The Life and Times of the Curious Cockroach

Dear Reader,

I am pleased to tell you that I’ve been asked to write a guest post for An Ache For The Distance (http://www.saharanscot.blogspot.com), a blog written by a Scottish traveler named Stuart Mathieson.

We’ve both taught abroad, so I figured it would be only fitting that I write the post about work. Also, seeing as I’m safely across the pond and back in Vancouver, Canada, I can finally write about my students without fearing scandal in The Village.

Below you’ll find the guest post, which consists of excerpts from a work journal I kept during my sojourn in The Village. Let’s just say that putting an utterly inexperienced 20-year-old in a room-full of hormonal French kids led to some pretty funny, and pretty terrifying, experiences. (All names have been changed)

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October 14th, 2010
Day: -3 (3 days before teaching)

Am officially in France. In France!!! Am v. excited. Three days before work starts, but am not nervous. Probably because have no idea what work will involve, since no one responded to my twenty emails during the summer holidays. Am guessing that here in this Southern French village everything is chill, everyone is chill, and work in general will be chill.

Have this image of what being a Language Assistant will be like. Image goes like this: 1) will sit cross legged at back of classroom, dressed smartly,  glancing at teacher from time to time, giving an important nod at this or that; 2) will receive subtle looks of curiosity and wonder from students, from time to time, 3) will be called on to correct this mistake or that 4) will organize maple-syrup-tasting parties, from time to time, 4) will have ample free time, to be used mostly for eating and other types of exploration.

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Date: May 22nd, 2011
Written while living in The Village

Apart from my colleagues and students, nobody in The Village spoke English. So when it came to French language immersion, it was as authentic as you could get. This post is dedicated to the awkward, unpredictable, and immensely amusing world of language immersion  – from my initial experience in Belgium to my time in The Village in France.

Witness accounts:

Immersion veterans have different ways of describing the experience. Some say it’s like having a double ear infection, where your head is filled with muddy sounds and you cannot distinguish one word from the next. Others say language immersion is like being dropped into an aquarium, where everyone communicates via gurgling noises, and whenever you try to speak, you realize that the gas mask stuck to your face makes the task mighty difficult.  And there are still others, who prefer not to talk about the experience at all. Personally, I think of language immersion as a battlefield, and no grammar boot camp back home can truly prepare you for it.

Stage 1: Shock, Seclusion, Pain

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(A quick post I wrote at home before firing it off from internet cafe. No longer have internet, will be traveling to villages around Nice for the next little while. Stay tuned.)

Location: The Village,  Southern France
Date: May 2nd, 2010

I think it’s time I introduce you to The Village. It’s my eighth month here as a language assistant. I applied to work in the Toulouse school district, and in the work placement gamble, the French Ministry of Education sent me here. It certainly isn’t Toulouse, and it isn’t anywhere close to Toulouse, but I’ve grown to love it. So after getting intimate with The Village – through its deep winter hibernation to its spring awakening — it’s time for the official introduction.

The first thing I must tell you is that The Village is not actually a village. It’s considered as a city by French standards. And by French standards, any middle-of-nowhere hummel with no stoplights or running buses becomes a city when it acquires its three-thousand-and-first inhabitant.

The Village was born out of the medieval times, and probably hasn’t expanded much since then. It  has all that’s needed to make it a wholesome, overall cute place to be. There’s a town hall, a post office, a church, a tea shop, a market square, a few bakeries, an ancient nunnery-turned-school, and a lovely river that’s harnessed into two or three canals as it runs through The Village.

Night Life

If you walk along the canals on any given evening, you’ll see the same pair of old ducks, cleaning themselves on the same rock. They are not the chattiest of types – no amount of human quacking will solicit a quack back. Still, if you’re a restless soul looking for night life, this is probably the closest you’ll get.

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