Kenavo (farewells, part 2)

Yesterday, I left Brittany. It was a mixed-bag of feelings:
Happiness with an excellent time there
Sadness that it was over
Awkwardness that I was being ridiculous waving to friends while sitting across from a very attractive Frenchman in first class.

This post, however, is not going to be a discussion of yesterday. I'm going to talk about Saturday, my real day of goodbyes.

Note to everyone: NEVER agree to two meals (even if one is called an apéritif and the other is called "come see my house") in one day in France. Though delicious and highly amusing, it is something of a stretch for any person's stomach. Oof.

Saturday at lunch, ma belle cavalière, aka my Breton dance partner, came and picked me up for a visit at her house. This visit ended up being a crazy delicious six-hour lunch with her family. Magret de canard, merguez, veal sausage, lots of cheeses, marinaded anchovies (even if you think you don't like anchovies, try this if you get the chance), homemade ratatouille, cheeses and a lovely strawberry tart. It was a really enjoyable meal and another fun look into French family life, including teenage angst. (The French: they're just like us! Only not!) Sidenote: there was the usual overabundance of bisous, even from the random neighbor boy who came by. Now that I'm in Paris with Americans, I have to say I actually miss bisous. I did not expect that to happen. It was really jarring for me today to meet people and not have the usual bisous/enchantée routine.

At the end, ma belle cavalière and I went on a little tour of Pont Scorff:

There was a very Breton wedding going on, which we crashed (I mean, the doors were open...). We also did a little tour of the artist ateliers around town. If you're ever in the region, I definitely recommend a trip to Pont Scorff. Not only is it completely charming and authentically Breton, the many artist studios are interesting, unique and filled with warm, talkative people. The pays de Lorient region where I live is Breton but does not always look so. During World War II, it was heavily bombed due to Germany's encampment there. America was the bomber and we managed to destroy everything but the German submarine bases. Pont-Scorff, only 30 or so minutes from Lorient, however, seems to have escaped completely unscathed. The current town hall was the former house of a prince and interesting sculptures are waiting to be discovered around the town. The cour des métiers d'art is a great place to go if you're searching for a unique gift. Fortunately I had left my wallet at home and couldn't be tempted into buying any pieces. 

Balloons all ready to fly away. 

This outfit earned me many a "Mais t'es toute belle ce soir!" 

The very Breton wedding. The door were open and we actually went in to watch. 

After the little tour, I was returned chez moi so that I could then be picked up to go to an apéritif at the president of Spered Kewenn (the local Breton association). I knew going into the apéro that it was very possible that this would be one of those apéros that is actually a dinner. I still thought, however, that the apéritif would be a somewhat short affair. Silly me. Silly, silly, silly me. It was six hours long and could have definitely been longer had people not needed to get up to vote in the morning.

It was an unforgettable evening. My Breton classmates and a few members of my dance class were in attendance. I was so incredibly touched that they all turned up to wish me farewell and a hopeful à bientôt. One of my classmates made me a little bag hand-embroidered with a Breton pattern and another woman baked a cake decorated with an American flag (myrtille for the blue, bananas for the white and strawberries for the red) and a single Breton flag. Another classmate made a far (a type of Breton cake) with apples. SO DELICIOUS. Normally fars are made with fig. Apples take the cake. Miam.

Hand-embroidered bag. 

A Breton-American cake. 

An apple-far cake. 

As the night wore on, after the champagne bottles had been emptied and the wine bottles dwindled down, the singing started. As it was the first Saturday of May, I sang My Old Kentucky Home (far away).  Breton songs were sung, as well as the French drinking song, Il faut que je m'en aille.

After the tea and coffee, but before les pruneaux. 

To finish off the night, we had traditional pruneaux. These are prunes soaked in eau de vie. At that point, my properly drunk classmate told me how much the class was going to miss me and how wonderful it was to have some youth in the class. He said that my being there allowed for such a night to happen. Normally it is only the "extremists" that sing Breton songs at a dinner, but because of me, even non-extremists partook in such an occasion. "Tu as marqué le coin," he said, but the truth is that I am the one that has been most changed and most marked by them. It's hard to part, but I know that I will always be welcome back. 

Buvons encore une dernière fois (Let's drink another, one last time)

A l'amitié, l'amour, la joie (To friendship, love and joy)

On a fêté nos retrouvailles (We've enjoyed our meetings)

Je m'ennuie pas, mais il faut que je m'en aille. (I'm not bored, but I must leave) 

-- Graeme Allwright 

What I'm up to tonight

(Further updates on recent life to come, but for now I think I'll enjoy the sunset.)

Goodbyes

I had to stop by the primary school today to pick up a flashdrive I left behind, so I tried to show up a few minutes after school let out to minimize the amount of crazy I stirred up. I still managed to pass many students along the way and I suspect there are a lot of parents that now know who that Mais-oui character is. I'm gonna miss hearing "AH! YAH MAIOUI!" English r's are super hard for French kiddos. The few students still in the school courtyard literally chased me down (as I ran after one of the student-life assistants myself to give them something back) and demanded bisous. No longer being an employee of the académie de Rennes, I complied and received bonbons and more bisous for my pains. I'm going to miss them.

With that in mind, I thought I'd share some of my favorite student notes (there's good chance I'll share even more as time goes on. I haven't gotten through them all yet.....) :

From a CM1 (a 9/10 year old), unprompted and all on her own (I love my job):

Mary, I loved doing English with you, you were very smily and you taught us many things. And to help us learn, you had us play games. We had a lot of fun with you. I thank you very much for everything. To have you with us was too great. I hope that we weren't too difficult with you. (As if, you were all angels, angels, I tell ya!)

Thank you for everything. 

I adore you Mary. 

Thank you very much. 

From (student)

I adore you.

(British flag) (Breton flag) (student name) (My students were never too clear on the fact I'm not English. I probably should have done more drilling on how, though I speak English, I am not in fact English.)

From a 4ème (in fact, from the good half of my worst class):

(English parts I think you can read)

I will miss you!

(est-ce que tu baise[s]?) <-- I'm not translating that here, but don't worry, google will translate it for you. Yeah. A student wrote that. OH KIDS..... This class is the one that has a kid "amoureux" de moi. (Edit: It looks like that might be some sort of cultural thing. There was a Ze Inconnus sketch called that... but it was about picking up chicks, from what the quick google description tells me. My connection is pretty slow, so it'll be a while before I can fully check up on this. Feel free to tell me if you know.)

 From a CM1/2 in the class that had a farewell party for me. I was depicted as the statue of liberty in a lot of these images....:

 Statue of liberty: There are skyscrapers that make the letters of my name! And people that say they will miss me!
Crowd: You will be welcome... in FRANCE! 
Oh SNAP! kiddos, I see what you did there. I love y'all. There are little people on all the buildings that have signs spelling out "we will miss you."

From the same class:

You were my best English mistress. (hehehehe, in France, primary school teachers are called Maître/Maîtresse)
When you leave, my heart will hurt. Thank you for everything. 

Thank you for the English. (I just really, really liked this picture.)

BEST THING EVER: THE SONG MY CM1/2s WROTE AND SANG FOR ME. Sung to "We Will Rock You." I'm sorry I didn't record it. So very, very sorry. It was really frickin' adorable.:

(In case it's not legible....:

Mary you're a girl make a good job
Teaching in the class gonna be a big girl some day
Can have a smile on your face
There's no disgrace
We speak English all over the place


We all, we all thank you
We all, we all thank you


Mary you're a young girl, good girl
Being under your feet, we give you our word today
Don't have tears on your face
There's no disgrace
Giving us fun all over the place


We will, we will miss you
We all, we all love you)

Okay. I'm gonna get back to packing and not thinking about how much I'm going to miss all the people here.

OH ALSO, any future assistants that may find themselves here, don't hesitate to contact me with any questions. :)

What a day!

This morning started out... badly. I woke up two hours before intended with stomach pains. Evidently, munching on lettuce before bed was a bad idea. I spent the rest of the morning trying to figure out if things had stopped enough to make it to my last day of classes at the collège. I was dehydrated, a little faint and not all-together. Still, it was going to be my last day and I couldn't miss it. I left my apartment a minute before class and thanked my lucky stars that I live on campus. For the first time ever, my students saw me in a t-shirt with more disheveled than usual hair. I told them I was dressing comme une américaine (sorry USA...).

First surprise of the morning: a teacher had made a mistake and my 4emes became 6emes. Not gonna lie, I loved this change. I love 6emes. Following the adorable 6emes who gave me thank you notes from all the students of their teacher (aaaaawwwwww) was my worst class. Rather my worst half of a class. I dreaded the thirty minutes I spent with the students every week. We made it through with minimal discomfort. I actually had a lot of fun with the second group (I usually do, it's just the first group that was penible). It might have helped that the second group came in with a paper they had all signed. (Granted.... one of the things written on there asked about my sex life.... er.... Well, the nice thing is knowing that this paper came from them and had nothing to do with their teacher.) I had planned on going to lunch with the teachers after that, but my stomach was protesting loudly even to the idea of water so I sat and waited for my last class ever at the collège.

My last class ever was with 5emes. 5eme is a funny age where some kids are still adorable children and other are awkwardly on their way to teenage years and others yet are all-growed-up. I made the hour into a Q&A session whose success was varied but overall positive. It was a good finish.

Second surprise of the morning (er... I guess I should say day. One week in Spain and already I think everything before 3pm is morning): I got called to see the gestionnaire. Whoops, I assumed, I should have told someone when I'd be quitte-ing the apartment. Mais non. It turned out the administrative team at the collège wanted to thank me and give me presents! So sweet! They told me that all the students and teachers had just been so happy with me. It was wonderful to hear as I had at times doubted my really being helpful to the students. I'm also not going to lie, when I was brought in to the principal's office, I thought I was in trouble. My mind is extremely inventive in times like these.

I'm gonna miss my little big monsters.

One more day at the primary school and I'm done. So sad, so sad, so sad. I've got quite the day planned out, however. My little monsters are going to have an English treasure hunt and taste PB&J. I'm pretty excited.

Much love,

MCJ

Back for the goodbyes

It's really weird coming back from vacation only to be saying goodbye constantly to everyone. Spain was fantastic, but I'll probably save talking about it for this summer when it seems like I'll have a looot of free time.

This Monday, I took the TCF exam (test de connaissance du français). I don't think it went as well as I would have liked after dominating my practice exams, but I'm reasonably confident I still got at least a B2 that would allow me to study in France. We'll see... in like two months. The only way I could see it turning out to be less would be if the optional tests weighted into the final score and my scattered responses to the oral expression were completely unsatisfactory. ANYWAY, not worth thinking about now. What will be, will be.

The test, despite its late beginnings, actually finished nearly on time, meaning I was able to make it to work on time. Yeah! Well, technically a minute late, but I had warned I might be much, much later so let's say I was early. What I walked into was my 9-11 year olds' spontaneous sex talk. It went somewhat overtime, so basically I sat in the back of the class for an hour and a half listening to my lil kiddos say what they already knew and learn what actually happens. (They anonymously wrote down what they knew and what questions they had and placed them into boxes at the front. The teacher then went through them all aloud.) These kids were actually pretty savvy. Unlike in America, you didn't hear anyone spouting off nonsense about storks. I was so impressed with how the teacher handled the subject and the class. It probably helps that the subject is not so taboo here (one discussion I overheard at a teacher lunch table here was on different foods' effects on erections). At first, some kids would giggle when hearing zizi or pénis or foufon (I'm not sure of spelling here since it's kiddy slang) or le sexe, but the teacher said "Okay, we're going to hear another word that's going to make you giggle.... Foot. .... Ear. .... Penis. See? It's just a scientific word for the anatomy. It's okay if you say zizi, because we can use words even like zizi to speak about things scientifically."

My kiddos also discussed periods which meant at recess, this conversation occurred:

Girl A: Mary, do you have your period?
Mary: Yes.
Girl B: Duh she has her period, she's not a child.
Girl C: Yeah, but she could have problems and then she wouldn't be able to get pregnant.
Girl A: Would you be sad if you had problems and couldn't have kids?
Mary: Well, yes, perhaps at first, but there are so many children without parents and I think it'd be a good thing to adopt. I could still have kids.
Girls ABC: But still....
Girl B: Have you got an amoureux?
Mary: No.
Girl B: Oh, that'd be nul to not have an amoureux.(N.B. Nul means lame here.)
Mary: hahahaha

Sadly, my next work days were less exciting. I had my last 3emes class (those are the oldest at the collège, freshman in high school aged) and just had a charming bunch of 5emes. We discussed differences between France and the US. (YOU DON'T DO THE BISE???) Apparently I say bisou funnily.

Last night was my last Breton class. The next two Tuesdays are French holidays (oh France...). We've decided to organize a little goodbye soirée which is nice since not everyone was able to make it to the class yesterday.

ELECTIONS!!! My goodness, they have been so much fun to watch. Perhaps I'll write something more about that later, but right now I need to prepare for 5emes, round 2. Wish me luck....

Bisous (said funnily) and hugs (said and executed properly),

MCJ

Heading to Spain tonight

And now for a ramble:

As it is now the Tuesday after Easter (and a day when people are no longer 0ff-work, the exception being us with les vacances already), I am on the receiving end of a lot of rejection. I knew that a lot of replies would come from universities that only accept lectrices from other universities with whom they have an agreement, but it's still le suck to get them. Ah well, I will keep on keeping on (and my info will still be on file at those places if one of their agreed upon candidates dropped off). Okay, so, there have only been two rejections so far, but they were rejections from schools I was really hoping to work for.

Project for the Spain trip: writing a Masters application.

I feel positive still, however. Where there's a will, there's a way. Talking with EU friends can be a little maddening though. Their only concern is finding a job, they don't have to find a job that will sponsor a visa. I was speaking with one who was telling me to go to the pole emploi to look for a job "and then you can also apply for unemployment benefits!"

Me: "Uhhhh I'm pretty sure that's not possible, given I'm an American and once my visa is over I'm officially a tourist."

"Oh, right."

Life has been exceptionally great, however. Lots of celebrations, lots of meeting new people, lots of saying goodbye. Saying goodbye is not great, but discovering that these people you just met a half year ago care about you and want you to stay a part of their lives is great.

MCJ

A million emails

My head is full of things like:

En espérant..., en attendant..., dans l'attente de votre réponse....
je vous prie d'accepter... agréer... l'expression de mes salutations distinguées.

School's out for... easter! I'm the last person in the school, save one. I've got to get in -- or rather OUT-- my last emails and print out last letters and CVs. Phwew.

This last week has been utterly amazing and a constant reminder that I am going to miss this place

And now I've got to leave before the alarm