The Bidet

Today in class, we were studying the syllables with the letter B (Ba, Be, Bi, Bo Bu). In our workbooks, we had several pictures of words starting or containing syllables with B.

There was a bathroom sink (lavabo), the act of drinking (boire), a banana (you can guess...), etc. But for Bi, there was a bidet. In case you don't know what it is, I've included a picture above. It's for washing anything out of your lower hemisphere that you don't want there. Since this is a G rated blog, I'll let you do the math...

Anyway, I came across the word today with the women in my class. For this particular word, I was really hoping they'd just circle "Bi", and we could move on. We'd had the word bidet in our workbooks last year, and last year, when they understood less, they didn't question anything. They just circled the right answer, and we rolled along.

Today, I was ready to move on, relieved no one had said anything yet, when one of my students said, "So a bidet is a toilet, c'est ca?"

"No,"I replied. "Not exactly."

"You don't go to the bathroom in it?" she asked.

"No."

"So?" she asked. "What's it for?"

"Washing up," I replied.

"Your hands?" she asked. "It's a sink?"

"No."

"Then what?"

All the ladies held the books up to get a better look at the picture, turning the books this way and that, analyzing the picture.

"Well," I said, "when you go into a bathroom in France, you'll see that there are two toilet looking things..."

"Oui?" she said, looking like she'd seen this before.

"So," I said, gulping, turning more than a little red, "the French people go potty in one and wash up in the other."

She stared at me, still confused. I didn't know if she lacked the vocabulary to understand or if she simply wasn't getting the concept behind the bidet.

After a few more failed attempts, I pulled over two chairs. I sat on one, pretending to be using the restroom. Then, I moved over to the other chair and said, "I'm washing myself." Or if I'm honest, since I was not sure how to best--and most easily--say what I wanted to, I said, (this is my attempt at a direct translation): "I'm washing my butt cheeks." (My poor mother. She'd be appalled!)

"Ohhhhhh...." my student said, and then, quickly translated in Arabic to those around her.

And all the sudden, everyone started laughing, while I quickly rearranged the chairs, saying hastily, "So, lavabo...that containts which syllable with B?"

That Bad Habit...

My boyfriend and I have developped this bad habit of making a running commentary on the lives of everyone around us. Normally, the people we come across aren't English speakers, so we comment on where we think they're going, what we think they're doing, how they could improve their looks, etc. Though they occasionally receive curious looks from us, they generally have no idea what's being said about them.
Last Sunday, Stephan and I were sitting in church, and this man and his son walked in.
"I wonder how he got his wife..." Stephan mused.
"Really?" I asked, "Because I feel like he's way better looking than she is."
"I know," he replied. "That's what I meant."
"Strangely, they've got a cute son," I said.
We then, moved onto something else, talking about the music or what the message would be or something equally banal. But a few minutes later, the pastor got up and announced that we'd be having a guest speaker that day.
"Please welcome Trevor Harris," he said.
My heart dropped as the man directly in front of us stood up with a curious smile on his face. Trevor Harris isn't a French name. It's a very, very English name.
Realizing this, I tried to replay our whole conversation over in my head, and I felt my face get so red. And then, I tried to remember how loud we'd been talking...could it have been a whisper? Or was it in a regular voice?
By the end, the only conclusion I came to was that it would be best to never, ever say anything that I wouldn't want to be overheard.
There we go. That's New Year's Resolution #3412.

Questions

Before coming to France to work with the women in my classes, I had a training session where I was told what to expect from the kinds of women I'd be working with. For one thing, I was told they would ask very invasive questions: Are you married? Why aren't you married? Do you have kids? Why not? .... things like that.
Well, for the most part, I haven't really experienced any of this aside from the occasional teasing I get for being 24 and single.
But the other day, a woman in class said to me (from my perspective, the question came completely out of the blue), "How much money do you make?"
I was taken aback by the question, because I'd never imagine asking anyone this. "Enough," I replied vaguely.
"No," she continued, "How much money do you make?"
I then explained that I'm a volunteer and that I received a monthly stipend.
"And you don't work?" she asked.
"Si!" I said, nettled that she thought teaching her French didn't constitute working. "I do work."
"What do you do for a living then?" she asked.
"Teach," I replied.
"Where?"
"Here," I said.
She paused a minute, considered this, and then said, "You're so funny."
"No," I replied. "Really. I'm here to teach you French."
"That's not work," she said.
"What is it then?" I laughed.
She smiled, "Oh, I don't know..." And then, with one final look at me, she left, laughing her way all the way down the rue Telegraphe.

But oh my. I enjoyed that conversation. I really love my work...or, from her perspective, my lack there of.

That Thin Line Between Fact and Fiction

I've been really tired lately--caught up in a lot of things and my mind has been a little muddled. I was praying this morning, and suddenly, this family came to mind. An American journalist married to a French man. They were thinking about a divorce. I kept trying to remember who this couple was, and how exactly it was that I'd come to know them.

My mind was blank.

Anyway, I prayed for them, and then, went along my business as usual. Later on today, I picked up the book I'm reading, Elle s'appelait Sarah, and I started laughing.

The book is the story of an American journalist married to a French man. She's writing an article on the French government's involvement in World War II, specifically within the context of Occupied France. The woman travels around the Paris area, visiting the interment camps, the work camp, the Vel d'Hiv where French/Jewish families were detained before being sent to Auschwitz. And then, of course, this American woman finds out she's pregnant, her husband doesn't want another baby, and so, he gives her the ultimatum--me or the baby.

I was, I have to admit, quite relieved when it hit me that this huge concern on my heart was actually fiction. Now, I can stop worrying about it so much.

Oh the Tales they Tell!

I think I've caught myself a pathological liar, but of course, that isn't a nice thing to say about someone, so we'll say that she's a "sower."
Anyway, there's this woman who comes to classes, and I've always felt terrible for her. When I first met her, she explained to me that she was an orphan and was raised in an orphanage by nuns. At the time, I'd just started my November novel, and I was writing about two girls who were living in an orphanage run by nuns. I tried to discreetly pose a few questions to this woman, but found out--strangely--nothing.
I didn't have much interaction with her again until just before Christmas. She sat in on my class, because her teacher was home sick. We were talking about Tu (the familiar form of "you") and Vous (the either formal or plural form of "you"). This woman piped up, saying that back in her home country, she had been the boss of an office building, and she'd used Vous with all of her employees (to show respect) but had asked them to use Tu with her. "Because they should feel comfortable, you know?" she'd said. I'd thought, "How sensitve of her." I didn't really think any more about this conversation. Until last Wednesday.
And last Wednesday, our paths crossed again.
She was in the kitchen talking to her teacher. I came in to put away the leftover tea and biscuits from tea, and she was saying, "I'm 54 years old, and I've never worked a day in my life. Who's going to hire me now?" She went on to explain that the government didn't want to continue giving her allocations but wanted her to find a job instead. She then said, "I'm trained to be a hair stylist, and I almost was hired at a salon in Paris once." Her teacher asked why it didn't work out, and this woman shook her head, looking disgusted, and said, "They don't work with L'Oreal, and I just can't work with anything but L'Oreal."
In any case, however, a flag went up in my head, since not even a month ago, she'd mentioned being the boss of that distinguished office building.
Later on that same day, she said to her teacher, "...I jumped into the sea to save two drowning children." She went on to explain that as soon as she and the children were pulled out of the water, photographers had descended upon them with their cameras, and she'd said, "Please don't take my photograph!" They asked why, and she said it was because her father was a distinguished member of the Supreme Court and she didn't think it appropriate that his daughter show up in the paper.
An orphan, then?
Anyway, I'm sure there's a reason for all of this, and yet still, it feels so strange to be hearing so many different--and blantantly contradictory!--stories. At least they're original, though.

I would be remiss if I didn't add this.

And 2010 came...

First of all, Happy New Year. It's a little late to send out these voeux (well, 18 days late), but still, this is the first post of the new year, so it only seems appropriate to (once again) say "Bonne Annee! Bonne Sante!"
So, as many of you know, 2010 wasn't so kind to my family.
As it happens, my parents, my younger brother and sister-in-law came to Paris to spend Christmas with me. They arrived on Christmas Eve and planned to leave on New Year's Day. We had a great time, saw almost everything we wanted to see (with the exception of the inside of Versailles...a three hour wait? Non merci!) But December 30, after a day packed full with a Mona Lisa sighting, an Eiffel Tower climb, and some Mexican-French food, my dad started feeling sub-par. And to make a long story short, New Year's Eve, we found out that he'd had a stroke. As the great philosopher John Mayer says, "Bad news never has good timing."
We started out at the hospital at Pontault, but they found nothing out of the ordinary with the exception of some high blood levels, so we were sent to a neurological hospital in Paris. Stephan came with us, because though the doctors spoke more English than Mom and Dad spoke French, there were still those awkward moments when the doctor would point to the ceiling and say, "Now what is zhiss called?" Needless to say, I felt a lot more comfortable having Stephan, the most solidly bilingual person I know, around.
And would you know, just as a side note, that there were no ambulances available on New Year's Eve? Not one. "It is the holidays," the aides would say with a shrug. Still, I kept thinking, "This would never happen on Grey's Anatomy."
So, back to the story, he made it to the hospital in Paris, Stephan and I sat in the waiting room while Dad had his IRM (which is the French version of MRI. I think it's almost impossibly funny that all medical things are backwards in French. An IRM is an MRI. AIDS is SIDA.) It was an odd way to welcome in 2010--drinking piping hot cups of Lipton soup from the coffee dispenser, and me trying to read The Complete Works of Isaac Babel aloud to Stephan who did his best to act interested. But 2010 came. We spent the next two weeks in the hospital, circling our chairs together, reading a book a day, watching Dad eat his French hospital meals (foie gras and duck, quenelles, a gray looking something that was labeled--quite vaguely and disturbingly--poultry. Yes, 2010 came.
And as terribly as it started, things have settled back into a semi-normal now.
Mom and Dad flew home last Wednesday, and the 9 hour flight that all of us feared (flying post-stroke is a scary thing!) went really well. I'm back teaching classes, trying not to laugh as the women claim that there really is no difference in appearance or sound between the letters b and d.
And also, it's now been a year since I left home. And while that brings with it many positive things (I now can use the metro/RER/bus system, I have a few friends, my French has improved to a point where people don't seem so inconvenienced when I speak), that also means one not-so-great thing: it's time to return to the prefecture and get another residency card.
But I'm sure that'll be another story for another day...
Until then, again, Bonne annee!