Venez pour la fete...

Saturday, one of the women I work with at Asnieres threw a party for the ladies in our classes. We talked about the party for almost a month before it happened. The anticipation built.

And Saturday afternoon, almost everyone came...literally. They came in their party dresses with their colorful head scarves. They brought cookies and cakes. They brought along daughters or sisters of friends. And my friend's house was packed. We packed nearly forty people in her little family room. We all smooshed together on the couch or sat knee-to-knee on the floor and chatted while we ate the hallal sausage they called Merguez, and the cookies, and the almonds, and the cakes...and the list goes on.

Then, after a while, the women all took hold of their pans and spoons, and started banging them together in time. And two of the women stood, tied scarves around their rear-ends, and danced. Not a waltz. Not a swing dance. We're talking Moroccan dancing--shaking the Northern hemisphere and shaking the Southern hemisphere in a way no one but a Moroccan can do. It seemed so strange to see the women do this. Normally, they're so proper. They sit ramrod straight in class, copying down everything I write on the board. They wear a hundred layers of clothes--a nice, practical black coat and a nice, practical black dress on top, but once they sit, you see the cartoon character socks and the colorful pajama pants that are lurking underneath. They take their turns going into a different room and praying on the same prayer mat. But they never dance. Until Saturday. And then, oh my, did they dance. They moved and shook and vibrated and danced until one of the two fell on the ground laughing so hard that she spent the next ten minutes making sure her eye makeup wasn't too smudged. It was a great time.

So, now, we're just counting down until the next one!

Spring and Strikes

I went to the prefecture today, and I received another carte de sejour--another residency card-- so I'm good to go until next February. Good news, huh?
In other news, today is a day of strikes.
Yesterday, I was running onto the platform to get my train, and I saw that ominous white paper, plastered to the wall, reading Greve. Strike. Not my favorite word.
I never heard what the strike was for, or rather, what the strikers were hoping to obtain. But this year, it's turned out that every time I've had to go to the prefecture, there's been a strike. Interesting, eh?

But today, all the trains were, as they say in French, perturbed...I'll leave you to guess what they mean by that. The E line was running amok, as were the A and B lines.
And today, I set off to buy my fiscal stamps from the public treasury (the official way of paying the government for another year of living in la Belle France), and everyone here in the office said, "Oh, don't even bother going. The people at the treasure definitely won't be working--it's the greve!"
I went anyway, praying it'd be open, so I could get my residency card. Thankfully, the people at the public treasury were indeed working.
Although, they seemed to be the only ones. The schools in the area were on strike. The kids were all sitting on the stone walls outside the grocery store, drinking Cokes, eating chips, throwing pebbles at the homeless saxophone player on the corner by the supermarket. The market, which is generally deserted on a Tuesday morning, was choked full of people. And the streets were flooded with cars.
And while the strikes normally beat the life out of me, today, I found it charming. When the sun is out and the daffodils are pushing up against the earth, springing to life one more time, streets full of people seems just about perfect. Spring has sprung.

A Minute to Brag...

Since I mentioned her, here she is: my niece, Juliette.

A Little Bit of This ; A Little Bit of That...

It's been a while since I've written, because my beloved cousin, Jill, was here for two weeks during our winter break, and Jill and I saw every cathedral and art museum in Paris (with a few exceptions...), and then, took a weekend tour of Florence, Italy and the nearby Cinque Terre. Wooonderful.
So, now I'm back in the Paris area--back to classes, back proof reading other peoples' articles for the organization's newsletters, and back to blogging. (Or so I hope!)

First off, I'm now an Aunt. You can probably tell by the changes in my writing style. Something about my word choice definitely screams "aunt", right?

And secondly, I've made friends with a mail-order bride, which has me very excited. I ran into this girl through a friend of mine about a week ago. She's 20 years old, and her 23 year old husband's family decided they wanted their son to marry a girl from the "old country." The girl moved over from Morocco and was married a few weekends ago. I've been over to her house twice now, which is quite the feat, because she lives on the top floor of an apartment building sans elevator. :s She's been coming to French class, learning French little by little. It's fun to finally see someone "young" come to class...not to insult any of my ladies, but most of them are 40s, 50s, 60s, and so, to see someone more in my age range has me thrilled.

And thirdly, I have a brief story that made me laugh a little. Today, I finished classes at Telegraphe, got on my metro, and was headed to the main train station. I saw one of the ladies from class on the metro, and she made her way over to sit with me (if you've read my earlier posts, this woman is the compulsive story teller). She sat down, and began explaining how she was "so African" when she moved to France twenty years ago, and how she had to learn to speak French correctly and act more "French" in order to get herself a job as an agent of L'Oreal products. ("I hate hair," she tells me on the train. "Oh?" I say. She nods, "But you have to live, don't you?") This woman has very good French. She speaks clearly, doesn't have a heavy accent, and in my opinion, has a pretty huge vocabulary.
"Well," you probably are thinking, "she has lived in France twenty years."
And that really doesn't mean much. My ladies over in Gennevilliers area (Little Morocco) have been here twenty to thirty years, and they're still in my beginner class saying things like, "I lots like you."
So, I asked this woman on the metro, this compulsive story teller, what her secret was to learning French.
"Night clubs," she replied. "Lots and lots of night clubs."
"Oh?"
"Yes," she continued. "You get the right combination of loud music, sweat, and movement, and it's like magic--poof! You know French."
I nodded and thanked her and moved right along.

So, there you have it--the secret to learning French is night clubs. Who knew?

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.