doing

I have been a raging ball of, umm, rage today. Luckily, I've turned that into a rage of productivity. (Unluckily, the raging weather back in the States is causing serious havoc. Devastating! This has to be the worst tornado season in ages...or have I just been blocking out the past?)

I spent more than the anticipated amount of hours grading exams today, and that was after spending a surprise chunk of my life grading exams for someone else who has caused more than a bit of tension in the work place. I keep telling myself, "It's almost over." Then another surprise comes up. Then, and this is often worse, nothing comes up, and I think, "No! It's almost over."

I may never be a teacher again.

I most likely will not be seeing anyone here ever again.

Oh, God. Okay, so I've been blocking these things out. I'm on a caffeine and adrenaline high, and I have been FLYING through a new to-do list. (Item number one on the list was to make the list, so that made it immediately feel like a success.) I'm counting the cross-offs on my daily list until I can free myself from the computer, where I've been for hours now, and go buy a nice bottle of wine to go with dinner. Nothing like burning the last bit of your paycheck in style! (We've gotten on a Gewurztraminer craze, so I need to tell you all about that soon. All I'll say now is: Find it!)

I've fixed my résumé, which is sort of depressing because it made me realize how completely trashed the ones I sent for graduate assistantship positions were. I've fixed my CV, which is difficult since I don't know what to put for a permanent address anymore. At some point, your parents NEED to stop getting your mail for you... but that point is still about two months away. I feel like I'm set for some new job/internship prospects, and that's exciting.

Joe will be glad to read this post, because it means the excessive cursing (when the Internet crashes while you're "on the phone" with your family; when you're supposed to be leaving for a meeting but you're still in your PJs because you forgot about the meeting; when you're doing dishes and your nails get all discolored and brittle; when you're mad at yourself for eating cookies) should be dying down now.

I had to cancel plans for tonight with a couple who have come to mean a lot to me. I had a friend offer new plans which I tried to gently decline. I need the night to continue the productivity, finish grading and making exams and get myself back into my writing. I need another coffee, then a glass of wine to calm down, then time to close my eyes for five minutes and not think of anything.

"You take life to seriously," I was told today. She, my more relaxed coworker who is also drowning in work yet able to host a soirée, is probably right, but I'm living for the moment when I close the laptop and have nothing waiting on my but a pizza and the feeling you get when you take your glasses off.

Cheers to that. I'll be back to normal (actually, well above normal) activity, wake-up calls and social calls tomorrow. Makes sense, since it's Joe's mid-week day off. Who needs class on Wednesdays, anyway?

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muffins to ease the sadness

Bluck. The weather yesterday was absolutely terrible, and I'll be honest. I taught for an hour. The rest of the day was spent cleaning or sitting in bed reading "The Memory Keeper's Daughter", which has not been a pleasurable read. That with the rain cast a dark cloud over our apartment that no rainbow could peak through. The muffins I made perked me up a bit, but now I'm still sitting around asking Joe questions. Are we okay? When will we have children? How do you make sure your child is okay? Will you, if our child isn't "okay", give them to the nurse and tell her to take it away and then tell me that the baby died? (Sorry. I just spoiled the first 30 pages. No worries, there are 500 more to go.)

I'm a worrier. Books like this increase the worry and decrease the honeymoon happiness that usually floats around our apartment. Not good. Our apartment isn't big enough for the two of us and a bad mood. Today though, I put extra blame on the weather. Even Joe seemed to be under the same Eeyore cloud I'd found, sitting in his usual spot near the window clicking through articles and not willing to do much. We ate a quite dinner, read quietly and went to bed early. (Even Joe was asleep well before midnight.)

I made a big to-do list for today, trying to set myself up for two months of productivity now that classes are ending. To start: breakfast. Choco-coconut-strawberry muffins & strawberries with kiwi slices. Here is my first draft of the muffin recipe, though they're a bit lumpy and the batter is rather dry. I'm not sure how I want to adjust that. Regardless, they're moist enough and pretty tasty. (Plus dry batter is way easier to eat with your fingers.)

3/4 c sliced strawberries (that you then mash with a potato masher)
3/4 c sugar (less if it's raw or course sugar)
1/3 c melted butter, which is about 3 tablespoons
2 c flour
3/4 teaspoon each f baking soda & baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 c coconut flakes (or here, coconut powdery stuff)

Mix the first three ingredients, then add in the rest and stir (or fold, since it's so dry) until well combined. Throw in 3/4 c (oh, what the heck, a big cup) of your favorite kind of chocolate all chopped up. I used dark, as always. There was a huge sale on it this week–five bars for three dollars. They're gone now. Maybe less of a bargain and more of a way to ruin your ab routine. Bake them at 375F (190C) for about 20 minutes. Eat while warm, or don't even bake them and eat the batter with a spoon. There's no egg, so no worry!

I think the end of classes is having a bigger emotional impact on me than I expected. Saying goodbye to a law class that I'd had for both semesters, I got teary eyed. It doesn't take much for me to cry, but thinking about my students, who I'd come to know so well & understand how to work with, facing intimidating professors in an even more intimidating university system switched me into big sister mode. I wanted to protect them, to do more for them. I wanted to stay with them and remind them that a bad grade isn't the end of your ability. It's just an adjustment: You have to relearn how to read the figures. You have to figure out what the grades really mean and what you can really expect–what they really expect from you.

They're all capable. I want to sit on their shoulders and whisper that to them. I want them to stick with it and use their law degrees to change the world in ways I know they can. I've heard their ideas–from human rights policy reform to adjusting hiring practices to limit race and gender discrimination in the workplace. These are the moments they need to remember–when they sat in a group of four and forced themselves to use vocabulary they barely knew to create original ideas about what law should be.

I'm leaving them. Toward the end of class, when they started getting excited and loud, I reminded them that they only had 20 more minutes to deal with me. Twenty minutes, then they wouldn't even have to think of me being on the same continent. I was startled by how much that statement affected me. I'm leaving them, and in a way it feels like abandonment. Like I'm failing them. Like they could, in some way, need me.

Then I remind myself that of the 30 professors I worked with during college, I remember four our five–or I remember names, but not their course. They have years left for the real professors, the mentors and the ones that matter, to step in & push the crazy, married American girl to the back of their minds like that one class I took on world civilizations that only met once a month. Who was that guy again?

I'll miss teaching. I'll miss walking into that hot room & shouting for them to be quiet. I'll miss fearing that they'll one day ask a question I can't answer. I'll miss them assuming that I don't speak French. I'll miss being inspired by them to make myself into a teacher I'd never imagined–never thought I wanted–myself to be. We did a lot of learning together.

an education

Okay, let me just break from my real thoughts by saying...

I'm eating a baguette for breakfast. Not a whole one. Just a big chunk of one. It's a day old, and it's HARD. I keep smearing a drop of real butter on each bite. I eat this for breakfast most mornings. But for some reason this one is so hard that it's hurting my lips when I try to bite it & cutting the inside of my mouth when I chew. Just the outside is hard; the inside is still wonderfully spongy. I am eating through the pain, & it is worth it. I will miss the eating injuries when we come back to the States.

Now I return to the regularly scheduled post.

There are classes at the university that don't follow the 12-week semester & instead run only for ten weeks. One of these is my most difficult class, one that requires students to spend two hours watching a five-minute video clip & answering questions. This class started two weeks late, thus ending its semester with the rest of the university.

The other class, a continuation of a one I taught last semester, ended two weeks early. Tuesday. When a friend said he needed someone to cover his last session with the same group of students, I jumped at the chance. Because while I've been helping them correct their English, they've been teaching me a lot of things. Like what it's like to have a serious disease; what your countries civil war was like; how to make traditional Algerian & Vietnamese dishes. Like if you let 12 people talk for long enough, they will become friends. They will open up in ways you'd never imagined–become bold enough to have class discussions going in directions you'd never have been comfortable pushing them.

When class ended, I was asked for my address. I was asked if I had Facebook. I was invited to visit them in their home countries. I was asked if I was positive I wouldn't stay in France another year. "Will you ever get back?"

We hope so. I hope they'll still be here; I hope that this is what they were looking for.

My students were what Americans would call "non-traditional". They had other jobs–working on PhDs or as engineers or veterinarians. They come from Rwanda, Syria, Vietnam, Cameroon, Algeria. The list goes on.

The first few weeks were spent giving presentation–how we were supposed to spend the whole class. They each gave their required presentation, & then we just couldn't take it anymore. We moved onto debating topics. "We get much more out of this," they told me as we sat in a circle getting increasingly impassioned.

It didn't seem appropriate at the time to say, " I do to." To explain that, in the States, we don't often get a chance to have these conversations with so many diverse stories & backgrounds. The country is so large that at times it seems easy & obvious that so much of our news coverage should focus only on our news & how the world–the disaster in Japan, the revolutions in the Arab world–affect OUR country & OUR lives instead of the lives of these nations.

For the last week, I wrote several topics on the board. Home schooling, intellectual property, evolution, human rights. We jumped into human rights & didn't leave it–didn't even have a pause in the conversation–for two hours, struggling with a big question.

How do we make the world fair & just when we have so many definitions for "fair" and "just" and "justice"? When does the U.S. entry into Libya stop being a UN mission & start being another attempt to make other cultures work like we do? And what IS the role of the U.S. in the world? What IS our obligation as a world power, as a pool of many resources, as a symbol of democracy for the world (even though, as I tried to explain to them, I don't SEE us as the most democratic or the best way to do democracy)?

"You need to start with yourselves. Your poor. Your health care," one student told me. I wanted to put him on the big news channels that we cling to, to tell his story & remind us that we must fix ourselves before we fix others. We must loves ourselves before we're good at loving others.

I want to fix the States, & sitting in that hot classroom with those 12 eager faces will change the voice that is in my head when I begin my graduate studies. I won't forget them, & I hope they won't forget the American that admitted we don't have it all together either.

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sunshine

I walked into class today a bit late. I had walked rather slowly to campus so that I had an extra minute of soaking in the 60 degrees. We've had sunshine all week, a rare phenomenon in Nancy. I've walked around without a jacket most of the time. A few days included a between-classes lunch hour (or pound cake hour) on the lawn with one of my good friends, Lauren.

This is all to illustrate the mood I was in when I walked into class. While I was unpacking my materials, another student–one of my more animated students whom I can count on to participate–walked in. He started walking back to his seat and casually said, "We should have class outside."

He was joking. French students never expect this to happen. All but one student said they'd never experienced it before. They already think I'm a bit of a Crazy American, which I play up in class to keep them entertained & interested. Before I fully realized what I was saying, I was repacking my materials and leading them down the stairs. Make way for ducklings*.

We had just planted ourselves on the grass, formed a circle and gotten our notebooks out. I was loading clips on my computer & getting out my lesson plan.

Then there was a man behind us, asking if we had any cannabis–not using some slang or subtle word. Directly asking, "Do you have cannabis?" I know my students told them no before starting to laugh, but I didn't quite manage to say anything. I felt so small, tucked up with my legs Indian-style. (Are we not supposed to say that anymore?  Hmm...) I felt my authority melting away. My mouth was hanging open.

We recovered & got through the whole lesson plan, even handling the dictation–an excerpt from a Nelson Mandela clip, which is a difficult accept when you're only in your first year of college–rather well. I decided I wasn't willing to risk it again & had my second class inside. Once was enough. I feel like I've liberated enough French souls for a while.

I know that I'll be spending as much time a possible outside this weekend, assuming the sunshine holds out. I've gotten used to this weather & didn't realize until yesterday evening that spring = rain. I thought we'd skipped right to summer. The flowers are already arriving... Maybe we don't need the April showers? Or maybe they can at least wait until after the weekend, so that I can finish my post-winter thawing?

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seemingly unrelated events

It is St. Patrick's Day. I am not wearing green. I cannot find my umbrella. I can only assume that this is some sort of Irish karma.

There is a 20 percent chance of precipitation, which in Nancy means it will rain for at least three hours today. Most likely while I am walking to my 8 a.m. class. I'll start that walk in ten minutes. Things aren't looking good.

I'm also teaching in French a lot today. The lessons this morning are for students that aren't as good in English, aren't majoring in English, aren't taking any other English classes at the moment. They spend most of their time with me watching the same video on repeat. I try to speak only English, without losing them, because I don't know how else they'll get exposed to it.

Today, we're learning about Casual Friday. We're talking about it in French, since they'll answer exam questions in French. This means that they'll be laughing at me, something they do on occasion when I speak French. They never correct my pronunciation; they never rephrase things I said... so it's not quite the errors. It's just... Well, why not humiliate your teacher when you know a language better than she?

It does not help to point out that the kind, generous teacher does not laugh at the English efforts of the students. So I'm putting on my strong face, and laughing be damned–I'm learnin' 'em good this week. Then I'm going out for lunch with friends. Then I'm teaching. Then I'm going to a gig. Then I'm coming home and crying about how behind I am on my Real Life because of an insane amount of obligations this week.

I want to break free. I want to brea-eak free.

After stopping my typing for a minute to search, I still can't find my umbrella. I did, however, find some "fromage frais" (fresh cheese) in the mini-fridge, chop up some figs & eat it. Nom nom nom. "Fromage frais" is different from "fromage blanc", which is similar to but different than cottage cheese, non of which are actual cheese-in-a-cheese-form cheese–and non of which are yogurt. I know we always thought it was Wisconsin, but France is the Land of Endless Dairy Options. More on this later.

For now, I'm off to teach, leaving too late and walking too quickly. As always. When in France, do as the French. Be late for everything & know that it doesn't matter because you have the authority.

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le deuxième semestre: les cours

Tonight, English Pub Night officially restarts. I'm supposed to go, sit around for a few hours playing Native English Speaker and occasionally letting myself slip into French. I love this. I've become friends with several of my students from last semester–this can be a difficult line since they're basically my age. I can't bring myself to it today, but I'm excited to get back to it next week.

I have a lot of new students; most of those from last semester are in new groups this semester. I want to see them again & bring in my new students. I feel like I'm a big, American sister to them–at Pub Night, but can shut it off in the classroom. I don't want you guys worrying about my professionalism...

As I said, my students have changed a lot this semester. My schedule has changed a lot. My teaching has changed a lot; I'm more comfortable in the classroom & have become much more comfortable writing the lessons. The classes I'm teaching have changed a lot. Largely for the better.

This semester, Lauren & I are sharing ue201 classes–a review & build-up of phonetic skills & English accents. Lauren & I love games, since the students laugh AND speak in class. (It's hard to get both.) Should be a fun semester for teachers & students alike. My favorite game: Idiom Pictionary, because it involves them guessing the meaning of an idiomatic phrase that they've tried to draw. Let's play it the other way round. Tell me what these French idioms mean.

un coup de foudre: a blast of lightening
pas ma tasse de thé: (English gives it away...)
tomber dans les pommes: fall into the apples
Answers at bottom.

When I'm not playing games, I'm teaching one of the three groups of law students I had last semester. We're learning how to create arguments & express our opinions, which is fun because I have LOADS of opinions. So do these students.

Last week, we discussed humanitarian rights. What can the United Nations do to protect them? What should the top five human rights be? The debate got most heated when we talked about the environment. Is a clean environment a humanitarian right? How do we work with that? What is the "environment"? This week, our topic IS environmental protection. I'm already excited for tomorrow.

A class that has me equally excited for the discussion it will bring about is my third year English class, where we'll be digging into literary terms–graphic novels, films, short stories. I spent all of Friday gathering a list of literary terms that seemed challenging without being too long or too abstract. We'll begin with excerpts from Dave Eggers and Ernest Hemingway, then see where the semester carries us. Can you tell how much I'm smiling even as I type this? Never, ever did I imagine I would be lucky to create discussions about the two things I'm most passionate about–humanitarian works & creative writing–in a classroom. 

Joe is still out teaching, & since I can't bring myself to go out we'll be spending the evening together, watching some French television & preparing for our classes tomorrow while drinking a pot of chamomile. I'm sure this all supports the image you have of us at a club with cardigan sweaters (like I told you in yesterday's post). It's a relief to have someone that understands my need for quiet evenings to lower the stress & emotions I've been feeling lately.

I look forward, in coming posts & coming conversations on these quiet nights in with Joe, to sharing the thoughts & discussions my students have. They're opening up much more this semester, & I'm already proud of them.

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ANSWERS to the idioms

un coup de foudre: love at first sight
pas ma tasse de thé: not my cup of tea
tomber dans les pommes: to faint

the weather & my mood

Store fronts like this one in Metz are popping up... Fall is here!

Yesterday, my sister had her second homecoming dance. I have no phone, no Internet at home and no place to go make a phone call because it was a Saturday afternoon by the time she woke up to start her day. These things are wearing me down. I know I haven't been the most optimistic person, but it just seems like no one–businesses we're communicating with in the States & people we're working with here–are really getting our situation.

There is another mystery class tomorrow. I may be changing a class time. I may be teaching a new class that I know nothing about. What I do know is that I was happy with the schedule I was settling into. I am happy with my ideas for the course. I am happy teaching. I like it more than expected: the time preparing, the trying to make them comfortable, the effort to work around words they don't know & search for understanding. I always leave class with a smile & a sense of accomplishment. They laugh at the silly things a make them do. ("No, say mother. Grrr. Like you're growling. Do it. Growl. Right now.")

All I can do is wait for the next e-mail & wake up early to prepare tomorrow & give them all I've got. I have YouTube. I have English as my native language. I have a sense of humor & a small mouth that can make me look angry very quickly (for if the sense of humor doesn't win them over or shut them up). In the mean time, I'm going to keep reading Une Forme de Vie, Nothomb's latest novel & a great fiction-that-looks-like-nonfiction work. I'm going to go to a Potimarron festival. I'm going to learn more about my camera while I walk around Lunéville & hold hands with my husband. We're going to have a picnic by a castle & watch the leaves change color from our window when we get home tonight. I'm going to, for once, make myself give up control & enjoy what I am in control of–my ability to enjoy what's going on around me.

I was angry yesterday morning. I was complaining about what we don't have & getting angry at people for not getting our shit together for us. "But we're in France," Joe said. And that said everything–things take longer; life moves more slowly because the living part of it is more important. I should be content–I'm living out my dream of being here.

It's another one of those weekends. It's getting colder & rainier, but for the first time this year that feels invigorating. It's no longer "too early for this weather." It's time. I have a passion for automn that's unmatched by any other nature event. I feel most alive, most vibrant, most in-tune with the world when the air starts smelling like leaves & cinnamon.

From where I sit, I see the hills of the Vosges starting. Housing move up toward a horizon. Shutters facing us, facing East, are open to bring in the early morning sun. Smoke is puffing from chimneys, and I know that in these homes people are warm in their fluffy socks with their hands around mugs of coffee as I am here, watching them with my toes by my electric heater and my hands around my green tea. The hills behind the houses are dark–trees no longer green, but fading to the sort of plum that comes to nature before it bursts into the full flames of autumn. Soon, the neighborhood will be on fire. I'm waiting, and I'm burning with it.