Two Euro Cents: Faim d'Echanges

I've just finished a lunch with a French family through a program in Nancy called Faim D'Echanges.  With this program, a family in Nancy invites a few new students to their home.  I was given the sign-up information from a colleague, because even though I'm not a student at the university here, I am a foreign assistant and we are eligible for the program.  One word: free food.  One description: awesome.


To begin, the lunch was excellent and, according to the host and to Megan, very traditional: Foie Gras to Boeuf Bourguignon to apple tart to coffee and truffles.  Wine throughout, but not a lot. There were two other people my age there.  One young woman from New York and the other a young woman from Poland.  We spoke mostly French but also some English and it was great to practice a little.  Of course the Polish woman spoke French, English, and Spanish, but hey, benefit of the European continent so I wasn't toooo jealous.   Our hosts were retired English and French professors and very nice--they had even spent five years in Baltimore, Maryland so it was nice to talk about the U.S. here and there.

My two euro cents for this experience are that a city with an emphasis on making foreign people feel welcome is great, and I am interested to see what programs exist in U.S. cities that are similar and that Megan and I can later sign up for to help foreign students feel welcome.  This time, Megan stayed at the apt., but only because she didxxxn't think she could come because she hadn't signed up.  What do you think the first question to me was when I arrived?  In January Megan and I are invited to come back and share another lunch.

language, kiddies

At long last, the return of...

I am fully engaged with two French elementary schools as of writing this, and here are my two cents: in the U.S. we need to expose children in our primary schools to a foreign language.  This is not a post saying French elementary schools are better; my experience so far has been sufficiently mixed enough to prefer American schools, though you can't beat the old wooden stairs and historic significance of a school named after a man who died protecting it. 

However, when it comes to language learning, the fact that learning English at this age is a high enough priority to pay me way more per hour than I could hope for in the U.S., where year-long internships are unpaid, shows that France is serious about the benefits of multilingualism in a way the U.S. is not (don't worry, it's France and I'm not allowed to work many hours, so I'm still just as poor or poorer than you). 

French kids are required to study English until they reach middle school, where they can either continue learning English or switch to something new; I had the choice of taking German, Spanish, French or Latin...in high school, where as of today Latin and French are gone, and your options were most likely equally limited or worse, and studying a foreign language probably wasn't mandatory for graduation.

The argument of, "Well, our kids don't need to learn Spanish, or German, or Chinese, or whatever, because those kids 'over there' will learn English, so problem solved," is not an argument but the verbal equivalent of putting your head in sand...that speaks English...and not noticing that each day the world becomes smaller, the need to engage with others in their native language is crucial to cultural understanding, and is an economic asset, among many other benefits that would make this too long two cent semi-rant turn into a pocket of nickels. 

Side note: Spanish has a chance to flourish, and is, in the U.S. in a way that German did not because of two wars and the negative stereotypes associated with the language because of those wars.

One sentence round-up: Studying a foreign language while young gives many benefits beyond cultural understanding that most American students, unfortunately, miss.

I want to ride my bicycle.

After a few weeks away from throwing two euro cents into the blog, I am back.  Not only am I back, but I am back with a bicycle, a first week of teaching finished, and a story.

Story:  I was almost run over by a bus.

Of course, this happens all the time for anyone who rides a bicycle, especially on roads with no bike lanes.  Quick note:  it is legal to ride on the road, and illegal to ride on the sidewalk.  Road bike.  Side walk.  Quick note: busses don’t care because you are small and they are massive and their brakes are like sharp objects down old blackboards that seem to be saying ooooouuucccchhhhhh.  air brake.

The elementary school where I teach is roughly 15 minutes away by bicycle.  The ride is pleasant and I don’t get honked at as much as in the U.S.  The road to the school is a mix of downhill sprints and awkward intersections.  In the mornings, I pass moms and dads, nannies and grandparents, taking little kids to school, hand in hand.  Sometimes they wave, I think, because I look awesome.

My bike is used and filthy, but is solid.  Soon, when it stops raining and the sun decides to lift the city’s depression, I am going to clean it.  I think, if it were shiny, I will be less likely to be destroyed.

Now, with the first week of classes over and my route from school to home mapped out, I’m excited to add a few posts about the French elementary schools, the teacher’s lounge, and the Disney cards children hoard like canned goods in a famine.  

Here's a look at our bikes from Atelier Dynamo, a really fun group of guys helping the town fix their bikes. For more bike pictures, look at the flickr photostream.  

A Book of French Poems by M. Mitre

Opening the closet door I found 2 Cents and decided it meant I am doing God's work.

I am sitting outside a white tent.  Inside, there are dozens of vendors selling books on covered tables.  Even with a language I haven’t grabbed well enough to read easily in, I still want to buy books.  Oh yeah, and I did.  It was a book of poems by an old man named Philippe Mitre who was just great to talk to—if you can call what I try to do talking. 

I’ve been studying French in a memorize vocab / listen and repeat way for a little over an hour a day, which is a terrible (behaviorist for you education folks reading) way to learn but the best at avoiding embarrassment and easiest to do while lying in bed alone.  Just a few minutes ago though I was able to ask a question with the verb “admirer” (guess what that means?) I was saying ten thousand times yesterday while writing its 14 tenses carefully in a blue notebook.

Qui admirez-vous?  [confused look]  pour leurs poemes [ahhhhh!....(mostly unintelligible except for the names)].  This is how I create French learning opportunities through interaction (the interactionist approach—thank you for the back pat).  Though I could only understand a little bit, I felt good about trying to have a conversation with a man who wanted to talk to me, or sell me his book, but whatever, now I’m outside and writing this and thinking of new things I could have said to him or will say to him tomorrow. 

Maybe tonight I will create a fake conversation and make Megan dress like him, putting on the one suit I have angled in the closet.  She will smile and point to a book on the table, which will be his/hers, and say “you can look through” but in French, and I will have to say, “Oh yes, I really like poetry and think that you are really cool because you have a book in front of you and look nice, and maybe after this whole thing is over we can go get a beer, or wine, if that is more your thing, and the peanuts or smoked sausage they bring is all yours, or if you’re trying to watch your salt intake because your old I can have a few, thanks, and the way you’ve just signed your name in the book is awesome, so we can go? oh you have a few more hours here, that’s fine, maybe I will just stand, over there, by the decorative tree and think great thoughts about the power of language and something religious about birds, or something?  You’re the best, I love you, I’ll sleep next to the wall tonight because I know you get claustrophobic.”

I didn’t end up engaging conversation the day after, but I saw him though, talking with his hands in a way I knew meant great things.

Tr-tr-tr-ain....choo-choooooo

We have been in Nancy for a few days now, and as I grabbed Megan's computer to write this, taking a break from listening to words I don't understand about politics I haven't been here long enough to care about, I decided describing the trip from Paris to Nancy would be the best thing to throw my two Euro cents at, which I will then grab at the end of this post because, well, I f'ing need that to buy bread, man.

Four flights of stairs with 150 pounds of luggage and then the roll/drag I've mastered to the metro, the metro with so many ups and downs of stairs that as of this post I've decided France hates cripples and has created the bicycle sharing programs, such as VeLib! in multicolor, as a way to mock them.  This trip, however, was the easiest of them all.  A week of walk-around-all-day had strengthened body and mind for the physical strain and embarrassment of having so much stuff.

We plopped onto the metro during non-peak hours, so it was only about half full.  Without having to change lines, we made it to Gare de l'Est and waited.   And waited.  And then a crippled pigeon that had a foot like so much balled up gew made us feel bad for him as he panhandled for bread crumbs we didn't have.

The young woman across from us did though, and she fed the little guy.  Ah, that's nice I thought.  And then the pigeon didn't leave.  He hobbled, kneeling in pigeon form, for crumbs.  Yes, the young woman thought, this is the time I shall kick him.  Bam, and he was off.

The train was a long metallic centipede with all requisite compartments for bags and people, and with the people Eurotones to scream through pockets announcing a phone call.  I don't know how to describe these.  Think ring-back tones your friends have, make them louder, add a beat that if it were color would cause a seizure, then-just-never-let-it-stop.  Fortunately the ride was only an hour, and when I would look out the window I could imagine a girl with blond pigtails running to me with Ricola logenzes made from honey found in that tree, or that one, or that one....


We arrive in Nancy.  I nearly crush the man who leaves the train in front of me with our luggage.  We find a map at the train station.  We find the hotel.  Now, the comparison of cities.

Nancy is not Paris. (I know, duh.)  It is less dense, more relaxed, and most importantly, more real.  Paris is attractive for all the reasons we've seen and read all our lives.  It is also a Disney Land of sorts, where as you enter it you know the water will be over priced, there's no way in hell you're letting your kids near THAT thing, and soon you'll leave with less money in your pocket and a few stories and pictures of a place that felt real for a time but you knew was fabricated just for you.

I could see myself retiring there and wasting money in over-priced cafes, because there is so much to appreciate (over a billion metro rides a year!?  good job public transit)  but today, I feel good about being in a French city that reminds me some of home: the sidewalks are cracked, someone is spitting somewhere in public, the people seem the nice and hard-working type, and there is a pizza place down the block.  Ok, so it is a real Italian owned place with the best pizza I've had for a very reasonable 7 euros that will feed two people easily, but still.  Now, damn it, give my money back so I can go get one of those!


Be sure you check out the updated Where Is Joe's Head page & visit our updated itinerary to find links to the places we visited & our photos on Flickr.

on paris: the stairs

 Stairs. I had a few in my house growing up, flights I remember dragging half-full backpacks up in high school–games where my sisters and I would wrap ourselves in blankets then tumble blindly until we got tired or started bleeding.

I didn't know stairs until we reached our hotel in Montmartre and hauled a year's worth of clothes and personal hygiene products we were quickly using from métro to hotel to métro to hostel.

Elevator, smell you later. Escalator, escargot pits. Stairs. Pas de problème.

In the morning, we left our fourth floor room with 150 pounds of luggage and rolled, dragged, lifted our way to a métro stop that would take us within walking distance of our hostel, where we're spending the next five nights and I can honestly say is not a bad place at all.

On arrival, we had to place our bags in storage until 4 (there are many odd yet logical rules here) when we could check in. Our day had begun, after taking our bags 13 stairs down and placing them on metal racks beneath orange and brown plastic pipes that, presumably from the smell, were important for the 100+ guests' calls of nature.

Our first use of the indispensable Paris Museum Pass that, for a flat fee based on number of days used, get you into 60 monuments and museums for "free" was the Conciergerie–palace & prison. After seeing a wall with a depressing amount of names denoting executions, we left to Sainte Chappelle. This church, which looks like what awesome fireworks would look like if they could be frozen & signify more than how much Uncle Rusty makes, had the best stained glass I've seen.

Feeling holy, we continued on to Notre Dame & ended our site-seeing in the Luxembourg Garden, where there will from today forward be the game "Where is Joe's Head?" Walking through Île St-Louis & back to our hostel, where our bags were untouched (I always worry), we had finished our day. In the morning, I would put my arms back on.

So what do you think? Are you ready? Let's play Where is Joe's Head!
Also check out our additions to the ::itinerary:: page.  The connection at our hotel is incredibly lathargic. Pictures will have to wait a bit.