"A Waste of Time" (No Motivation)

No, I'm not talking about moving to France, or dropping everything to become an English teacher, or even explaining the new health care agenda to "the other side of the aisle." This is a direct quote from my contact at Lycée Baggio in reference to the class of misfits he was trying to teach about the English Speaking World. It was an unexpected exclamation, and the first bit of English I had heard spoken the entire morning. Let's just say that my premier jour d'ecole was quite an experience.

But...before I can get into what an interesting time today was, I must mention our first real night out on the town. In my last post we were in the process of getting ready to go out and meet up with all the other English assistants in the Lille area. Well that didn't happen, but we still had an amazing time in the city. Lille is beautiful at night. The streets are all lit up with bright lamps and the buildings are illuminated with neon spotlights all throughout the city. The average Saturday night sees thousands of people crawling out of every pub and café and bar and really anywhere that is actually open past 7pm. I'm not just talking about your average "lets get wasted" high school or college student either. No, literally everyone was out on the town, young and old, kids as young as three and four years old out with their parents until well after 11pm, and for no particular reason other than blowing off a little steam from the week past.

Initially our plan had been to meet up with the other assistants, but they were meeting at 6pm, and we weren't ready to leave the house until about 6:45. So we got into the city a little "late," and there was no giant group of Americans waiting to greet us outside of the Gare Lille-Flandres. Our first thought was to try and find them; this we did unsuccessfully for about 20-30min before giving up, and wandering into a bar whose name seemed familiar, possibly from pre-trip research on the Lille nightlife. It was called the Australian, a very dark place with lots of people watching a soccer match, but there was no room for us. Also we hadn't eaten dinner yet so we decided to try out the "PUB" next door. This place was much calmer, had good beer and a nice dinner menu as well. Kathryn and I split a pizza and enjoyed a few...refreshments. The first of which was the French version of Red Bull and vodka which included some unusual garnishes of fruit-flavored marshmallows (we passed on those). Next we switched to beers for the rest of the night. The pub was nice, the waiter spoke English (we still tried our best to respond in French) and the food wasn't too bad. The pizza was still better than almost any I had in Oregon. We stayed there long enough for me to tell Kathryn almost everything I knew about international rugby (the T.V. had switched to it once the soccer was over).

The rest of the night was spent hopping from bar to café to estaminet to anywhere that looked appealing as we strolled through the damp Lille night. During our time we met a very nice waiter who spoke of some of his adventures in San Francisco and Las Vegas. He summed it up as so: "Las Vegas...lose your inhibitions, lose your money, lose your wife, lose your mind" and we guessed he had a good time. He also mentioned how much he enjoyed SanFran. He said he didn't mind the cool grey weather. I'm sure it's because we are in for a lot of the same this winter here in Lille. The beer we had at this particular café was the best we've tasted in Lille thus far. That's not to say it was amazing (I think the stuff my Dad and I made was still better) but this was less fruity than most of the others we had to this point. On our way back to the tram station Kathryn got a craving for a Nuttella crepe, and I got one for a kebab. This led us to a little Saudi Arabian restaurant just blocks from the Gare. It was the only place we could find at midnight still serving both crepes and kebab. Again the waiter was incredibly nice, and we chatted (in French) about how he had studied English for years, then spent time living in England only to return to France and forget every last word he had ever learned. The late night food was great, but it was what the other patrons in the restaurant were eating that will drive us back there to sample the dinner menu. Finally we had to rush out of there because we were minutes away from missing the last tram back to Wasquehal, and we didn't want to have to pay for a taxi home.

That was our fantastic first night out. On to my first day of school.

I haven't had a real first day of school in a very long time. Yes at U of O I had plenty of first day of classes, but that was nothing like a first day of school. This was real...like first day of Jr. High or High School real. Nerves the night before, trouble sleeping (more from getting over my flu but whatever) and of course, showing up late and having absolutely no idea what room I was supposed to be in or how to find it. The showing up late part wasn't exactly my fault. Halfway through my tram ride into the city the conductor came on the intercom, and spoke very quickly in French. I had my headphones in listening to my ipod so the only real part I understood was something about mechanics, which I assumed meant there was a problem. I was right because no sooner had I paused Kanye than the doors opened and everyone filed out onto the platform, and into the rain. Luckily we only had to wait about 5min or so before the next tram pulled up and we packed it to the gills.

Once we arrived at the main train station I started looking around to try and find the correct metro line I was supposed to get on that would take me to Baggio. Before this trip I thought I was very prepared, but the problem was last week when we went to visit my school we had walked from the main train station, and I never really checked which metro line to get on. This cause a little bit of stress since I was already running late. Just remember it was very early in the morning and I was still thinking American. If I had more of a French mind-set I would have remembered that being on time really doesn't matter (one of the "fact facts" I picked up today was that in many places it is rude to arrive early or even on time). After walking back and forth between the maps showing the routes of the metro lines about 5 times I gave up and figured I would just walk. It would add on another 30min or so to my trip but, so what? Then once I got to the school all I would have to do is get on the metro going back to the main station and where ever it let me off, next time I would know where to catch the right train.

This was a good idea until I actually made it out of the station, and found that in the 10min or so that I was underground pacing, the rain had picked up. It wasn't anything worse than a normal Eugene Oregon misty shower, but I had a couple kilometers to go. The real problem was that I was wearing my winter coat, and it was getting hot, and I was quickly losing interest in walking. My path to the school led me to the Square of the Republic that has the Palais des Beaux Arts which also happens to have a metro stop. I guessed that since I was about 1/4 of the way to the school this metro must go the rest of the way. I was wrong, but it did get relatively close to the street that my school is on. I got on the train and hoped that when I got off I would be facing south so when I turned left, like the map in the station said, I would actually be headed the right direction. I ended up at the Wazemmes station, went up the stairs and took a left. As chance would have it, after six blocks or so I reached the street Kathryn and I had walked down originally to get to Baggio, so I was back on track. Once I knew where I actually was it only took another 10min or so before I finally got to the school.

Since I had arrived late everything was locked up, and I had to wait at the gate for the security guard to come over. There were also two other students that were late to school waiting beside me. I was let right in, they were beaten mercilessly. Just kidding. They did get what sounded like a stern talking to then one was let in and I have no idea what happened to the other. Actually getting onto the grounds of the school was just the first step in the battle to find M. Gonzalez my contact. He told me to meet him in the "Salle des Professors" (teachers lounge) which was in the main building on the ground floor. What he didn't tell me was that the school is actually two schools technical, and professional, so the first two people I ended up asking for directions could do nothing more than lead me to someone else who again had no idea who I was or where I needed to be. Finally after being led to 4 or 5 different teachers offices we found the head secretary who was expecting me, and had a dossier with my contract waiting on her desk. Luckily everyone that I met and dealt with in the entire school was very nice, and understanding, and helpful. By this time it was around 9:30am and I was standing at the door to M. Gonzales' classroom.

He came out and greeted me, and suggested that I go wait in the teachers lounge for him because he needed to finish teaching his class. Well I had already tried to get into the teachers lounge, but you need an electronic pass key to get in (something that I obviously did not have yet) so I asked if I could sit in on the rest of his class. He said yes but also mentioned that this class did not have the students I would be working with, but instead was full of trouble-makers. He said I would be working with the "honors students," the best the school has to offer, and these kids did not care, had no motivation, and were a waste of time. I thought he was being a little harsh, but he was more or less right. They were loud and obnoxious and didn't stop acting like...well...we did when we were freshman in high school (they were probably 17/18 years old though) At first they thought I was a new student, but when they found out I was American the most pressing issue was finding out how much the Iphone cost in the States. There was only 10minutes left in the class when I arrived and M. Gonzales ended things early so we could talk and he could show me around the campus.

The next couple hours were spent being introduced to the instructors in the English department, getting my electronic pass key so I can have access to the teachers lounge, and also use it in the cafeteria to pay for lunch. I didn't have lunch in the school restaurant, but I am looking forward to it. Lunch only costs about 2euros, and I have been told by some of the other professors that they eat very well at Lycée Baggio. For lunch I went out to a little sandwich shop with the English teacher that actually helped Kathryn and I set up our housing situation with the Cook family. After lunch we went to a little Middle-Eastern tabac/café for a very good and very strong cup of coffee. This was all leading up to my first actual class to assist.

At 2pm I was led up to the room by the teacher. On the way she explained (in very fast French) that the kids were upper-level students studying for their BTS exams, and needed to be proficient in English to get a job. BTS is some kind of electro-mechanical engineering degree. I figured this out because my first assignment (or what I thought was my first assignment) was to go around and read the students reports they had written about a two week internship they had over the summer. So after introducing my self twice (the first time I spoke way too fast because this was right after finishing the big cup of very strong coffee, and no one could understand me) I began to go around the room reading these reports and trying to ask them open-ended questions about their experiences to get them speaking in English. However, even though the kids had been taking English for about 10 years already there were only 3 or 4 that spoke very well at all. Asking questions really wasn't very successful so instead I just went through the reports with them, and pointed out some mistakes and sentences that made no sense or that I couldn't understand. This was made a little more difficult by the fact the students all had jobs repairing metro and train cable lines, or working to fix the machines that replace bowling pins in the lanes at bowling ally's. The problem was they used a lot of technical language that I couldn't tell if it was correct or not because I have no experience with their field of study.

When the class had been let out the teacher told me that the students were taking advantage of me by getting help correcting the errors in their papers. Apparently what I was supposed to do was talk to them about the paper, tell them what I didn't understand and then they were supposed to go fix it themselves. Oh well, now I know for next time that they are supposed to do everything on their own. It will be easier for me as well to just have them read/tell me what their papers are about, and let them know how horrible they are at English and to stop wasting my time (that's the French way).

After school was finished I rushed home on the metro and tram to tend to Kathryn who was home dying of the plague. The real problem was that since we had been sick last week all the meds' had been used up so she had nothing around to make her feel better. I made some pasta so we could have a warm meal then found the Tylenol PM to get her feeling better. We crashed early last night because she was sick and I was just exhausted from getting up before the sun.

We have a big rendez-vous at Baggio on Wednesday where all the Lycée assistants from the Lille region will be attending. I believe it will not only be English assistants because I was told there will be over 350 of us there, and I know there aren't 350 English assistants in Lille. It should be interesting to finally meet some other assistants, and get all the necessary paperwork filled out. I'll let you know how it goes.

-Jor and Kathryn

P.S. - I almost forgot. Sunday I got a chance to talk with my parents on skype. This is the most amazing piece of technology because we were able to hook up the webcams so it was like we were chatting in person (and for free). Yes, I enjoy talking to my parents and seeing them and all, but the BEST part was they just aimed the webcam at the TV and I was able to watch the second half of the BEARS v. lions game!!! So now I have a way to watch Da Bears pound the NFC into submission on their way to the Super Bowl, and my parents have a definite way to get me on the phone at least once a week. Love you guys.