#1. Taking my baby steps in French-English translation I bring to you:
American English ( that weed spreading in the British linguistic garden) explained by a linguistics scholar from Bretagne. Check out my difficulties dealing with French comma usage!
"A force that attracts, not by its intellectual strength, but, like tabloids, pornographic films, drugs, Pandora’s Box or the apple held out first by Satan and then by Eve, by its novelty and then its capacity to stir up our unhealthy curiosities. Maybe even immoral!"
I read all ten pages of this beauty basking in his poetic descriptions of my language ( real English is the language of Shakespeare, but Americans don't understand this). He positively out does himself with metaphor. I only hope that he succumbed and can actually speak American English.
#2. How do you like your cream?
My host mom eats butter pretty much straight. She most frequently cuts cheese sized hunks of it to put on grilled bread-y bits which she floats in her chicory. She puts a good 1/4 cup of it into our vegetables, in the soup, rice, potatoes, in chocolate. There is a pat of it in and on everything. With this in mind, I was surprised the other night to see her cooking my egg in olive oil ( ditto with greasing the cake pan). We had roughly the following conversation :
me: " you don't cook your eggs in butter?"
L: " No"
me: " I just thought that since you like butter so much you'd make your eggs in it"
L ( insulted): "What do you mean I like butter so much? I never cook with butter--it's bad for you. I am very careful about this. Do people do that in American?"
I should add that I like eating butter with my host mom, this was just a rather confusing conversation which taken at face value seems to suggest that cooking with butter is bad while eating it good. Either that or my host mom cannot resist the butter dish when she is at the table. In any case, I cannot resist the Camembert which I eat in the same quantity and on the same bread-y bits as she her butter. Note to all enthusiasts: if you are modeling data in French using a pie chart, you refer to each section as simply "a camembert."
#3. How all things ( despite the labeling) actually come from Bretagne: the subject of my history class which I have felt necessary to re-name from " France in the world" to" France at the center of the world."
Ever wondered where your Parmesan cheese comes from? Probably not because it is a controlled origin substance ie only Parmesan if made in that little chunk of Italy. However in this day and age of globalization and the unquestionable innovation of the Breton people not to mention their unparalleled cheese-making skills and the actual unremarkable nature of Parmesan which makes it easy to knock off, that Parmesan actually comes from a factory in Bretagne. The Italians no longer make cheese, only lables.
Butter: the Chinese know what good butter is. It comes from Bretagne and they import it secretly because of trade restictions. However, nothing else will do.
Pork: Breton pork is the pride of the region. Ham you think is Italian is actually Breton raised and shipped to Italy via refrigerated trucks which crowd a particular intersection in Rennes every day at 18h00. Once the convoy reaches Italy, the Italians dress up the pork and sell it.
#4. Aspects of colonialism and global French activities explained: why I was writhing during my two hour stint of France in the World this evening.
a) The French built the Panama canal, but they " didn't arrive at paying for it." American banks bought them out. No mention of the huge French bank scandal associated with the Panama canal, the faulty design plans and malaria all which did the French in. Yeah the Americans got in there with their new money and Big Stick Diplomacy aspirations, but there was a bit of engineering envolved on their part...
b) The French emancipated all the slaves in their Empire in 1848. Because they all wanted to be French citizens and the French could not deny the logic of their desires.
c) The slaves "came" from Africa to work on the sugar plantations like it was a garden party. How droll. I disagree with the verb choice which he used repetedly.
This list goes on and on. My professor simply amazes me with his opinions on the world and his knowlege of Breton beet production. Despite the fact that I am banging my head on the desk during his class, he is actually really nice and keeps inviting us into his office to practice our French and partake in his vast knowledge. I am convinced he knows everything about France, most things about Europe, lots about Asia and a fair bit about the U.S. He has lived in Vietnam and traveled in Asia extensively. He vacations in Italy where he enjoys Breton products with Italian labling( ditto with Breton butter in China). He stage manages Roman ruins in Rennes and is the only person who remembers that there is a random Roman wall chunk in the court-yard of the languages building at Univerité de Rennes II. He even likes the EU. I cannot fit this man into any kind of mold, therefore it is probably good that I sit in his class and become overwhelmed by the choice bits of information he purveys. Wonders never cease.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
A Day of Photo-Journalism
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=297511&id=637287248&l=59bf0c1ad0
Click on this link to see a day at the market, in down-town Rennes and along the canal. A big walk!
Click on this link to see a day at the market, in down-town Rennes and along the canal. A big walk!
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Teaching English
This week I had my first hour of "stage" at a local school. I take the #1 bus out to a building with copper sides and teach 13 and 14 year olds English. My weekend project is to figure out the names of English grammar constructions so that I know if the kids have actually mastered the past perfect or not. I was really excited at how welcome I was at the school. When I entered the janitor was fixing the door and he greeted me and pointed me in the right direction. Mariette an English teacher and a really really nice lady took me around and introduced me to all her colleagues and Monsieur le Directeur. It seems from my tour that there are whole ( really nice) sections of the building cordoned off for the teachers. Kids hang out either in the classrooms or outdoors and the teachers get the nice couches and the coffee pots etc... It is in these areas that they gather to gossip shamelessly about their students and to complain about the drama of the day. I got to go to lunch with the teachers and after we had cut everyone else in line we whisked off into a teachers' side lunchroom and I learned about the bad kids' exploits of the morning, the profs who had eaten too much in London over the weekend and the vagaries of the French tutoyer ( the informal you). The school lunch was actually pretty tasty: better than the university fare by far. My experience in the classroom was an eyeful. My teacher was extremely harried ( it was all that cake in London perhaps?) and she knew EXACTLY how she wanted me to procede which of course was not how I wanted to do it. My first moments with her were not like touring the building with Mariette. Without evening allowing me to introduce myself she demanded that everyone ask me questions in the present perfect. They wrote them down on paper while I was left in the lurch--standing in front of the class without yet being formally awknowledged. Then I called on people and answered their questions. French classroom dynamics are very different from American ones. The teachers lash out to maintain order, but I also suspect as a kind of game both with the students and amongst themselves. As I was answearing questions about whether or not I like to listen to music, I became aware of a disturbance which I decided to ignore. The teacher however interrupted me angrily and said " excuse me, I am afraid we are going to have to stop class because Mr. So and So is being disruptive." All eyes on the back of the room, she demanded that the miscreant go to the corner. I confess I was rooting for him when he a) refused to answer her and b) refused to move. Ohhh she was mad mad mad and he just sat there arms crossed with everyone else adding to the drama as noisily as they could. Impass, or so I thought for all of a sudden she said " that's it, we're leaving. Everyone out. If he won't leave, we will" and so we all left and everyone pushed and shoved each other in the hallway and then filed into the room next door and sat down in perfect order. The whole affair was so bizarre that I actually thought little of it and kept on talking. Things that happen in French instead of English are like this...surreal. People can ask me to do things or meet at a certain time and place and I won't do them even though I understand the words. Nothing seems quite true in French-- in my mind passing the butter in French isn't actually passing the butter. Things remain theoretical probabilities while the English they are physical realities. That and the fact that she actually asked him to go to the corner. How could that be real? I was looking around for the dunce cap because that is what happens next in storybooks.
That was an interesting debacle, but the rest of the class period was really fun and the kids were cute and mischievious but also visably curious and shy. I sat there feeling torn because I am going to be teaching them alone and need to have respect and attention, but I was also totally with them against their teacher who was demanding respect and attention in her own way. After class she started telling everyone she met about the events of the morning. It was almost as if she had whipped up the drama for the lunch table. This kid, I was reassured in English, was very bad and I would not be teaching him as he was going to "some sort of trade school" she translated distainfully. I watched a movie for French class at St. Olaf which criticized the limitations of the French education system. One is the fact that only the really brilliant and motivated students benefit from the teacher, and those who can't handle the classroom and its culture of obedience are systematically discounted and left behind. This is the first thing I ran into in the classroom. I am only teaching those kids who already speak a lot and have the most potential. The others wait it out until tradeschool while the teachers complain about them spitefully in the lunch room. For an American used to hearing lip service to fair chance in schools and in fact seeing a lot of effort to help everyone suceed, the anti-democratic nature of this school was really striking. I now understand the worried cocktail conversations I've been overhearing about children and school. If you don't make the grade and make it early, you are toast.
That was an interesting debacle, but the rest of the class period was really fun and the kids were cute and mischievious but also visably curious and shy. I sat there feeling torn because I am going to be teaching them alone and need to have respect and attention, but I was also totally with them against their teacher who was demanding respect and attention in her own way. After class she started telling everyone she met about the events of the morning. It was almost as if she had whipped up the drama for the lunch table. This kid, I was reassured in English, was very bad and I would not be teaching him as he was going to "some sort of trade school" she translated distainfully. I watched a movie for French class at St. Olaf which criticized the limitations of the French education system. One is the fact that only the really brilliant and motivated students benefit from the teacher, and those who can't handle the classroom and its culture of obedience are systematically discounted and left behind. This is the first thing I ran into in the classroom. I am only teaching those kids who already speak a lot and have the most potential. The others wait it out until tradeschool while the teachers complain about them spitefully in the lunch room. For an American used to hearing lip service to fair chance in schools and in fact seeing a lot of effort to help everyone suceed, the anti-democratic nature of this school was really striking. I now understand the worried cocktail conversations I've been overhearing about children and school. If you don't make the grade and make it early, you are toast.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
flowers that bloom in the spring tra-la
I am not sure when this happened, but all of a sudden it is no longer winter in Rennes. People are still dragging about in their black wool coats, but we have flowers and green things and that scent of springy-ness that for some reason smells the same here as it does everywhere else. The camilia outside my house is starting to weep pink petals and by the church in town the massive shrubberies have started putting out white and pink flowers. Yesterday I rounded the corner on my walk in the Parc du thabor/jardin des plantes and came across a hillside of crocuses.
These crocuses were probably the most (only??) spontaneous display in the whole park. The neon orange clad city workers labor each day to clip and trim and tease reluctant plants into order. The result is quite impressive. To enter you walk through the standard French municipal green gate and then sweep up a wide stone opera staircase with banasters and Ming-vase-sized flower pots. Chosing right or left, you wander up through crawling vines( crawling only in the right places) and past a tumbling stream bed that must have water piped into it during summer. There are acres of green grass, large stately trees, a circular goldfish pond, a Victorian arboritum ( I think this must be the "des plantes" bit because otherwise what a ridiculous name for a park: The Garden of the Plants). The carousel is not running right now, nor are the fountains, but someone has planted hundreds of spring flowers. There are dozens of varieties of ducks in their own pen. There is a rose laberynth with each variety carefully labled. There are dozens of varieties of trees in the rose garden too-- all on stakes and pruned to be a meter high. Yesterday when I was there, the orange workers were wrestling with what I can only call a rose serpent. It was a vine about an inch in diameter with giant thorns which was being neatly wrapped around trelising. The end result was hundreds of feet of vicious looking thorns tamed around posts and wires to resemble a gently undulating high tension electric line about nine feet off the ground. It must be lovely and romantic in summer time a regular cosine wave of roses. In February it looks like Constantine wire. I was super impressed: how do they DO that?
The park near my house is not nearly as formal as this downtown monument. It is low and marshy with ducks, a picnic area and a 90s playground and a 21st century playground. This 90s baby knows which one she prefers! There are huge signs warning you not to walk on the ice and also a display about natural consciousness in the urban environment. The roar of the Rocade which is the periferal highway cuts through the omnipresent mist. I am not sure how you can trumpet the environmental conscienceness of landscaped duck ponds, but Rennes does do a wonderful job with providing little bits of green space for every single appartment dweller. There are snaking paths and parks amidst all of the subsidized housing-- I keep getting lost there amidst the paths and the highrises.
These crocuses were probably the most (only??) spontaneous display in the whole park. The neon orange clad city workers labor each day to clip and trim and tease reluctant plants into order. The result is quite impressive. To enter you walk through the standard French municipal green gate and then sweep up a wide stone opera staircase with banasters and Ming-vase-sized flower pots. Chosing right or left, you wander up through crawling vines( crawling only in the right places) and past a tumbling stream bed that must have water piped into it during summer. There are acres of green grass, large stately trees, a circular goldfish pond, a Victorian arboritum ( I think this must be the "des plantes" bit because otherwise what a ridiculous name for a park: The Garden of the Plants). The carousel is not running right now, nor are the fountains, but someone has planted hundreds of spring flowers. There are dozens of varieties of ducks in their own pen. There is a rose laberynth with each variety carefully labled. There are dozens of varieties of trees in the rose garden too-- all on stakes and pruned to be a meter high. Yesterday when I was there, the orange workers were wrestling with what I can only call a rose serpent. It was a vine about an inch in diameter with giant thorns which was being neatly wrapped around trelising. The end result was hundreds of feet of vicious looking thorns tamed around posts and wires to resemble a gently undulating high tension electric line about nine feet off the ground. It must be lovely and romantic in summer time a regular cosine wave of roses. In February it looks like Constantine wire. I was super impressed: how do they DO that?
The park near my house is not nearly as formal as this downtown monument. It is low and marshy with ducks, a picnic area and a 90s playground and a 21st century playground. This 90s baby knows which one she prefers! There are huge signs warning you not to walk on the ice and also a display about natural consciousness in the urban environment. The roar of the Rocade which is the periferal highway cuts through the omnipresent mist. I am not sure how you can trumpet the environmental conscienceness of landscaped duck ponds, but Rennes does do a wonderful job with providing little bits of green space for every single appartment dweller. There are snaking paths and parks amidst all of the subsidized housing-- I keep getting lost there amidst the paths and the highrises.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Why this Thursday was good enough for two posts
#1. I finally found the park near my house after 2 weeks of getting lost or showing up when it was closed. I have found that a lot of things I try to do in France require 5-6 re-tries. It was worth it to run in a big green field in the morning sun. I even had to take off my sweatshirt it was so warm. Mamas with toddlers strolled about, but the high-tech playground was empty.
#2. I rode the bus with some very nice girls and found the school where we will be visiting classrooms to teach English. They have a copper roof and a kind of Zen-like garden. Swank.
#3. After getting back on the bus I drop-of-the-hat recognized the neighborhood we were traveling through as containing a hairsalon for which I had a coupon. I impromptu leapt of the bus and while searching for the salon came across a SNCF ticket booth and was able to buy train tickets to go to Paris this weekend. My French ticket buying skills were perfectly normal even though I made the guy search about for days/ times.
#4. I got a rather complicated hair cut and it doesn't look bad. This involved a lot of gesticulating/ excitement. The French word " shampooing" threw me for a bit of a loop. I am also given to understand that I have horrendously dry and damaged hair. I was able to politely refuse the 14 euro cream and make semi-normal conversation with the coiffeuse despite the fact that I had no idea what she was saying.
#5. After I entered the metro and everyone in the car was honest-to-God covering/ plugging their noses/mouths and laughing. I have a cold and could smell nothing. I wonder who it was and why s/he didn't notice the world was gagging. It was super weird to notice a bad smell visually.
#6. In the library bathroom I was attacked by a middle aged woman who noticed the abnormal amount of hair on my coat (result of the haircut). She proceeded to FREAK out and spent at least five minutes clucking and wiping me down with wet toilet paper. She managed to involve everyone in the bathroom with this process and a girl my own age got rather annoyed and said I all needed to do was get some scotch tape and go to town. Toilet-paper lady wouldn't listen and started in on the hair-dressers of today. I managed to escape her and then ran into the girl again who griped about some people creating drama out of nothing...
#7. I ate a pastery called "un suisse" that was not very good. It involved gelatin and mini-chocolate chips inside pastery. Does anyone know what this thing is? I wondered if the gelatin was supposed to be citrus flavored. For 28 centimes I also bought a sugered pop-over that was really good.
#8. Despite my afternoon snacks, I thought I was going to die before dinner. However, it was worth the wait because we had crepes which we cooked at the table on a party griddle. We ate these with ham, any kind of cheese we wanted and mushrooms. We also fried eggs on the griddle and I shocked the world when I flipped my egg. I decided it must be an American thing: the French only cook eggs sunnyside up.
#9. For desert we melted chocolate bars onto our crepes. I found a banana. Lucie put an enormous amount of butter with my chocolte and she added salt to hers. Mine was so buttery I decided to go the salt route as well... I am not sure about the salt/ chocolate mixture, but God do I love melted chocolate with banana. The little boys make fun of my inordinate love of chocolate, but then again they keep sneaking me squares when no one is looking so...
#10. Said chocolate jokers love their toy tops SO MUCH that they sleep with them each night. There is a TV show for kids with anime type characters who use tops as weapons to fight evil and have epic adventures. The retail sales of the special tops complete with really intense launchers are astronomical. There are no more " toupies" in the stores. I personally can't play tops for 6 hours a day, but they love them.
#2. I rode the bus with some very nice girls and found the school where we will be visiting classrooms to teach English. They have a copper roof and a kind of Zen-like garden. Swank.
#3. After getting back on the bus I drop-of-the-hat recognized the neighborhood we were traveling through as containing a hairsalon for which I had a coupon. I impromptu leapt of the bus and while searching for the salon came across a SNCF ticket booth and was able to buy train tickets to go to Paris this weekend. My French ticket buying skills were perfectly normal even though I made the guy search about for days/ times.
#4. I got a rather complicated hair cut and it doesn't look bad. This involved a lot of gesticulating/ excitement. The French word " shampooing" threw me for a bit of a loop. I am also given to understand that I have horrendously dry and damaged hair. I was able to politely refuse the 14 euro cream and make semi-normal conversation with the coiffeuse despite the fact that I had no idea what she was saying.
#5. After I entered the metro and everyone in the car was honest-to-God covering/ plugging their noses/mouths and laughing. I have a cold and could smell nothing. I wonder who it was and why s/he didn't notice the world was gagging. It was super weird to notice a bad smell visually.
#6. In the library bathroom I was attacked by a middle aged woman who noticed the abnormal amount of hair on my coat (result of the haircut). She proceeded to FREAK out and spent at least five minutes clucking and wiping me down with wet toilet paper. She managed to involve everyone in the bathroom with this process and a girl my own age got rather annoyed and said I all needed to do was get some scotch tape and go to town. Toilet-paper lady wouldn't listen and started in on the hair-dressers of today. I managed to escape her and then ran into the girl again who griped about some people creating drama out of nothing...
#7. I ate a pastery called "un suisse" that was not very good. It involved gelatin and mini-chocolate chips inside pastery. Does anyone know what this thing is? I wondered if the gelatin was supposed to be citrus flavored. For 28 centimes I also bought a sugered pop-over that was really good.
#8. Despite my afternoon snacks, I thought I was going to die before dinner. However, it was worth the wait because we had crepes which we cooked at the table on a party griddle. We ate these with ham, any kind of cheese we wanted and mushrooms. We also fried eggs on the griddle and I shocked the world when I flipped my egg. I decided it must be an American thing: the French only cook eggs sunnyside up.
#9. For desert we melted chocolate bars onto our crepes. I found a banana. Lucie put an enormous amount of butter with my chocolte and she added salt to hers. Mine was so buttery I decided to go the salt route as well... I am not sure about the salt/ chocolate mixture, but God do I love melted chocolate with banana. The little boys make fun of my inordinate love of chocolate, but then again they keep sneaking me squares when no one is looking so...
#10. Said chocolate jokers love their toy tops SO MUCH that they sleep with them each night. There is a TV show for kids with anime type characters who use tops as weapons to fight evil and have epic adventures. The retail sales of the special tops complete with really intense launchers are astronomical. There are no more " toupies" in the stores. I personally can't play tops for 6 hours a day, but they love them.
A few pictures of campus and the church near my house
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| View from our student lounge: observe the fine sundial and then the distinct lack of sun. |
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| The church near my house and my steadfast landmark. The clock forever reads four and Sundays the chimes go bonkers. |
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| View from Batiment E: home of international students |
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