Hello there! I made it through the all-nighter that I pulled
to follow the election results and have now returned from my solo trip to
Bordeaux as well. Both of these experiences were highlights of my time in
France thus far. I meant to accelerate my writing process by telling you less
about each day so that I would get to the present sooner, but it was like the
Pringles slogan (“Once you pop, the fun don’t stop”): once I started writing,
the words just wouldn’t stop coming out! So I don’t really know what to do. I
guess I just never should’ve stopped posting entries for those couple of weeks.
I would say that I’ll catch up over Thanksgiving break, but wait, that doesn’t
exist here! Thanksgiving will just be a regular day of work. But don’t worry –
I’m planning to attend 2 traditional dinners (one on Thursday the 22nd,
sponsored by the Fulbright Alumni Association and one on Saturday the 24th,
sponsored by the American Church in Paris) to celebrate this crucial American
holiday even while I’m so far from home.
So we’ll see what happens in terms of restraining myself
from writing so much so that I can skip to the very exciting days. But I kind
of like it this way because I’m holding you in suspense and forcing you to come
back to see what’s here all the time...Okay, lemme stop power-tripping ;) Hope
you enjoy this post!
Peace and love, Morgann
Friday, October 19 – “Respect”
and “Repeat” (discipline problem) + Inspirational Friday night movie
·
Read Paul’s words about thorns in our flesh as I
thought about my migraines: “To keep me from becoming conceited because of
these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a
messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take
it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my
power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly
about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for
Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in
persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (II
Corinthians 12:7-10).
·
Got asked again
why I was up so early if I didn’t have to work until the afternoon by my
Spanish kitchenmate, who remarked that I was making two scrambled eggs as in all the American movies she’d seen. While
making my lunch, talked to Italian kitchenmate who works as a teaching
assistant as well – yes, they offer Italian at the secondary level here – and
found out that she works in the same suburb of Paris as me (Aulnay-sous-Bois),
but in a different school. How had we not realized that before?
·
Sent some emails and prepared for the building
inspection we had been warned about by hurriedly throwing some of the clutter
that had accumulated on my floor from the week into my large suitcase that sits
beside by chest of drawers since it doesn’t fit in my closet. No, Mom, I still
don’t keep my room very clean. Some things never change.
·
Left around noon for my 1:55 class since I was
cutting it close yesterday when there were no trains going to Aulnay from Gare
du Nord for several minutes. Same thing happened again. Perhaps it’s because I’m
traveling outside of morning rush hour on Thurs/Fri unlike Wed?
·
Picked up my non-smiling school ID from the
office, which apparently says that my first name is Lyles and my last name is
Morgann-Ashley due to a mix-up somewhere along the line of communication, but
they’re not going to re-do it. Also learned that I might not be able to obtain
my own special electronic-scanner-key-thing that is required to open the
classroom on the 1st floor of building C that I use once a week. The
woman in charge of the “special” keys is a high-level administrator who has
been away for family reasons recently so the other office staffers just said I
should ask someone else to open the door. Didn’t want to bother the same
teacher from last Fri, so I went to the « conseiller principal
d’éducation »
(hmm…I didn’t go to public school, so it’s hard to identify this exact position
in a general way; role is to oversee attendance & discipline mainly as well
as security I guess because they check ID’s at the gate) before class. Guy said
he would lend me his access key when I brought the students over to that
building after the start of the period. He actually ended up coming out of his
office to open the door for me because he wanted to fuss at the students for
talking in the hallway on their way to the classroom. He kind of looked at me
like, Are you sure you got this? especially
because I was speaking to them only in English
·
Classes 1 and 2: same basic 3 activities from other
classes (intros, Aulnay activities, America photos). The CPE was kind of right
about Class 1 getting out of hand. I had a lot of very talkative students and
had to give warnings to several of them. For the first time, I had to ask 2 students
not to come back to the breakout session with me the next time around. I had
already said that “Respect” was one of our 2 class rules (in addition to
speaking English only), and we had reviewed what that meant. Actually, one of
the students in question said it meant not talking when someone else was
talking. So later, he was just chatting away with his neighbor in the back row while
a shy girl in the front row was trying to give me an answer. Another guy on the
side of the room was talking as well. I approached each of them and used clear
English and hand gestures to ask them to “repeat” what she had just said, but
of course they couldn’t. Then I asked her to tell them her answer again and
told them to pay attention this time, again with lots of hand signals and eye
contact. In the middle of her answer, they BOTH resumed their conversations.
She was noticeably disturbed. I told them that they had broken a class rule
after I had given them a second chance to listen, so that was it. They claimed
that they hadn’t understood my English, but the rest of the class stepped in to
call them out on that lie. It was cute, though, because one of them kept trying
to participate at every opportunity for the rest of class. He was pretty
disappointed, but hopefully he’ll learn from this.
·
Class 3: too many questions about high school in
America because I hadn’t interacted with these students before, so we barely
had time to debate guns as I’d done with their classmates last week. Hard to
cut them off because I was glad to hear them speak so much English and pay
attention. Someone asked if American schools were as big as on TV/in movies. I hadn’t heard that before.
·
Actually had dinner companions during the 6:00
hour, which is unusual for these Europeans who eat so late. After, I went to
Young Adults Movie Night at The American Church in Paris. We were supposed to
watch To Kill a Mockingbird, but the
guy in charge didn’t show up with the movie or to set up the big screen. So the
10 of us watched Soul Surfer since it
was in the church library on a smaller projection screen that they normally use
for worship music lyrics during Bible study, for example. I hadn’t seen this
movie before, and it actually brought me to tears at one point. I hardly ever
cry in real life, but movies will do that to me. It was a very inspirational
Friday night activity. Oh, and it turned out that the guy in charge was stuck
in an elevator in his apartment building for the duration of the film, which is
why he was MIA and not answering his phone. Poor thing!
·
Had a crêpe craving on my way home. I guess I
needed something sweet after eating salty popcorn. Took me a minute to find a
place that was still serving them at that late hour and that wasn’t too far off
of the path I had to take to get home anyway, but I discovered a pizza/panini/crêpe
restaurant that stays open until 2 am right around the corner from me that I
hadn’t really noticed before. Of course, I don’t plan to go there that late,
but it was nice to satisfy my craving for some Nutella with bananas just before
bedtime.
Saturday, October 20 –
Purple bag + Mini-malls + “Origins” question while tutoring + Covers at concert
·
Since my sister Mallory had an 18th
birthday coming up in two weeks, I got up early to look for a gift that I could
put in the mail before noon. The present itself was just a token souvenir from
Paris, but what I really loved was the purple bag (her favorite color) that
said “I love you” in English. Even found a birthday card in French (which she
doesn’t speak, by the way) with a dog on it since she and Giselle (probably the
only member of our household that I haven’t yet mentioned in this blog) are
best buds. [By the way, since I’m writing
this much later, I can tell you that unfortunately my gift arrived in the mail
one day late, so my two-weeks-in-advance estimate wasn’t quite right. But I was
kind of afraid of that when the post office clerk questioned my choice to send
my package without…how would I say « suivi » in
English…delivery confirmation, I guess? It was just too expensive compared to
the value of what I was sending. But later I decided to send some flowers from
within the States just in case. Quote from Mallory as I Skyped with her on her
birthday: “Good backup plan.”]
 |
| I had never noticed the American theme of this métro stop before |
·
Went
grocery shopping and, as an afterthought, bought some overpriced extra
batteries for my afternoon outing from a photocopy/printing place on my way to
the Cadet métro
shop since I was out of spares. Thank God I did or else most of the photos
included in this entry would not exist!
·
The outing was a guided visit to some of the « passages
couverts » (literally, “covered passages”) in the heart of Paris sponsored
by the Equipe d’Accueil et d’Amitié pour les Etudiants Etrangers = group
of older French women who provide activities/fellowship for foreign students +
teaching assistants who pay a small membership fee to join the organization. So
6 of us braved the rain to meet our very knowledgeable leader at the Comédie
Française
(very famous French theatre) right across from the Louvre (very famous art
museum) in order to walk around to some of these tunnels that contained
mini-malls, basically, of various sizes with stores and restaurants. Our leader
gave us a lot of historical context about the area of Paris that we were in and
described the defining characteristics of many of these different « passages »,
but they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll let the images tell
you the story of our 1.5-hour walk.
 |
| The entrance to the Comédie Française, which is under construction |
 |
| Looking from the theatre to the Louvre, to show you their proximity |
 |
| Looking up at the theatre building, to show you the architectural style |
 |
| A café on the side of the theatre |
 |
| As we approached the Louvre... |
 |
| ...we saw that a huge group was protesting against animal testing out front |
 |
| Entering one of the "covered passages" with our tour guide in red |
 |
| BTW, the rest of this sign says "brasserie" as in restaurant |
 |
| A very unique building that I noticed |
 |
| "The road of the good children" |
 |
| Pretty sure this and the photo below are sections of one campus of the National Library of France |
 |
| La Bourse, or the stock exchange, no longer used |
 |
| Mallory recently asked me if French people really wear berets - here's one on display at a store! |
 |
| I just liked the word "Snack'issime" |
·
Afterward, I went to a library (Bibliothèque
Benjamin Rabier) in the 19th arrondissement to try my hand at
one-on-one English tutoring for the first time. As I told you in the entry from
September 30, I had met this young lady and her father at the Baptist church
that I’ve been attending regularly, and they had asked me for help because she’s
in the equivalent of 12th grade but has a very poor command of
English for her age, which I guess could be problematic for her big graduation
test. So when they asked visitors to introduce themselves (common practice in
small churches I’ve been to), and I said I was an American who was here to
teach English, the father believed that I had been sent to them from God “for such
a time as this,” in essence (Esther 4:14). So I just started talking to her and
took out my notebook to write down translations into French or key
words/phrases that I was using in English for her to see in addition to hearing. We talked about the upcoming election a
lot because that was what seemed to get her to speak English the most rather
than just saying “yes” to the stuff I was
saying. It was true that her level was pretty low, but I think she enjoyed the
hour we spent together. I asked her if she had any questions at the end, and
she inquired as to my “origins” as many of my students had done. You see, in
France, if you’re a person of color, you’re usually pretty faithful to your
roots, as in your cultural heritage. But in America, some of us, especially
African Americans, simply don’t know where our ancestors came from because of
the lack of record-keeping during the era when slaves were brought overseas as
well as some of the unimaginable practices of brainwashing that were used in
order to cause the future slaves to forget their former lives in Africa before
bringing them to America. I learned about this in Ouidah, Bénin
in 2010 when I walked the path that slaves took from the market to the port and
saw some of the underground facilities that were used to keep them in complete
darkness without nourishment in order to disorient them for long periods of
time. I did my best to explain the basics of why I don’t know my “origins” to
this young lady as I had to some of my students at school and told her that
hopefully I’ll be able to afford genetic testing someday to trace my lineage
back to a particular people group. In the meantime, my money’s on Sénégal
because too many people have told me that I look like I’m from there for them
to all be wrong. So maybe the French language is in my blood!
·
Took one of the most crowded métros in the history
of mankind back towards the center of Paris for a concert at the American
Church in Paris. I was under the impression that the program would consist
entirely of worship music, but there were actually a lot of covers of popular
secular songs by U2, Coldplay, etc. in addition to praise songs. It was
basically a chance for musicians within the church (mostly people my age) to
have an audience with whom to share their talent. It was a cool event in and of
itself, and it was nice to continue meeting new people. The mistress of
ceremonies introduced one of the musicians as being from Durham, North Carolina, so shout-out to my relatives on my mom’s side
who live there! You’ve got some representation over here in Paris :) I also
met a professional photographer who’s about my age and who gave me some advice
on blogging because that’s a big part of his job. He told me that the most
important things to remember are to write often and to let my personality come
through. It was kind of awkward because this was during the phase when I wasn’t
writing to you because I just kept putting it off, but now I’m doing my best to
get back on track. And as for the personality thing, if you didn’t know I was
crazy before, the cat is out of the bag!
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