Bisous

Adventure updates, photos (mostly of food and bicycles), and amusing stories (at least I think so).

26 November 2008

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Between the presidential elections and the plethora of specifically American holidays since my arrival in France, I've never been at a loss for material for my classes. I've been teaching classes on Thanksgiving all week, and by "teaching classes" I mean playing bingo and talking about what we have to be thankful for. Considering my students' level of English (and maturity) I've avoided Thanksgiving vocabulary words like "colonization," "small pox," and "genocide," preferring to stick instead to words like "pumpkin pie" and "cranberry sauce" (which, for the French, may actually be more inconceivable...)

How would you answer the nearly existential question, "What is a cranberry?"

How would you convince a person from a country lauded for its fine cuisine that, indeed, a pie made of squash and cinnamon and cream is delicious?

The lessons have been some of the most fun that I've taught so far. I start class by showing them some pictures that I took last Thanksgiving of all of the traditional dishes. The video clip I have of Thanksgiving a couple years ago with some of my extended family around a Huge table yelling "Happy Thanksgiving" has been the big hit. My girls today said: "Oh! It's just like Little House on the Prairie!" and "Mademoiselle, you really do that? You're sure that your family isn't acting? It's just sooo cute!"

Then I have them push all of the tables together to make one big table and I hand out slips of paper with names of my family members on them. Much to Lauren's dismay, I've taken all of our empty tupperware dishes, the salt and pepper shakers, our decorative gourds, pie pans, cake pans, the ladle, etc., and labeled them with the names of different dishes. We all sit down at the table and play act Thanksgiving dinner chez Brianne. "Sandi, uuuu, Mum, can yoo please pass zee gravy?" "Yes, of couse! 'ere you go." "Zank you" 'You're welcome" ... Everyone speaks, everyone laughs, and, somehow magically, pretending to be a family makes everyone less shy and more willing to participate. At first they're all shocked when I begin rearranging the classroom, when I ask them to sit in a circle facing each other, when I join them. It's as if, by disrupting the physical organization of the classroom, the French magisterial mentality gets broken too.

For the last fifteen minutes of class, we go around the table and each person says one thing that she or he is thankful for. Responses include: family, friends, having enough to eat, Barack Obama, and..... dolloping whip cream on my day ....
"I am sankful for zat Brianne comes to France." :)

Of course, what they actually mean by that is that they're thankful that they didn't have to do any real work for a whole class period....but my ego would rather bask in the warmth of being liked (undeniably one of my biggest faults)! It is encouraging though to see students who normally sit with their arms folded, eyes rolled, and cell phones out actually excited to participate.
Technically (so they tell me) my 'job' is to improve my students' conversational English, but I feel successful if I've made them think (if even for a fleeting second) "hey, English is fun."

So, this Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for a year of fun and rest. I'm thankful to be in France with good friends and loads of Christmas decorations (hey, since there isn't any Thanksgiving to mark the transition to Christmas, they're allowed to be out here!) And, I'm thankful for you (since you are most likely a family member or close friend ;)

I hope you all bask in togetherness, gravy, and afternoon naps.

07 November 2008

I really wanted to take you all on a photo tour, but, of course, this server won't let me upload photos. Although your first reaction might be disappointment, you might reconsider when you find out that I took over 500 pictures in Switzerland... The narration to half the would-be slide show goes something like, "Here's a beautiful fall tree next to a beautiful turquoise river with the Alps in the background" .... "Here's the beautiful orange tree from the left" .... "Here's the tree from the right with a boat in the foreground" .... "Here's a leaf from the tree floating in the river by the boat" .... "Here's a self-portrait of me with the tree and the boat and the mountains" etc etc. You know it's bad when you suspect that you would lose the attention of your own parents!

I've been bad again and I can't possible cover all that's happened since the last time I posted. A brief re-cap: paperwork, teaching, vacation. Lauren and I just returned from the first of our four paid vacations :) We spent a week and a half traveling through Switzerland and it was absolutely stunning. A country full of mountains where in autumn you can go back and forth between gorgeous fall and North Pole Narnia, famous for chocolate and cheese, where the people (at least in the French part) speak French but are organized more like Germany ... yes please. It also a country where scientists have constructed a massive proton accelerator in hopes of capturing on film what exactly happens when two isolate protons smash into each other at ridiculous speeds, a side effect of which could be the accidental creation of a "minor" black hole. Haha. But, I think I'd still move there in a heartbeat if anyone gave me an opportunity, or lots and lots of Swiss Francs.

Lauren and I traveled with CouchSurfing (which sounds really sketchy utnil you try it). It's basically a website like Facebook where you can contact people who live in the area where you want to go and stay with them for free. Obviously it's great for the budget, but the real reason I love it is because of the cultural exchange. As a tourist, you rarely get the opportunity to see a place from the perspective of someone who lives there, which is what couchsurfing allows you to do. This time Lauren and I had a fabulous host in Luzern, Remo, who took us to meet his mom in the village where he's from and then drove us above the clouds so we could actually see the mountains. And, in St. Gallen, we stayed in a sweet converted farm-house with Sebastian and his family. We went hiking to a nearby mountain and we got to meet his darling Grandparents who live just up the hill from his family.


It was a super trip...but I do laugh when I realize that basically I took a vacation from vacation. Sigh. I will never be able to do "real life" after this.

Sorry for the abrupt ending, but the cafe where I'm using the internet is closing so I have to run! Hopefully I'll be able to put up some picture sometime soon and also write about what my day to day life is like!

bisous to you all!