stereotypes, vrai ou non

so one of the strange parts of living in a foreign country is constantly being confronted by stereotypes, whether about france, the us or even other countries. jane had a teacher tell her class "see, not all americans are fat! look at jane!" my kids ask me all the time if a) i only eat at mcdonalds; b) how many celebrities do i know and c) if gossip girl/desperate housewives/any other american show are actually true to life. i want to be like "guys. we are not all fat. and stupid. and lazy. and sleep around." except that last part is probably not appropriate to tell 13 year olds.
but the other side of it is the stereotypes about france. there are three main ones that i have been pondering this week.

1) french people smell bad.
okay at first i thought this was true. but then i realized i work in a middle school. and middle schoolers do smell bad. but as far as i can tell, french adults do not smell any worse than american ones so deal with that! especially because the next two stereotypes are totally true.

2) french people are always on strike.
this is just true. period. i think its one of those things you cant ever really understand unless you come from a place or live there for a long time, because i spend about half my time here asking people why they are going on strike and then they give me all the reasons, but i really mean "but why are you on STRIKE? not "WHY are you on strike" aka why a one day strike every month or so as opposed to a massive one once a year. but from what i can gather, its a national pastime/tradition/sport. today there is a strike that originates from the primary schools but the train workers, all the other levels of schools and PUBLIC RADIO are on strike. can you imagine if npr went on strike? anyways this means that about half the kids are here and maybe a fourth of the teachers- and since i only have class when teachers are here, i have one class from 9-10 and one from 4-5. lame. but despite the fact i dont really understand, it is pretty cool to see people actually getting involved in governmental decisions and protesting what is important to them- this time, it has to do with closing lots of preschools and getting rid of support staff in schools. so im all for it even if i dont really get what is going on.

3) french people love food.
this is the most true thing that has ever been said. french people love eating food, they love talking about it, they love recipes and ingredients and open air markets and chocolate and coffee and beef and cheese and bread. coincidentally, this is something we have in common. except the beef. but i have found this to be rather useful because if im in the teachers room and im sort of awkward because im about 10 years younger than any of the teachers and the only foreigner, plus i dont have kids and am not married and therefore this isnt always a ton in common that i can discuss with teachers, ill say "sooooo whats the difference between a chataigne and a marron?" which are two different kinds of chestnuts. then i will get an amazing discussion all about which is better for what and how to cook them and promises of recipes and then someone brings in examples the next day and all is right with the world. there are often homemade pastries and treats in the teachers' room, but i had never thought about the fact that maybe i could make something. until this week, when a class asked me to make a cinnamon twist recipe that i had been describing to them because my family makes it every year for christmas. so i brought in some extras for the teachers and all of a sudden, we were all best friends. everyone wanted the recipe and wanted to say something to me about them and teachers stopped me in the halls to tell me how much they liked them. if id known that was the way to their hearts, i would have done it months ago.

beyond all of that, everything is good in france- i went to strasbourg last weekend with jane and it was glorious and weirdly german/french. shes coming this weekend to angers, then the next weekend we are meeting up with molly in paris and then MOROCCO AND SPAIN FOR TWO WEEKS. estoy lista para viajar!

ps- the picture is the class post cinnamon twists

back in the uk

oy. so after a relatively busy week of running lots of errands and working on applications, not to mention trying to stop 14 year olds from telling me that they love me and want to move to the united states with me (im pretty sure its because i dont give them homework), i went back to england for the first time since i studied there 2 years ago. all my friends from my flat and the flat above me are still friends and live in 3 different houses and i was actually pretty nervous to see everyone again. except it was awesome. for the following reasons:


1) i had forgotten about my massive intense crush on all things english and ESPECIALLY the accent. i got on the bus at the airport and the driver said "you aright, love?" and i said MARRY ME. but seriously i do love england- free museums and good beer and wild amounts of politeness- its basically the opposite of france.

2) basically the entire weekend went: eat pizza with katie, go to a party, go to a club, dance, eat kebab, go to sleep at 5, and wake up at 11. repeat three times. AND we went to tescos (see the picture) which is an amazing grocery store. they have about 80 different kinds of chocolate pudding. plus after spending a lot of time in smaller grocery stores in angers, it was actually kind of astounding how big the store was. and how you can get 3 pizzas for 6 pounds. hence the massive amount of pizza-eating.



3) beyond all that though, i did go into london on saturday which was really wonderful because i spent the whole day walking around and thinking about how much time i spent there with rach doing everything. and i mean everything- i think we went to every single museum and sightseeing place there is. i still remember getting off the tube at rush hour on oxford street one of my first days and nearly curling up into the fetal position on the sidewalk because i had never seen that many people in one place in my life. then rachel called me a small town girl. then i realized she was right. but its amazing to go somewhere that big when you live in a small city like angers- on my 10 minute walk to the train station on thursday, i saw 3 people i knew. and the anonymity of london is astounding after that.

4) so basically it was really great to be able to go back and see everyone but TERRIBLE to return here because i had a million things to do and i was exhausted having woken up at 11 am fully dressed from the night before. but sometimes teaching can make it all better- i had two separate classes today ask me if they could come home with me and one kid said: "we go to beach together? i am verrrry bizee but i put it in zee calendar." also another 13 year old thinks i live with the english teachers. possibly all together.

5) i now have about 6 straight weeks of traveling up ahead including the fulfillment of jane and my mutual lifelong dream, STRASBOURG. be prepared.

So this is new to me. But having been informed by everybody and their mother that I will forget everything if I don't write it down/in a format where they can read it, here we are. In numerical order.
1) On Sunday, I came back to Angers(where I live- city of about 150,000 in between the regions of the Loire Valley and Brittany) from two weeks of snow in Portland where it never snows and in Angers, it was about 20 degrees fahrenheit and snowed all of Monday afternoon. And supposedly it never snows here either. Which was hilarious because then everyone FREAKED out even though there was about half an inch of snow. Since I live in Angers but work in Beaufort-en-Vallee, which is a town of 6,000 about 45 minutes away, the rest of the week was insane. There wasnt really school on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday since the kids live in really small towns and the buses couldn't get to them. The frustrating thing was that the buses were cancelled but school wasn't (a teacher explained to me that the school has an obligation to stay open, I think for welfare of the kids or something?) so I didn't know if I had to be there or not. I tried to go on Tuesday and then failed, but made it Thursday and had about 5 kids in each class. But today we went with the entire troisieme (the ninth grade) on a field trip to the cinema in town and saw "the darjeeling limited." imagine 150 french 14 year olds and a wes anderson movie. in the first 5 minutes you see natalie portman completely nude. it was uncomfortable.

2) 3 of my favorite students in the europe class (which is the advanced english class) asked if they could "tutoyer" me, which means use the informal form of "you." i informed that of course they could slash i hadn't noticed which one they were using. tu vs. vous (formal you) is a big deal here, kind of like whether you call someone "lydia" or "mrs. anderson" and it is also one of the hardest things to learn. actually, you can't really learn it. you just have to pay a lot of attention to power hierarchies when you address people. so anyways, i said yes to which they seemed quite pleased.

3) in the teachers' room today, there was a note that said "whoever took the scotch that belongs in the teachers' room, please return it." which cracked me up, the fact that the teachers' room has its own whiskey. someone asked what i was laughing about and i explained, to which the entire room of about 20 teachers who were on break started laughing. i had forgotten that scotch can mean the drink but also scotch tape. so despite evidence to the contrary, apparently the teachers have not been drinking in between classes.

4) i went to my classroom to get something yesterday and there were a bunch of boys from one of my ninth grade class outside the room who all started yelling "HELLO, LYDIA" at me. i emerged a second later and they were all flexing their muscles in a competition. it was weird.

that is all for this week. let me know what you think!

ps- the picture is of the maine, the river in angers, from the chateau. pretty sweet, huh?