See, there’s a critical mass in the homework load, when a certain procrastination/self-preservation instinct surfaces and whispers in a silky, sultry voice:

Hey. Don’t you think the best thing for you right now is to update your blog.

Yes, you whisper back. Yes it is.

Hello again, dearest readers. The Curious Cockroach is indeed still alive, though the growing number of pest extermination websites following this blog is becoming somewhat alarming. I feel there was a bit of miscommunication somewhere.

I vow to be more present (online) this spring, and will share with you some of the writing I’ve been doing offline. But for now, here are some rad and random facts:

Carnivorous plants have been known to digest monkeys.

Clouds are a form of aerosol.

In French, “je suis ta femme” can either mean:
1) “I am your wife” or 2) “I am following your wife.”
If that doesn’t sum up la belle langue française, I don’t know what does.

After a year of living in Belgium and eight months in France, I thought my French was pretty good. I mean, I could communicate with people. I had all the genders of vegetables and school supplies memorized. Even got some idiomatic expressions up my sleeve.

But this week’s translation class taught me that really, French still eludes me. And probably even hates me a little. But at least I’m not alone. My classmates and I spent a good while arguing over the meaning of the following sentence:

Il a levé le pied avec la caisse.

As homework, we had each looked at the sentence, consulted our dictionaries and/or francophone boyfriends, and came to class convinced that our translations were spot on. Here some are the sentences we proudly produced:

a) He slowed down the car.
b) He vanished with the cash register.
c) He lifted his foot with the crate.

Spot on, all right. After much debate, some of which went on after class, we agreed to disagree. Perhaps one of us was right, or the answer lay somewhere in between. Maybe he lifted his foot with the car, or his foot vanished with the cash register.

I think, really, what each of us were fighting for was a little vindication. That after four years of French classes, we sort of understood something…

Cheerio,
Roachy

Today I wanted to post about my road trip to Forks, Washington (“The Twilight Capitol of the World”), but WordPress refuses to upload my pictures. And what’s a Twilight post without pictures of blood-themed bumper stickers, Team Edward underwear and baby vampire dolls?

WordPress chose the worst time to be uncooperative.

WordPress must be on Team Jacob.

Am not giving up.  Pictures will be posted soon.

The gentleman named Oleg traced Alyona’s gaze to his own name tag and blushed. He felt ridiculous, wearing a stiff suit in a shop full loose-leaf tea bins and psychedelic paintings of toads.

“I just got out of a business conference,” he said, almost apologetically.

“Business conference?” asked Alyona and, unable to resist, added, “… right here in Arkash, or in Kiev?”

“Arkash, of course.”

The corners of Alyona’s lips slowly curled into a smile.

Oleg and Alyona spent several hours in the shop together. They sat at a small table that sagged under the weight of teapots, cups, flimsy metal contraptions and sand timers, which a skeletal waitress overturned with each round of tea. Oleg and Alyona’s cheeks becoming rosier and rosier as they filled and refilled their cups and shared stories. When the maiden became convinced that Oleg had no intention of running off to Kiev in search of work and matrimony, that he didn’t drink or smoke, that his real name was indeed Oleg and had been Oleg since birth, she invited him over for dinner. He accepted.

Walking along the Arkash streets, arm in arm, such a lovely pair they were! The poplar trees nodded to Alyona, and she nodded back, feeling just as tall and proud as them. She swayed in the wind, her head whirled in the clouds, she could hardly see the ground below. Was Oleg husband or stranger? The girl didn’t know. Was this walk their first or their hundredth? The girl didn’t remember.

There were many things she no longer remembered, in fact.

Giddily Alyona unlocked the front door of her apartment and ushered Oleg inside. The gentleman jumped back, startled at the sight. His eyes looked from the sad coffee table with its corners sawed off, to the rest of the mangled octagonal furniture, to the electric saw leaning against the refrigerator, to the yellow dust that lay in heaps and covered everything like a malignant mold, to the brown furled-up bits that smelled of apple cider and rotting earth, to the young maiden, in her furriest coat and reddest lipstick, who stood in the middle of it all as if it were just another renovation project gone slightly awry. Alyona may have even been able to pass it off as such if, at that very moment, two hairless creatures of unidentifiable species had not begun mewing hungrily at the gentleman’s ankles.

Oleg let a throaty tenor scream. With his mouth still open, he looked up at Alyona. But the girl didn’t say anything. She only stared at Oleg, as hungrily as the two animals, with her left eye twitching uncontrollably.

They spent a long while like this: Alyona ecstatic, Oleg terrified, but both immobile. Then Alyona blinked abruptly and turned on her heel.

“Make yourself at home, darling, while I fix us something to eat!” she said, and disappeared into the kitchen.

Oleg baited his breath, tip-toed out of the apartment, and closed the door behind him as quietly as possible. Only when he was far from Alyona’s street did he slow his pace. Oleg’s panic had ebbed and he was able to think clearly again.

He reached into his silk trouser pocket, pulled out a rat tail, and threw it down on the dusty pavement.

“That’s the fourth one this month,” he thought. “I’ve tried every good-luck charm I could find, yet I keep falling for total nutcases.” And as the gentleman walked on, he had a sudden urge to move to Kiev.

The End.

“Say what? My electric saw? And just what do you intend to do with an electric saw, young miss?” asked Mr. Kosakov, who stood at his doorway with a mug of steaming tea in his hands.

“Womanly matters, Mr. Kosakov,” said Alyona grimly.

Mr. Kosakov was a quiet, gray-haired man who crafted furniture for a living. While he was accustomed to lending his tools to neighbours, here he found something unsettling. He looked down the hall at Alyona’s apartment door, eyed it suspiciously, and then looked back at the girl.

“Please, Mr. Kosakov,” repeated Alyona, “hand me the prettiest, shiniest saw my nimble arms can lift, and I promise to bring it back in a jiffy.”

By now, dear reader, I imagine you’re wondering what Alyona was doing at her neighbour’s doorway, when she was supposed to be busy pealing the apples she had just bought from the toad-woman. If Misfortune didn’t have the habit of throwing nasty things Alyona’s way, the girl would indeed be doing just that. But upon her return home, Alyona was so tired from her heavy bags, that she was oblivious to her surroundings. There was thus no way the poor girl could prevent, or in the very least predict, being assaulted so viciously in her very own home, by her very own coffee table.

The untrained eye would have missed the assault altogether. The coffee table did indeed remain quite still from the beginning of the incident to the end. How deceiving such airs of innocence can be to a superstitious mind like Alyona’s. The coffee table surely sensed the girl’s exhaustion, when it coaxed her to take a sweet moment’s rest on one of its corners! Not a second too soon did Alyona remember that sitting on the corner of a table meant seven years without marriage. And hadn’t she spent her entire morning trying to avert just that?

Her eye gave another twitch at the thought.

So Alyona now stood in front of Mr. Kosakov, looking pale and grim, wishing to borrow the tool that could solve the issue once and for all. Mr. Kosakov, did not wish to inquire what Alyona had meant by “womanly matters,” so without further questions he lent the girl his electric saw.

Alyona set to work immediately. She sawed off all four corners of the coffee table, but she did not stop there. That afternoon, Alyona purged her apartment of all its corners — the countertops, the kitchen table, even the granite sink could not escape the  girl’s eye and the saw’s teeth.

When Alyona finally switched off the machine, her entire apartment was covered in sawdust. Ksusha looked around with satisfaction, seeing all the accidental misfortune she had just averted.

But at that very moment, two cats started rubbing at her ankles and mewing hungrily. Alyona was so startled that she almost dropped the electric saw on the poor creatures. You see, dear reader, those poor creatures happened to be black.

This was too much for Alyona. Time was flying by, her skin beginning to wither and crease under the weight of immanent spinsterhood, and here were these two black cats roaming around her apartment. They belonged to Mr. Kosakov, and took every opportunity to sneak out of his apartment and startle the other tenants.

They followed Alyona from room to room like a ghastly shadow. Finally the girl gave the cats a last stern look and shut them in the bathroom.

“I’ll deal with you later,” she said, wondering how many more curses she would have fight off that day.

*

The skin on Alyona’s hands stung from the scrapes. But a sweet smell filled her nostrils and coaxed her to carry on pealing.

A yellow-green twilight had descended on the city, followed by a breathless night. But Alyona could not sleep until she finished her task.She spent hours working through the sacs of apples, throwing peal after peal over her left shoulder just as the toad-woman had instructed.

When she finished with the last apple, Alyona collapsed on her coach and fell fast asleep. But that night, the maiden did not dream of her future husband — not even the first letter of his name. All she dreamt about was never-ending apple pealing.

Next morning, Alyona tried to remember her dream. After all her hard work, she refused to be disappointed. She figured that the toad-woman forgot to mention that she was to interpret the dream instead of just recollecting it. So Alyona closed her eyes tightly, and decided that the majority of the apple peals in her dream formed the letter “O”.
Brilliant! thought Alyona. Of all the men she would have had to chase before, that single letter sure did narrow down the possibilities. She thought of the names of all her friends, acquaintances, former classmates, all the O-somethings she could introduce to her parents and grandparents, to her aunt Oksana and uncle Oleg, her cousins Petya and Olga …

So the girl put on her reddest lipstick and furriest coat, and headed for the city centre. She felt so light, as if her little feet were just grazing the ground. She moved faster and faster, her long locks whipping behind her like flames. Alyona was radiant, radiant like a maiden before she is a maiden no more.

This is my last solitary walk, thought Alyona,  I can feel it in all of my bones!

Alyona stepped inside a teashop, and right there in front of her was a handsome gentleman. He was wearing a suit, and a white sticker on his chest read:

“Hello, my name is OLEG”

Alyona almost fainted on the spot. The painting of a toad on the wall seemed to give her a wink.

The final part of this short story will be posted soon.

As Alyona unscrewed the mirror off her bathroom wall, she thought of the day Ukraine’s soon-to-be swimming champion plucked out both eyebrows. His lady fans had been petrified with indignation. They wrote angry letters to the press, calling back the signature brows that had once filled television screens with irresistible, mysterious expression.

“I just needed an edge,” he had told the Kiev Gazette, “or to at least to believe I had one.”

As Alyona slid the mirror underneath her pillow, she felt she truly understood the man. Living in a city where crazed single women were plenty and eligible bachelors were few, Alyona needed an edge just as badly. That’s why she had decided to dabble in superstition, just for a moment or two.

“Of course!” thought Alyona as she slipped into bed that evening, “if a maiden wants to see her future husband’s face in her dreams, she is to fall asleep with a mirror under her pillow. May Fortune wink at me tonight, and show me who to chase!”

With a smile still stretched across her cheeks, Alyona fell fast asleep. But that night Fortune did not wink at Alyona. In fact, Fortune was nowhere in sight. There were so many women in Arkash demanding its services (in ways that were less and less orthodox by the day), that Fortune had long packed its bags and fled the city in search of better working conditions.

So that night, instead of dreaming of her future husband, Alyona woke up at 5:00 a.m. with a terrible itch on her scalp. The girl let out an ear-piercing shriek when she untangled a piece of broken mirror from her hair. She leaped out of bed and looked at the sight before her: the shards on her sheets broke the sun’s rays into a thousand pieces and threw them against the walls and ceiling, where they stayed, quivering like tiny white spiders.

Alyona knew of nothing more frightening than a broken mirror. Even her daily eye-lash curling ceremony did not come close. A lost eye could always be exchanged for a glass one, but seven years of life lost to lonely misery? No, that could never be returned. Such was the curse of the broken mirror.

“Where would I be after seven years of unhappiness?” Alyona asked the tiny white spiders, “I’d be aged 26, good grief! I’d be unsightly and senile, planting potatoes at my grandparents’ dacha, spitting out my teeth at all the little nephews running around my legs…”

The white spiders stayed silent, but through their quivering now seemed to nod.

“Never!” exclaimed Alyona, and all of her innermost terror rose up through her limps and culminated into one, tiny twitch of her eye.

But the girl did not give up. She simply had to avert misfortune. By the time she untangled all the shards from her long locks, she came up with another idea. She remembered reading in a relationship advice column that the only way to shake off seven years of unhappiness was to dump the broken mirror into a river.

So Alyona began gathering all the glittering pieces into a sac, and one by one, the white spiders disappeared from the walls and ceiling. Twenty minutes later, Alyona stood by the Dnieper, watching the sac sink to the river’s murky depths. How light she felt! How relieved she was! She had won back seven years of life and felt like a child again.

Alyona skipped along the riverbanks, dainty as the buttercups blooming around her. Even the reappearance of the spiders underneath bridges didn’t frighten her, for they weren’t spiders at all — just the sun split into pieces by the river’s gurgles and churns.

Then someone cleared their throat. A bored, monotone voice sounded at Alyona’s ear:

My dear little girl,
Try one of my apples.
They’re juicy and crisp,
Crisp and delicious.
50 cents and a kilo you’ll get,
And here there’s nothing fictitious.

Alyona perceived that the voice came from a woman — if the term “woman” is used loosely and generously. When she spoke, each syllable sent ripples from her mouth to the rest of her neckless, toad-like body. The tiny stool beneath her blubbery bottom squeaked along to her drones, lamenting its fate as Atlas did when he heaved and signed beneath the universe.

There was something about the old woman, the stool, and the two mounds of bruised apples by her sides, that evoked sympathy from Alyona. The girl told the toad-woman all about her troubles. She recounted her nineteen years of singledom, and trembled in fear as she spoke of her approaching spinsterhood. Her voice rose higher and higher in apocalyptic tones; even the birds were stunned mid-song, and now, with beaks hanging open stupidly, watched the scene unfolding below. But the toad-woman herself seemed unmoved. She nodded along distractedly, all the while picking at something under her fingernails. When Alyona gave her last sob, the toad-woman cleared her throat again and resumed her expressionless rhymes:

My poor little girl,
You’re the tenth one today
To tell me your sorrows
In such theatrical way.
All that you fair maidens need,
Is an apple to fill you with sunshine,
And ease your heart’s petty greed.

But why stop at one apple,
When a kilo costs 50 cents,
Look how they’re juicy and crisp,
Crisp and –

The toad-woman stopped abruptly, and fixed Alyona with an intense stare. Suddenly looking very suspicious, she seemed to squint at something between Alyona’s brows. The girl was taken aback by the toad-woman’s awakening. She wondered how it was possible for her features to shift so sharply from one expression to the next, when, just moments ago, they hung from her face like gelatinous flaps, barely supported by bone or cartilage. Now she stared at Alyona with amusement, now with pity, now with mounting horror. The poor girl was convinced she had just sprouted a wart, or possibly a third eye.

Dear reader, if only things were that simple.

The toad-woman inflated herself to greater proportions, quickly checked something on the inside of her palm, and said:

Ay! What’s that I see?
Where those furrowed brows meet,
Something stares back at me?
How it disgraces that pretty face!
That vile, contemptuous wrinkle,
Which spreads in such haste!

(Alyona gasped,
the toad-woman’s stool gave a loud squeak)

Now I see your beauty is meek,
Your troubles are real,
And your future bleak.
Listen closely and follow my counsel,
Or suffer a long, bitter decline,
And die lonely and haggard,
With a figure no better than mine.

Step One: buy my apples,
(A kilo for 99 cents, what a fine price!)
Step Two: throw their peals
Over your shoulder, and don’t think twice!
Step Three: skip off to bed,
You’ll dream of the lad you’ll wed.
If you don’t see his face,
Worry not, you’ll see his name.
If you don’t see his name,
Go back to Step One, have no shame!
Step Four: wake up and chase the lad,
And quick, with a ring bind him,
Before you grow old, gray, and mad!

No sooner had the toad-woman pronounced her last words, than the distressed maiden began searching her pockets for coins. With each coin she produced, the toad-woman added apples onto her scale. Her smile stretched wider and wider, and by the time the scale read twenty kilograms, her mouth looked as though it began at one ear and ended at the other. But Alyona took no notice of this monstrous transformation, so preoccupied she was by her own wrinkling brows.

Alyona gave her last coin to the toad-woman and asked, “In case I need to find you again, can you tell me your name?”

“Fortune, sweet pea, just call me Fortune,” said the toad-woman. Then she produced a snuff pack from her crocodile purse and seemed to forget Alyona’s presence.

*

Dragging the sacs of apples back home, Alyona smiled triumphantly. Her body ached, each step was slow and laborious.

“I just needed an edge,” she pictured herself saying to envious bridesmaids, “that’s how you win any race.”

To be continued.

A large fly rammed itself against the window again and again. The tea kettle emitted long whistles and hoots. Alyona Andreevna Volkova sat at her kitchen table, so busy staring at her own hands that she wasn’t aware of anything else. She flexed her fingers into a fist, then relaxed them slowly, watching her skin stretch then gather between her knuckles. She let out a long sigh.

Older. Starchier. These can’t be the same hands I had the evening before.

Usually, Alyona was cheerful. But that day she turned nineteen.

Alyona was a stout little maiden. Her long domineering locks made her look all the smaller, and seemed to anchor her to the ground wherever she went. She was the type who knew what she liked or didn’t like, and many considered this a distinctly unlikeable trait.

She didn’t like birthdays, or spiders, or birds, or anything else that ran or flew by all on its own accord. She most certainly didn’t like the sands in her grandmother’s tea timers, either.

The tea kettle sounded as though it would launch from its flame any second.

Alyona looked at her knuckles more intently, but still couldn’t prevent her mind from replaying the last telephone conversation with her grandmother.

“What’s this about being busy? Third week in a row, pumpkin,” her grandmother had said.

“You know how it is at the office,” Alyona had replied, shoving her severance cheque envelope under the phonebook.“If I don’t work as long as they ask, I’m fired. They’ll get someone else in a heartbeat.”

“But I made borsht.”

A small hesitant pause came from Alyona’s end.

“I can show you my new tea timer, too.”

“Ah, no. I’m sorry grandma, I really, really can’t–the office. You know how it is at the office.”

Otherwise, that Sunday afternoon, like so many Sunday afternoons before, Alyona would come by her grandparent’s apartment. All three of them would sit back in their chairs, filled to capacity with salted fish or borscht with pig’s lard. Just as Alyona would sink into meditative digestion, forgetting what usually came next, Alyona’s grandmother would jump up in a most startling way. She’d rush out of the kitchen, reappearing with boxes of hour glasses and a mad smile on her face. Alyona dreaded the moment when her grandfather, resigned with age and routine, would steep the tea as her grandmother overturned all thirty-nine of the garish antique timers.

“Gone and spent, that one!” she’d say, “And that one too! Running out, running out, wait for the last little sand grain — there it goes! Soon I’ll drop just like these grains. So will your grandfather, aunt Oksana, uncle Oleg, cousins Petya and Olga — start pouring the tea, will you Alyona? Oh don’t shake like that, that’s no way to serve anyone.”

As Alyona would bring the cup to her lips, her grandmother would look at her sweetly, and in her raspy voice would say:

“Best get a move on, dear, if you know what I mean.”

Alyona did know what her grandmother meant. That’s why she’d started skipping their Sunday lunches. Preparing to turn nineteen was no small affair in the city of Arkash, and no lady wanted to face the monstrous number empty-handed. Without a wedding ring, or at least a solid prospect of obtaining one, even reasonably attractive maidens like Alyona lived on the brink of spinsterhood.

There simply weren’t enough men to go around. They were either buried in engineering textbooks — their minds completely sealed off from the outside world —  or had already left for Kiev to find work. Nature’s harmonious balance was set askew, and this sent many young ladies wild and unladylike with rivalry.

So on that fateful birthday morning, Alyona realized that her morning make-up routine no longer sufficed. She gave her hands one last grim look, and began circling around her apartment. Her head whirled with schemes and gentlemen to be caught. The threads of thought all seemed to lead to one specific place in her mind, to one glowing knot that became larger and larger as it spun: Alyona had an idea.

The girl stopped pacing. She took the kettle off its flame, smiling to herself as she singed two cockroaches at once against the counter-top.

To be continued.

You learn more from students than they learn from you.

Before coming to The Village and teaching at a high school and middle school, I thought that the above was just a cliche. I mean, come on, I was going to teach these kids English expressions, slang words, Canadian culture, maybe throw in grammar here and there. I had to teach, and they just had to sit back and be teachable, right?

Not quite. For a twenty-year-old who had never worked with kids/teens before (and no, there was no younger sibling guinea-pig), the experience turned out to be a lot more difficult than expected. But I got a lot out of it, and I can now say it myself: my students taught me more than I taught them. And that’s no cliche.

My main role as Language Assistant was to get my students to practice their oral English as much as I could, while their English teachers took care of the grammar bit. So here are my observations and recommendations that never made it into the Work Journal.

Working with pre-teens (Ages 11-13)

• Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. As soon as I stood in front of my middle school students without a teacher at my side, they tested my boundaries. At first I took this personally … What? I don’t look scary and authoritative enough as I am? Is it the way I talk? Is it my hair? … It only took about seven months (out of my eight-month contract) to realize that it really didn’t have anything to do with me. They were just kids faced with a new teacher, trying to make sense of the weird limbo. Every teacher has his/her own limits and rules. These students were just trying to figure out mine, by getting as close to the line as possible until I reacted. Nothing personal.

• How to set boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. Have clear rules, and for heaven’s sake, STICK TO THEM. “If you talk out of turn two times, the third time you’ll have detention” is one basic example. If you cave in to Johny’s puppy eyes, even if it’s his third warning, you are breaking your own rules. That means you lose credibility in front of everyone. Your rules will evaporate. And sooner than later, the kids will eat you alive.

• Always be in shape (emotionally). Having a bad day? Forget about it as soon as you enter the classroom. If you’re grumpy and tired, and show it, don’t expect your students to sympathize right away. They’ll probably just sense that you’re weak, and continue to prod you in their most loving way. Unless, of course, you’re so upset you’re already smithereens, in which case you shouldn’t even be in the classroom.  The point here is that if you want your students to be enthusiastic about what you’re teaching them, you have to look more than enthusiastic yourself.

• That wonderful age. Whatever it is. It’s normal for teachers to be more comfortable with a certain age group than another. Don’t beat yourself up if you feel weird in front of 11-year-olds but love working with teens. Personally I loved working with 13-year-olds. I found them as enthusiastic as younger kids, but much easier to manage in groups. You’ll find your niche sooner or later.

Working with teens (ages 14 and 15)

No recommendations/observations available. My colleagues just said that all past Language assistants who worked with this age group had to be reassembled with a teaspoon… which is why I wasn’t assigned to these classes. In any case…good luck! You’ll find your niche sooner or later, ahem ahem.

Working with teens (ages 16-18)

• Don’t take it personally. Unless they genuinely hate you. But they probably don’t. If you’re trying your best, if you genuinely care, chances are it’s not you. If your lesson plan isn’t happily received, it might be because: A) time of the day (ie. they are hungry/tired/etc); B)time of the year (right after holidays, or right before, the alignment of the planets, etc.); C)they’re just having a bad day; D) group mentality (they fear looking enthusiastic when the popular kids are not)

• Take teens as they are. Respect that lot’s of teens go through a rough patch at this point in their lives. Don’t expect them to be as enthusiastic as you are, at all times. Take them as they are, don’t expect to change their innermost being, and be happy if you do get through to them. That being said, of course, always expect the same respect as you show them.

• Choose your activities based on the group. Each group has different dynamics and different interests, so you have to adapt constantly. For example, I had a debate about Facebook that went wonderfully with one group, but flopped with another. No lesson is a guaranteed success or failure, and that’s the thrill in teaching.

• Short activities, familiar subjects. I found that planning multiple small activities (video, debate, game, writing) worked better than having one long one. A lesson plan that’s constantly moving gets the enthusiasm going — especially when it’s their last class on a Friday! Also, teens like to learn about things they can relate to. Social media they can relate to. Surrogate mothers in India, not so much.

• Get creative. A little buffoonery can go a long way. So you’re doing a mock court hearing as your activity. You’re determined to discuss Child Goddess laws in Nepal, and you’ve found a group of teens who could be interested. Now go full out. Change the seating arrangement if you can, make giant place cards displaying  “Child Goddess”, “Ex-Child Goddess”, “Human Rights Activist” along with all the other players, make an official sign for the classroom door, act like an snooty or wise judge, etc etc.  Make the activity feel real, get creative and excited, and your students might meet you half way.

• You’re playing your role, students are playing theirs. Teaching is acting. You play a role, you bluff in certain situations, you suppress your giggles and growls to appear calm at all times. And guess what? Students are playing their role just as well. You’ll find that lot’s of students are very different “as people” than they are as students in a classroom setting. This brings us back to the all-important divine rule of: don’t take it personally.

• It does get magical. When you get through to teens, it’s got to be one of the most rewarding experiences on the planet. So look forward to those moments, and cherish them once they come.

Agree or disagree with something? Have other advice to share? Feel more than welcome, that’s what the comments sections is all about.

Signing off,
The Curious Cockroach

‘

Haze of tobacco in front of high school doing wonders for stress levels, should really consider taking up smoking.

November 18th, 2010
Location: high school
Activity: not applicable (n/a)
Enthusiasm levels: non-existent (literally)

Some teachers on strike. No one showed up to class.
Apparently strikes are against President Sarkozy’s attempt to bump retirement age from 60 to 62.

December 2nd, 2010
Location: high School
Activity: n/a
Enthusiasm levels: v. high, but not inside classroom

Students now on strike too. How lovely that they are so far-sighted and are already thinking about their retirement. One student showed up to class, but only to ask me if I wanted to go on strike as well. Said I feared Ministry of National Education would deport me back to Canada.

Spent rest of class looking out of window, twiddling thumbs, watching my students making picket signs in courtyard. “RETIREMENT AT 62, MY ASS”  and “SARKO, YOU’RE FUCKED” were some of the more popular ones, apparently.

Then it looked as though students were barricading school doors with garbage bins, so decided it was time to vacate the premises.

December 3rd, 2010
Location: middle School
Activity: Justin Bieber PowerPoint presentation, discussion, quiz
Enthusiasm levels: extremely low & extremely high at the same time

Mixed reaction when unveiled life-size Justin Bieber projection on whiteboard: eruption of squeals (girls) and furious groans (boys). One student asked me if I knew Justin Bieber, since we both live in North America. Air of expectancy filled room instantly. Said that yes, have run into him once or twice, as we happen to go to same hair dresser. V. cute kids.

December 6th, 2010
Location: high School
Planned activity: n/a
Excitement levels: n/a

Teachers and students still on strike. No one showed up to class, but neither did I, after learning that the Spanish Language Assistant was accidentally barricaded inside school for unspecified amount of time.

January 20th, 2011
Location: high school
Activity: planning bank robbery
Enthusiasm levels: high

Have been getting through to teens lately, they’ve been more engaged — wonder if this has something to do with fact that my latest lessons have mostly been crime-related.

Did PowerPoint presentation on history’s most famous bank robberies (have never seen more attentive group of students), then divided class into gangs, gave them bank floor plans, asked them to plan robbery, then explain it to class in English. Some alarmingly creative ideas, made Oceans 11,12, &13 look like peanuts.

Love the lovely students.

February 4th, 2011
Location: high School emergency bunker (aka Principal’s Office)
Activity: Catastrophic Event Drill
Enthusiasm levels: mixed

Class cancelled due to Catastrophic Event Drill. On today’s Potential Catastrophe menu: if the stream suddenly floods and wipes out entire village.

Found that drill was difficult to take seriously, because:

1) the “alarm” consisted of the Principal running from floor to floor with megaphone, yelling disjointedly: “CATASTROPHIC EVENT DRILL (simulated siren here)… IS ON NOW (simulated siren here) HOW DO YOU GET THIS BLOODY MEGAPHONE (siren) TO STOP CUTTING ME OUT (siren) WITH BLASTED SIRENS … AH, GOT IT, THANK YOU MADAME DUPONT… THE STREAM HAS BEEN  … FLOODED (siren siren siren) BLASTED MEGAPHONE … CATASTROPHIC EVENT DRILL OFFICIALLY … (siren) ON ”

2) The entire first floor claimed they couldn’t even hear the megaphone, thus spent the drill being confused and playing cards

3) The hazardous stream in question is called “La Bave,” which, in French, means:

bave: [bav] nf  (of person)
dribble; (of dog) slaver; (of
enraged dog) froth; (of
slug) slime

This evokes every image but one involving raging floods and uprooted buildings…but, I suppose, one can never be too careful.

April 15th, 2011
Location: High School, then Middle School
Activity: maple-syrup-tasting party
Enthusiasm levels: bitter-sweet (hardy har har)

My last week of work, decided to do something fun/cultural. Throughout the week, teens at high school gave me grim nods in the hallways.12-year-olds at middle school gave me sad looks, sometimes pulling me aside and asking last-minute questions:

“Madame, vat life eez like, in snow and ice?  ‘ave you ever saw Brad Pitt? Or Zac Effron, at least? And you too eez famous, like everyone een America North?”

Goodbye students, goodbye colleagues, goodbye France, goodbye sunshine and sweet breeze….back to America North I go!

‘

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)

____________________________________________________________________

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.

October 19th, 2010
Day: -2
Location: Middle-school Principal’s office

Throat slightly sore from suppressed screams. Idyllic image of being Language Assistant shattered during meeting with middle school principal: firstly, b/c had to go through school courtyard during recess, and realized that children actually v. frightening b/c they’re like tiny ticking time bombs, unleashing flashes of energy in the most unnerving/violent ways; secondly, because school principal told me that would have all these lovely little time bombs all to myself, for 55 minutes at a time, without any help from teachers.  Will have over 220 students.

Obviously my parents are to blame for all of this — in all their efforts to teach me things, they neglected to supply me with younger sibling(s) as training.

Am generally terrified.

October 20th, 2010
Day: -1, 10:35am
Location: High-School Principal’s Office

Crossing high school courtyard an entirely different affair: energy levels anything but excessive. The teenagers eyed me coolly through clouds of cigarette smoke, their faces half-hidden in scarves.

Meeting with high school Principal went well. My role in high school essentially same as in middle school: to be “bearer of native tongue” and incite students to practice as much spoken English as possible. Now must rack brains for lesson ideas.

D-Day at High School
October 21st, 2010, 6:30am
Location: apartment bathroom
Woke up bright and early, looking like either been punched in eye or have smoked a rare breed of marijuana that has rather asymmetrical effects. To my horror, have contracted Pink Eye (conjunctivitis) right before am supposed to be formally introduced to students.

Perhaps should call in sick.

6:55am
Location: apartment bathroom
Decided not to call in sick after practicing squinty facial expression that looks intellectual and almost natural. Left eye stealthily concealed in a John Black (Days of Our Lives) type way, when he solves some important mystery. (Or maybe John Black too had chronic conjunctivitis?)

12:30pm
Location: high school
Activity: Introductions
Classroom enthusiasm level: average
First day of teaching over. Was shaking like a leaf but significantly calmed down by haze of cigarette smoke in front of building.

Class started out well. Got students to introduce themselves with the following formula: “Hello my name is _____, I am _____ years old,  I am from _____,  I like to _____, after high school, I’d like to _____, etc.”

One student said she liked to play badminton, another said that he would like to be teacher after high school (cute!), another said she is from Paris and likes reading and listening to music. Then it was one young man’s turn to speak, and he said in most matter-of-fact, nonchalant manner:

“‘Ello, my name eez Pierre Limoges, I am sixteen years old, I am from Capdenac, and I like to ‘ave sex.”

Silence swept across room as colour of my face slowly but surely changed to match my flaming left eye. Should have gone all teacher-like and said that that comment was inappropriate etc, but instead broke long awkward silence by emitting a sort of laugh that, as author/zoologist Gerald Durrel might say, a drunken hyena would have been proud to produce.

Argh. I vow to be more competent during 2nd class.

D-Day at Middle School
Activity: Introductions
Classroom enthusiasm levels: high
Decided to sneak into classroom before recess, in order to stay zen-like and give myself some hope of feigning confidence.

Had class of 12-year-olds, most of whom had never seen a living Canadian before. Everyone excited and generally cute. Lot’s of energy. Good behaviour lasted for good ten minutes. Got students to introduce themselves with same formula as high school, plus: “my favourite type of cheese is ______”

Spent good 10 minutes explaining what “my favourite type of cheese is _____” meant. Have never had to mime a piece of cheese before — made marked progress in charades today.

Introductions were going well, got at least 12 unknown kinds of cheese written down (to be tasted during own spare time), until:

“Madame? How do you say “cheese is awful, I hate it” in English?”

Student was clearly trying to test my limits and jeopardize entire lesson plan. Was determined to be more competent than previous day, thus puffed myself up in teacher/blowfish type way, squinted left eye v. intensely, and said v. stiffly:

“Translating blasphemy is not part of my job description, young man.”

‘
(Part 2 of work journal to be posted soon)