figured I could explain the strips, and at the same time explain the concepts that went with them like carving jack-o-lanterns and trick or treating.

When I was 12, my brother and I went through a period of 6 months where we bought every Calvin and Hobbes book available and laughed our heads off. Lesson in teaching English: Humor does not always translate. As I stood in front of the class of thirty-five bored looking students, I tried to remember what the endearingly British Olivier had said the previous day at orientation in his workshop on connecting with students. On asking somebody if they had heard of Scooby Doo, he said “Scooby Doo is not the answer. Scooby Doo is just the excuse”, meaning the excuse to get people talking. Brilliance.

But Calvin and Hobbes proved to not be an excuse for anything. The comic ctrip that I picked shows Calvin holding a knife about to carve a jack-o-lantern. “OK Jack” he says, “time for your labotamy!”, to which Hobbes meekly replies “Yech, not even any anesthesthia”. I remember laughing at this a long time ago- It was funny, I swear. But all of a sudden hearing it read in a French accent, and taken out of context I realized that not only did it not make sense, but it was also not funny or appropriate, and I all of a sudden felt like the crazy language assistant with the sick, perverse sense of humor. EHHHH (loosens collar a little).

How do you explain to a group of French 15-year olds how the idea of performing a lobotomy on a jack-o-lantern is funny? No, no. two steps back. How do you explain a lobotomy to a group of French 15 year-olds?

This is not a blog about Cows.

This is not a blog about cows. I promise.

However, I was walking along the chemin at night my first day here to get to the main road and heard a rustling noise in the bushes. Thinking I was still in Columbus, I pulled out my pepper spray to realize that the two brown eyes staring at me could not possibly belong to a human being. Needless to say, this is the image that greeted me the next morning when I walked down the same path to get to the center of Dieppe.

Some things really do not seem to change.

On the other hand, this is the exceptionally gross and exceptionally small toilet that greeted me when I was in Rouen the other day. I’m not kidding, I walked into the stall and thought maybe in France they have special public toilets for children. This things was smaller than my foot, and stood about 6 inches off the ground.

Strange Days

I seem to be finding friends in the strangest places. On the one hand there’s all the random French people I come into contact with on a daily basis. My closest French friend right now (since Dieppe has no university and therefore most of its inhabitants might as well either be eligible for senior or juvenile benefits), is named Mathieu and he’s 12 years old, and kicks ass. One day as I was sitting creepily in the corner of Cafe Victor Hugo, he came up to me, and asked if I wanted to play Backgammon. Since I didn’t know how to play, he taught me, and we spent the entire afternoon chatting and playing board games. Since then, I see him everywhere- downtown at a supermarket called Shopi, on I’ll feel a tap on my shoulder as I’m walking down the street and it’ll be him running to get home in time for dinner.

I had my requisite medical visit in Rouen yesterday, which is my gateway to the ellusive Carte de Sejour (yay social security!). And since most of the people who had to get x-rays ( hey Mom, no Tuberculosis!)  are from outside the EU, most of them spoke English or Spanish, meaning I successfully avoided speaking French for an entire day.

Speaking to other non-Frenchies is odd- especially since I’ve been so immersed in Fench lately. I know that before I got here, I told myself that I wouldn’t hang out with other English speakers, but I forget sometimes how big of a role little cultural reference points play in helping to define our places in the world, indeed in defining ourselves. What music do we listen to and what tv shows do we watch? What music did our parents listen to? What were our favorite commercials or books when we were little? Sometimes talking to classes of high school and middle school students, you start to lose track these cultural phonomenon, having no idea where their interests are coming from, and they yours. We live in societies where so much of what we are surrounded by forms our lives, and our habits, and our likes and dislikes, that it’s odd to be someplace where these reference points have absolutely no context. And it’s funny how losing the cultural minutae of your existence affects the way you start to see yourself. and how you start to see other people. 

This is why every once in awhile, it’s oddly comforting to talk to someone who understands the cultural significance of peanut butter or Elvis Costello. Or to hear someone recite a line from Kids in the Hall and know what they are going to say before they say it.

So tell me what you listen to when you’re sad. Or happy. Tell me what kind of food your mom used to make you when you were sick. THEN I’ll start to get an idea of who you are.

Living with Miriam and Rocio for the moment and being able to listen to Miriam play the Cranberries in the morning or watch Rocio cook up some chorizo and onion for dinner gives me so much insight into their lives and who they are even though we are from completely different backgrounds. And I feel like it’s this kind of detail that I really dont have with any of the students at Neruda or Delvincourt so I have to way of putting any of them in context. Which is actually really frustrating.

The other day Miriam and I went to Alli’s temporary studio in the center of Dieppe to have dinner with her and her mom. Returning home at 11pm I joked that Rocio would be worried since everything in Dieppe closes at 8pm. Sure enough, I get a text that reads, “comme vous n’etes pas ici je suis un peu inquiete”.

It made me smile. Not because she was worried, but because it’s felt like it’s been such a long time since there was somebody around to worry about where I was.

Molasses

This morning I woke up and walked into the kitchen to find that the sink was backlogged with dirty water and freefloating black particles that I’m assuming are the remnants of peoples’ last nights dinner. Granted this has been a problem for the past two days, but yesterday I walked to the megamart, Auchun (imagine WalMart but in mall form and French), and bought drain declogger, so I was hoping that this morning I would awaken to a sparkling clean and declogged sink. Not the case.

I’ve never been apt with technical anything. When I was seven, I dug my grandmother’s dusty typwriter out of the attic and refused to type anything on the computer. Likewise I’ve always preffered old film cameras as opposed to digital ones. And God forbid I ever have to fix a radio or a tv. I can take ‘em apart easy. I just cannot put them back together, and frankly I really can’t be bothered.

And I have to confess I really wouldn’t be bothered by this seemingly trivial problem if it werent’t for the piles of dirty dishes stacking up next to the sink, and if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve had a fever for the past few days, and the fact that when you feel this shitty pulling the comforter off your shivering, aching body in the morning seems like an accomplishment of epic proportions. And on top of classes, and feeling out of my element, and waking up this morning to find crumbs on my bed and my hair sticking up at funny angles, the continuing saga of the clogged sink is the straw that broke the camel’s back. This of course all culminated last night upon returning to the apartment with Mirium and Rocio, and fueled by a recent dose of tylenol pm, a lack of food, feverish rantings, and a stack of dirty dishes, I threw my bag onto the floor like a six year old, threw my hands up in the air, yelled “I don’t care anymore!” and went into my room where I promptly fell asleep for the next twelve hours. Obviously one of my finer moments.

Needless to say today will consist of a trip to Auchun: the sequal.

Super toxic coroding drain declogger will be bought, as will more cold medicine (in France, instead of having 60 choices of tylenol for every hour of the day, they have one type of medicine that just says “cold” on it).

I don’t really have much else to say. I’ve been sick and my brain is running like mollasses.

1 assistant, pulled in 100 directions

Early October days make me think of crunching leaves and bonfires, pumpkins in windows, and apple cider. In Normandie, it’s been a lot of rain, although it’s just the right temperature for me to start walking around in pants and sweaters, with my magenta scarf wrapped snuggly around my neck. Brilliant.

This time last year I was living at home, trying to forge an identity for myself in the absence of being a student, and in the wake of the ineveitable mass exodus of friends leaving Columbus to move on to other things. Working at Jeni’s and spending countless hours nervously holding cups of coffee at Cafe Apropos, I remember sitting on that corner of Michigan and third trying to get all of my shit together, which was only exacerbated by the fact that everybody else seemed to have theirs figured out.

Lately, I’ve realized that while Dieppe is a great town, there are days where I wake up and my shoelaces won’t tie right, or I can’t get rid of the bags under my eyes, or my toast burns in the morning, and my coffee turns watery, and my migraines return. And I realize, that even though I’m glad in general that I’m in France, sometimes the details of the ins and outs of day to day life begin to take their toll, and I just end up feeling so exhausted that when I look in the mirror I can only wonder if the bags under my eyes are just me having a bad day, or if this has become the sum of the addition of all the days of my life.

I’m also starting to feel like one of those Captain Planet stretch toys you used to get at the dentist. 1 english assistant, at least 8 different teachers and hundreds of students. I’m starting to realize that native English speakers are a rare commodity around here indeed, and on any given day I’ve found at least two or three teachers approach me, asking me if I can cover a specific topic for their class. To add to that, you get the libarian who wants to meet with the assistants to arrange something; and Dominique has a laundry list of topics to cover with me every morning, add to that at least 3 people breathing down my neck telling me I have to reach a decision on where I want to live by the end of the week. I cannot say how many teachers have approached me offering their two cents on the situation, telling me it would be silly to move, but at 23 years old, I guess I’m just not used to having to answer to people for issues like that. Add all these together and what do you get? One stressed out assistant.

Yesterday I got a package from my mom with some rainboots and my coat that she promised she would send me. Since I stopped trick or treating in middle school, my mom has given me a bag of halloween candy every single year at some point in October. And while I thought this tradition would stop in High school, I have in fact, recieved a bag of halloween candy every single year since then as well. So yesterday when I opened my package, I pulled out my coat, and rainboots to find a bag of trail mix with candy corn and brown and oragne m&m’s wedged into the bottom of the box accompanied with a note wishing me happy halloween.

Sometimes it’s the most trivial things that make me well up here, and I find that I’ll be fine, until three days pass, and Dad will tell me that they grilled potatos and salmon on th grill and tried using taragon instead of rosemary, ans before I know it, I have tears running down my face.

Last year, at times, stuck in the same place in Columbus while everybody else was going to school or working towards something, I often felt tethered to the end of my rope. This year, I sometimes feel at my wits end but in a completely different way.

Putting distance has the pleasant effect of trivializing things that seemed annoyingly significant before.

On the other hand, it has the reciprocally annoying way of magnifying small details that seemed trivial before, but now seem to carry unbelievable weight.