Chez Moi

I live in the cité scolaire. For lack of a better English equivalent, it's what we in America might call a campus, although I'm not sure that it's quite the same thing. It's a complex of academic, administrative, and residential buildings associated with one or more schools—in my case, four, which I believe makes it the biggest in the city. It's all concentrated into a fairly small geographic area (lots of concrete), and the whole block is surrounded by a tall fence dotted with both vehicle and pedestrian gates. As a non-student residing on the property, I have possession of a cluster of keys that includes not only the normal ones to my building and my room, but also a single large, magical key that will open any of the outer gates should I need it to. It makes me feel very powerful. (You can laugh, but in a world where I don't know how to do anything and am doing well to understand maybe 60% of what's said to me, I'm going to take what power I can get.)

I'm still trying to learn my way around, as everything kind of looks the some (a maze of boxy grey and white buildings with lots of windows surrounded by various parking lots and walkways and courtyards), but it's been a few days since I really got lost. And it's not like it's an enormous place, anyway.

My room is on the top floor (106 stairs from the ground...) of what seems to be a multipurpose building—I know there are classes held here, and I also know that there are other rooms/apartments elsewhere in the building, although I do not know who lives in them. In my corner of the fifth floor (that's the sixth floor for my fellow Americans), one of my several keys opens the door to a tiled hallway off of which there are four small rooms like tiny studio apartments, with a shower and toilet at the end of the hall that we all share. The latter have been described as “prison-like” by several people other than me, which makes me feel less ungrateful for perpetuating the label. Only my room and the one next to mine are occupied full-time (the other by the Spanish assistant); the other two are, as far as I understand the situation, used by people who work for the school in some capacity but live elsewhere and only stay here on occasion. I have not met them, nor do I know whether it's only two people or there's some kind of sharing going on, nor do I really understand the circumstances of their using the rooms. Perhaps they are teachers or staff members who live outside the city and spend the night here when they are going to be working especially late and/or early and don't want to commute. I don't know.

My room is more than adequate, although I wish there was carpet because the tile floor is very cold. (I'm still debating the merits of trying to bring an area rug back from Ikea on the bus and drag it across the cité and up six flights of stairs. I might just buy some more socks and wear multiple pairs.) I have a reasonably comfortable single bed, for which I was provided sheets and a duvet and pillow set, which I supplemented with a cheap fleece blanket. I also have dresser with two small shelves, a bedside table, a desk and chair, another small table, a wardrobe that's mostly shelves and not nearly enough clothes-hanging space, a squat refrigerator, a toaster oven with two burners on top, and a small sink in the corner. Everything is arranged around the walls so that although the room is crowded, there's plenty of space in the middle to move around. I don't really mind much that it's small; I like space, but I don't need it. I'm going to spend most of the time I'm here at the desk or on my bed anyway. It's a bright room, and it has everything I really need, so I'm content. My biggest complaint is not having nicer bathroom facilities, which is hardly a complaint at all. All in all, it's not so different from living in a dorm except that now I can cook and wash dishes in my room—so really, it's an improvement.

Living in the cité scolaire has its advantages. First and foremost, I don't pay either rent or utilities. I think that's usually the main upside to being offered housing by your school, along with avoiding the stress of having to find a place on your own. Even assistants who have to pay for their school-owned lodging pay only a token amount compared to what renting a room or an apartment in the city at large would cost. And when you make less than 800 euros a month, even if that's a generous salary for the job, not having to shell out half of it in order to have a roof over your head is a very nice thing. Another advantage is that I couldn't really be any closer to work. My commute consists of going down the stairs and taking a two-minute walk across the parking lot into the main school building. There may even be a way to get there without going outside, but I'm only just starting to figure out where my classrooms are and haven't fully explored all the passageways yet. I also have a card that allows me to eat in the cafeteria along with the students who board. The hours aren't terribly convenient, but the meals are decent and very cheap.

Disadvantages include the fact that having classes held in the same building where I live means being subjected to the ringing of bells every hour. It's not the electronic beep we had in my high school either, but the old-school kind of bell that makes a really loud, shrill, vibrating, ringing sound. There's also the constant proximity to students, whom I think most assistants will admit to being afraid of in the beginning—you don't know how to interact with them, and you constantly feel you're being stared at. I work at a school that has a lot of students enrolled in post-high-school diploma programs, many of whom are around my age, so I always imagine that I kind of look like I could be a student but A) don't blend in well enough to get away with it, and B) don't really want to be mistaken for a student anyway. Plus, I always seem to be moving against the crowd when trying to enter or leave my building between classes. It's really awkward.

I also live some distance from the city center, where most of the bars and restaurants and stores are. It's not a great distance—a twenty or thirty minute walk, depending on where you're heading and how fast you go—but it's not necessarily the best place to walk at night in a city with a drinking problem, and the buses stop running early. Even the "night" buses finish around 10:30 during the week and 12:30 on weekends. I'm not as far away as some people are, and since three other assistants live in the cité and another lives in a flat up the street, I can often come and go with at least one other person. And it's certainly not as inconvenient for me as for the assistants whose schools are in the suburbs or in small towns in the outlying area, who have nothing to do nearby and no way of getting into the city or back without the buses. And then, it's me: I'm on my own a lot, I look after myself, and, as with anywhere else I've lived, I refuse to be afraid of my own city. I've already walked home alone several times—once even before the buses stopped running, because I'd miscalculated and would have had to wait longer at the bus stop than it was going to take me to just walk—but I'm not sure that I'd want to do that any later (or any drunker) than I already have. I'm quite proud to say that I've pretty much gone wherever I've wanted at pretty much whatever hour I've pleased since I was sixteen years old—I'm the girl who walks other girls home—but I do try not to go out of my way to be stupid about it.

Then there's the isolation that comes with living at a school anywhere. At night, it gets very quiet here, and on weekends, when most of the students who board during the week go home, the whole complex is eerily deserted. For the first few days I was here, none of the other assistants were yet, and then there were a few days when the English assistants at one of the other schools in the cité had moved in but we didn't know about each other yet—we met trying to find our way into the school where our orientation was to be held two weeks ago and only then realized we had all come from the same cite. I'm a person who likes to be alone, who sometimes even goes out of my way to be alone, but to feel that alone, like you're the only person around for hours or days at a time, is a little oppressive even for me. I'm glad all of the assistants are now here and, so far, getting along. More on that later!

Ma Nouvelle Ville

You can read all about Brest on Wikipedia if you want, and it probably has some kind of tourism website in English, too (come to think of it, I should probably read those myself…), so I'll skip straight to my perspective: Brest is less than I desired, but more than I imagined. By that, I mean that while I had hoped to be somewhere more vibrantly French or Breton or both, both Brest and my situation in it have proved to be better than I expected from my reading and from some of my email exchanges over the summer. If Brest is not quite as rich in history or culture as I might have wanted, or at least not in the ways I might have wanted, it still has plenty to offer in terms of things to do, places to go, and people to meet. I think Americans always have grand expectations for anywhere in Europe; if I'm willing to let go of those and accept that Brest is not going to be my beloved Tours or Avignon, let alone Paris or Nice, then it is, in fact, a perfectly fine place to live. And it is full of magpies, which I love.

Of course, it's also full of steep hills, which I love much less, despite where I grew up.

Four months ago, when I first learned I'd been placed here, I wrote that I was both relieved about the size of the city and its student population* and disappointed that I was going to wind up, yet again, in one of the few places in my chosen country that had little surviving physical evidence of its long history. In Brest's case, that's because it was almost totally leveled in WWII and was rebuilt after the war. It's a port city, with an important naval base, and in its day was filled with factories, though I'm told that much of the industry that was here is now gone. Having heard that makes me even more inclined than I already had been to play the Billy Joel song "Allentown" for my students when I talk to them about where I come from—about the only thing better than a pop culture reference to my hometown is a pop culture reference to my hometown that's potentially tailor-made for les Brestois to relate to.

Some of the city is attractive—for example, the monumental Place de la Liberte at its heart, and the broad Rue de Siam that leads from the Place down to a lovely view of the harbor, which is flanked by the castle and tower that are all that remains of medieval Brest. Much of the rest is, at best, nondescript. Concrete, barred windows, and graffiti abound. Shades of grey and white and beige are predominant, though I have seen at least a few colorful residential streets. Within the city proper, houses are small and massive apartment buildings common. Sirens are a constant, and would almost make me feel at home if the sound wasn't so different from American sirens. It took me a few days to get used to that, but now I tune them out just as easily as I do back in Bethlehem.

Despite having been destroyed, Brest seems to have managed to retain its medieval street plan, and I have yet to make much sense of it, even though I once wrote a history paper about medieval city layouts having a kind of internal logic. It's very easy for me to get turned around if I'm not paying close attention or it's too cloudy for me to tell compass directions easily (which is most of the time here). I get lost a lot anytime I stray from the most familiar routes. 

A lot of streets are named after people, ranging from the vaguely creepy (Rue Robespierre? Really, Brest?) to the unintentionally humorous (I don't know who Claude le Prat was, or if the average French person would think that's a funny name, but his street sign cracks me up). Many of them, of course, are French names I don't recognize, so I get excited when I do know who a street is named for and why they deserve the honor. There are what seems like a surprising number of streets named after writers, from Rue Charles Baudelaire and Rue Victor Hugo, which I suppose are to be expected, to Rue Hemingway down by the quays. I've only seen that one on the map for the moment, but I'll have to go find it at some point, although I don't actually know whether Hemingway had any connection to Brest or not.

Brest is, despite all the not-so-flattering things I said above, a nice enough place to be, especially in the unseasonably nice weather that we had for the first week and a half I was here. The city center really is nice, although most of it is currently a treacherous, labyrinthine construction zone for the new tramway that should go into operation soon after I'm due to leave, and there are also some lovely gardens and parks, including a series of walking paths along the river that I already love, and even some tree-lined streets. The French are also very fond of landscaping with flowering plants. I am quite willing to believe, however, that during the long, dark, wet winter, this will indeed be a depressing city. In fact, I wonder if that's not as much a reason for the number of pubs here as the Irish influence on the region or the fact that except for in summer it's simply too cold and wet for all the oh-so-French sidewalk cafes.

I can't seem to stop myself thinking of Brest as the Pittsburgh of France even though that's unfair in several respects (the biggest of which being that I've spent approximately two hours in Pittsburgh in my entire life—and they were at night, in winter). In some ways, though, I think it's entirely fair: Brest is a grimy, dreary, formerly industry-heavy city of several hundred thousand that, though it has a few nice things to offer in the way of history and culture and nightlife, is a place that kind of fails to stand out and that even its inhabitants tend not to boast much about.

But hey, I work twelve hours a week, plus a little prep time, for which I get paid a ridiculous amount of money** AND get nearly eight weeks of vacation time (although I may volunteer to teach optional classes during one or two of those breaks and make even more money)—part of the point of being a language assistant is to go out and travel and do cool things away from your base city. And when I am here, there are other assistants to hang out with, museums and bars and libraries to go to, more shopping than I can handle (including a fantastic, awe-inspiring bookstore that could pose a serious hazard for me), and plenty of nice walks to take and pastries to eat. Brest may not be very glamorous, but I think I'll be plenty fond of it before it's time to leave.

(If I can remember, I'll try to update this post with pictures this weekend.)

* One night last week, a large group of assistants was sitting in what seems to have become our usual pub, and one girl observed, "The worrying thing here is that there are 17,000 students in Brest and none of them are here..."

** I did the math, actually. It works out to almost 21 euros per hour, for what will probably take very little effort on my part—in other words, over twice as much as I'd probably make doing archaeology right now, and possibly more than I'll ever make doing archaeology even if I go on to get a Ph.D. Plus, I don't have to go to work if the teacher I'm supposed to work with is sick or on strike (it's France, so the latter is bound to happen sooner or later), and it doesn't affect my salary because I don't actually get paid by the hour. It would pretty much be the best job ever even if the economy didn't suck.

My First Days en Bretagne

I arrived in France two Tuesdays ago, tired and confused and really, really glad to be meeting someone at the airport: a fellow Académie de Rennes assistante (that's the French feminine spelling, not a typo) who graduated this year from the university where my father now works, so we were able to meet ahead of time and start to get to know each other, as well as to figure out that we were getting to France the same day. Plus, she studied abroad in France and had at least a little bit of train experience, so I was quite happy to follow her and let her figure out where we had to go. (Thanks, Ali!) We bought discount cards for under-26s* (I managed to lose mine later that same day and had to go online to request another from the SNCF after I got to Brest) and found the platform, but we weren't able to sit together because French trains have assigned seating even if you buy your ticket the day of the trip, as I did. Lame. (It's not like that in Ireland.) But we did have lunch together during our short stop in Rennes.

Rennes is the main city in the region, with Brest coming in second. They're about two hours apart by train. My train buddy's town is one of a number of much smaller ones (about the size of the city of Oberlin!) and is just to the Rennes side of halfway between the two big cities. Right now I don't know a whole lot more than that about the geography of Brittany, other than that there's a town not far from Brest called Quimper that's supposed to be very nice. I do know that within a short distance of Brest there exists both a Wolf Museum and a Strawberry Museum. Provided I can find a way to get to them without renting a car, that's clearly a sign that I'm in the right part of France.

Another sign: Brittany is fantastic because on the one hand, Brest is super-French and filled with bakeries and crêperies and sidewalk cafés. On the other hand, it's also filled with Irish pubs (which are a lot more legit than Irish pubs in America, even if they still have a little bit of local influence).

Back to my story. My responsable (the teacher who served as my contact person at the school and who's now more or less taking charge of my integration) had generously volunteered to come meet me at the train station and drive me and all my stuff** to the lycée. She was very nice, and spoke to me in English, which was a huge relief, and showed me up to my room. She also told (not asked) me I was going to have dinner at her house, and left me alone for an hour or so to clean up and make my bed before coming back to get me again. Her daughter, who is studying modern languages at the university and speaks English, Italian, and maybe some Spanish (I don't remember now) as well as French, made the dinner and was also very nice to me, albeit more reluctant than her mother to speak English, with the result that there was a lot of code switching going on, and sometimes the two of them went on in very fast French and I missed almost all of it and just sat there and smiled blankly. But, it turns out that the daughter and I are exactly the same age, to the day, and she lived for a few months in Dublin, so we could all talk about how wonderful Ireland is.

The next day I was supposed to report to the teacher's lounge to be introduced to some of the other English teachers and have my responsable take me up to meet the proviseur (principal, headmaster) and then his secretary, who would help me take care of all the necessary paperwork. I slept very, very late and was lazy even once I was awake, to the point that I managed to put off going to get something to eat from the bakery my responsable had pointed out the night before until I had less than an hour before the appointed meeting time. And of course, despite the fact that getting from the school to the bakery is incredibly simple and we had both laughed about the idea that I might get lost trying to go back by myself, that's exactly what I proceeded to do. So lost, in fact, that at one point I thought I was going to have to choose between being late and calling to admit that I'd gotten lost, neither of which was even the slightest bit appealing. At the last possible moment, I discovered that I had almost gotten to the right intersection quite early on, only to mistakenly think I was wrong and go a different way. With that mystery solved, getting back was far more straightforward, and I had exactly enough time to deposit my baguette in my room, change my shirt, and cross the parking lot to the school building right on time.

The teacher's room had been pointed out to me from outside the building, but once inside I wasn't one hundred percent sure I knew which way to go, and naturally the woman at the reception desk saw me peering up and down hallways in two different directions and asked if I needed something—at which point I promptly forgot how to speak French. Utterly unable to come up with the phrase "teacher's room" (an exact equivalent, by the way, nothing idiomatic about it), I eventually managed to stammer something like "Sorry… I am the English assistant and I am looking for _____." Since I must have looked completely incompetent to understand directions, she got up and led me down the hall to the correct place. Once there, I was introduced to a number of people, none of whom were English teachers and all of whose names I've forgotten, though I recognize most of them when I see them now. We say hello, and some of them have even started to do "the bises," that very French way of greeting people you know with a kiss on the cheek, with me.*** 

I sat awkwardly at the table and understood enough of the conversation going on around me to realize that the teachers were discussing computers, and specifically the merits of Macs vs. PCs especially with regard to foreign language instruction. I did not understand enough of it to feel comfortable jumping in. On the other hand, I find I'm often a little overwhelmed by French conversations even when I do grasp most of what's being said. Everything moves at lightning speed, with hardly a pause between speakers.

Anyway, I did eventually meet one other English teacher, an older man who very kindly asked me if I spoke French, to which I replied, "A little. I read and write much better than I speak." (My standard response—either that or "Well, I speak French badly," depending on who's posing the question.) At least, that's what I meant to say. I realized much later on that day that what I'd actually said had completely ignored some fundamental rules of grammar, in any language. Fortunately, he just smiled and said something like, "Ah, yes, it's always that way."

But seriously, this is why I was simultaneously relieved and a little horrified that the application process for American assistants did not involve an interview. I probably look way more proficient in French on paper than I would to anyone trying to have a conversation with me. I'm about as far as it gets from being an eloquent speaker even in my native language, especially when put on the spot; I'm constantly unable to make my brain articulate thoughts at an acceptable pace, and frequently tripping over whatever words I do come up with. Plus I'm shy to begin with, and that's not exactly going to make anybody more inclined to talk, let alone a shy person, so it becomes this really awkward vicious circle. Plunking me down in the middle of a totally new situation with totally unfamiliar people and saying "Now you have to talk in a different language" is pretty much a recipe for disaster, regardless of having studied said different language for years. I knew I was bad at spoken French, but I don't think I was ever fully prepared for just how bad it could get. Because it's not just that conversation. That might be the most glaring mistake I've made, but I think the number of correct sentences I've uttered in the last two weeks is miniscule compared to the number of sentences I've butchered (or just failed to complete).

It turned out the secretary wasn't even there that afternoon, and as there was no one else around to meet and my responsable's afternoon class was taking a test, so there was no point in my sitting in, I was dismissed for the afternoon having embarrassed myself more or less for nothing. I went back the next morning and was paraded amongst the administrative personnel and did a lot of smiling and nodding and half understanding what was said to me. On Thursday I met a very nice Spanish teacher who told me, though I had a particularly hard time understanding her French, that she was responsible for my Spanish-language counterpart, a boy from Colombia who would be arriving on Sunday and probably living in the room next to mine. Also on Thursday, my responsable tried to take me to a nearby bank to open an account, but the branch was inexplicably closed for the day, so we had to go back on Friday instead, at which point the mission was accomplished with very little trouble. However, the bank employees have subsequently been on strike, until yesterday or today, so I have not yet received my bank card, nor have I been able to stop by and make sure I've done everything I need to do before I can. Ah, France.

Coming up: Exploring the city, meeting other assistants, my first encounters with students, and the lowdown on life in Brest [as a semi-reclusive foreign girl living in a high school, which is probably not the best possible insider perspective].

* 26 is the magic age in France, it seems. A person becomes a legal adult at 18, just like nearly everywhere else, but based on my observations in the past two weeks, there follows this magical period wherein one has all the rights and privileges of an adult, but still gets a lot of preferential treatment, particularly concerning financial breaks. In Ireland, I remember, student discounts abound; here, most deals are just for young people, usually (though probably not always) up to the age of 26, regardless of student vs. non-student status. And we're not just talking about reduced admission to museums or meal deals at local restaurants—we get special bus and train passes, are offered special deals by everyone from banks to cell phone and internet companies, pay less for supplemental health insurance... all just for being under the age of 26. I do not know what the French job market looks like for twenty-somethings right now, but assuming it's no worse than anywhere else, this is a fantastic place to be young.

** My ambitious plan to pack super light did not quite go as planned, but more on that later.

*** As my responsable's daughter later explained to me, this custom differs regionally—in Brittany, one kiss, usually on the right. Elsewhere in France, it's three, alternating sides. And when I said goodbye to a fellow assistant from Spain the other night, it was two, one on each side. I've also observed on my own that the only people who'll do it upon a first meeting (including the Spanish assistant, who's about my age and therefore much younger than most of the teachers) are men. Fewer women have done it with me at all yet, and those who have have all waited until we've met at least two or three times.

Let The Countdown Begin

A week from right now, I will be on a plane on my way to Paris. I will have left the house I grew up in for the last time and will not set foot anywhere in America again for more than seven months—at least. It could be more, because I have a one-way ticket and no idea where I'm going or what I'm doing after my contract is over.

Twenty-two and a recent grad is a scary thing to be anyway. Nothing is certain, nothing is permanent. Even my friends who are now in grad school don't have anything planned for their lives beyond the next couple of years until they have their next degree. To be twenty-two and a recent grad and on your way to another country with a temporary work visa and nowhere to go when it's up is scarier still. We're not just venturing into adulthood, with all its usual challenges and uncertainties; we're doing it in a foreign language, thousands of miles from our family and friends, with nothing more than what we can carry in a suitcase or two, and we don't know when—or if—we'll be “home” again. We don't even know where home is anymore.

It's exciting, too—I know the freedom I have right now is just as fleeting as everything else, and I intend to make the most of it—but still very unsettling.

The things I'm most excited about mostly involve the traveling I plan to do. I want to thoroughly explore France, and I'd like to do at least some of it on foot. Brittany has fabulous mountain and coastal scenery, France as a whole has one of the best systems of long-distance walking paths anywhere in the world, and I have a brand-new backpack, a good pair of boots, and a love of being outside. I loved seeing Ireland from buses and trains, but I also loved my mini-adventures on foot, and I gained enough solo traveling experience that semester that I'm ready to cut some of the buses and spend more time on the ground. I also want to visit college friends in Copenhagen and Senegal, and take trips to Amsterdam and Prague. I'd like to go back to Ireland, and England, and I desperately want to take an extended trip to Scotland, maybe by saving up some money and planning to go in the spring, after I'm done teaching. And that's all just the beginning, and I know I won't even be able to do all of that. So we'll see.

And I won't lie; I'm also looking forward to drinking nothing but cheap wine and gorging myself on crepes and pastries.

Things I'm extremely, perhaps irrationally, concerned about include, but are not limited to: getting to Brest, my first interactions with my contact person and others at the school, figuring out everything I need to do in the first few days and when to do it and who to talk to to get it done, getting a SIM card and some kind of internet, and opening a French bank account (for that last one, concerned times a million).

My correspondence with my “personne contact” (see, French isn't always hard for English speakers!), the teacher at my school who's basically in charge of answering my questions and making sure I know what I'm supposed to be doing as far as my actual job is concerned, has been reassuring, but also a source of some additional stress. On the one hand, she's been very available and reasonably good at answering most of my sometimes-numerous questions, and even gone so far as to give me her personal email address and phone numbers to make sure I can reach her. From what I hear, some assistants are unable to get in touch with their contacts at all over the summer, so I feel very fortunate in that regard. Reading between the lines, she also seems very nice—she's even offered to come to meet me at the train station when I get into Brest, which is definitely going beyond what's expected of her. I say “reading between the lines,” though, because the French are notoriously reserved, and although her emails to me have been cordial, they've not been overly friendly. Of course, my first email to her was probably unnecessarily formal, and therein lies part of my concern—I'm also naturally a pretty reserved person, partly because I'm also a private person and partly because I'm shy and tend to err on the side of distance when it comes to people I don't know well. I'm slow to make friends (among other things) because I tend to wait for someone else to make the first move. I have a feeling the French and I will be edging around one another for quite some time.

Also, there's the fact that French, like most Romance languages, has two different words for “you”. To put it very simply, there is the informal “you”, used with family and friends, and the formal (or plural, but that's not the confusing part) “you”, used with strangers/casual acquaintances and with people to whom one should show extra respect. In practice, the boundaries are much murkier, despite the fact that the French do not use the word “friend” as casually as most Americans—most young people would not use the formal “you” with anyone their own age, for example, and co-workers are likely to use the informal “you” among themselves even if they are really no more than acquaintances. And so the questions of whether and/or at what point to begin to “tutoyer”—that is, to use the informal form of “you”—with someone with whom you do not have a clearly defined relationship is one that tends to cause considerable anxiety among non-native speakers. Not only do we lack the cultural context for determining what's appropriate, English speakers don't have a linguistic reference point because our language does not make such a distinction. I had not fully appreciated the extent of the ambiguity until now, having never had much occasion NOT to use the formal except with my friends and classmates. Obviously, my first email to my contact at the lycée used the formal “you”. She wrote back addressing me with the informal. I could take this one of two ways: The fact that she is being casual is an invitation for me to do the same, OR the fact that she is being casual but did not explicitly invite me to do the same is indicative of our age and status difference and I should continue to be extra-respectful.

Thus far I've gone with the latter. In theory, we are fellow teachers now and should be able to be informal with each other, even if I'm only an assistant. But she's not just a teacher; she's the head of the department, and I don't know enough yet about French schools to have any idea how much weight that distinction carries or whether it has any bearing on her relationship with other teachers.

The “you” debate is a continual topic of internet conversation among language assistants, but there are few answers to be had. Experiences and attitudes seem to range widely, and the advice follows suit. Many people seem to have/have had contacts who were puzzled if they continued to address them formally and/or who insisted almost immediately that that was unnecessary. Nearly everyone who wasn't so lucky seems to be in a position of uncertainty similar to mine. Some people say “if they're 'tutoie-ing' you, it's okay to do it back,” (as is normally a good rule of thumb, but as I mentioned above, there's the added complication in this case of my being kinda-sorta a subordinate) others say to wait until you've met in person, still others say to wait to be asked or to just ask them outright if it's okay. There are even a few who say, “meh, it doesn't matter anyway, we can get away with not knowing the rules because we're dumb foreigners and no one expects much of us anyway.” (I don't like that last one very much.) I think I've decided to just wait until I get there and observe how other teachers interact for a few days, assuming I'm not invited to tutoyer up front.

As for the actual teaching, which I sometimes forget is the reason I'm going, I go back and forth between being ridiculously excited and ridiculously scared. There's not a lot of in between or a lot of simultaneous mixed feelings. When I'm brainstorming activities and games that I can do with my classes or sorting through things like maps and photos and card games and planning how I might be able to use them in lessons, I get really super excited. There is a part of me that's wanted to be a teacher ever since I was a little kid, despite my shyness and my inability to improvise and my horror of public speaking and my awkwardness with children. I know that this could be a lot of fun for me. But then I remember the shyness and awkwardness and fear, etc., and wonder if I'll actually be able to keep a roomful of students entertained productively or, perhaps more importantly, keep them at bay when there are discipline problems (which, from what I hear, there almost certainly will be, especially at the high school level and especially because I'm a woman with mostly male students). Part of me thinks this is going to be amazing, and the rest thinks it's going to be awful and uncomfortable and I'm going to hate it. I guess there's really no way to know until I've actually started.

Which will be in two weeks.

Life is crazy.

Obnoxious And Terrifying Visa Process Is Obnoxious And Terrifying

So about that visa appointment.

After several weeks of slowly gathering documents and paperwork (some of which my parents had to bring to me when they came to visit last month... including my passport [fail]), printing out forms at the local library at ten cents a pop because I decided I didn't need to bring my printer with me for the summer (fail), having passport photos taken for at least the eighth time in the last two years (Passport photos: they're not just for passports anymore. In fact, you need them for EVERYTHING YOU APPLY TO DO EVER.), and making copies of everything because the French are as obsessive about that as my mother, I had everything I thought I would need together and somewhat organized and was as ready as I was going to get for my appearance at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C.

I was living about three hours away from D.C., so I drove up on Monday night before my Tuesday appointment time and spent the night with a friend in an outer suburb so I could be slightly less anxious about getting delayed. Getting to and finding a parking spot at the nearest metro station the following morning was still a harrowing experience, despite having left really early (relative to my appointment time, that is). Then I had to purchase a new metro card (that saga isn't worth telling right now, so suffice it to say that I got one on my first trip to D.C. several years ago and it is no longer in my possession), which took me a few tries to figure out because for some stupid reason you can't buy them from the same machines you use to add money to them or vice versa. And yes, I could have just bought a regular paper farecard or a day pass, but I like having the card I can [hopefully] keep to use in the future, plus I could use it to pay my parking fee at the end of the day. Anyway, the next major annoyance, though I knew about this one in advance, was that the French Embassy is not on Embassy Row. It's not anywhere near Embassy Row. In fact, you can't even get there on the metro. I had to take a half hour trip into central Washington on the metro and then get on a bus two blocks away to take another half hour trip to the Embassy. Now, I haven't spent a lot of time in Washington, but I've been there enough that I'm reasonably comfortable getting around by myself... but I'd never taken a bus before, mostly because I've never strayed too far beyond the realm of the metro. I prefer trains to buses in general, and one of the reasons for that is that as far as I can tell, when you take a bus in an unfamiliar place, there's pretty much no way to know where all the stops are in advance. And it doesn't usually occur to me to ask the driver where I should get off—not that I'd be likely to do that even if it did. Of course, for a trip this specific and time-dependent, I'd used the trip planner on the metro website and let it tell me exactly what route to take, but for some reason it failed to mention the existence of a bus stop literally right next to the Embassy, leading me to get off at least two stops sooner than was actually necessary and walk a third of a mile down the road for no discernible reason whatsoever.

Whatever. It was a nice day, and a safe neighborhood, and I was an hour and a half early regardless, so no real harm done.

Then the real fun began.

The gate to the Embassy is locked, understandably, but there's no buzzer, at least not that I saw, so I guess you just have to hope that the person in the guardhouse sees you standing there and decides to trust you. She did. However, said guardhouse is in the middle of the driveway, not really anywhere near the pedestrian entrance, and if you enter on foot there is nothing blocking your path and no sign indicating that you should cross the driveway to the guardhouse instead of just following the sign beyond it pointing towards the consulate, so that's exactly what I did, before being called back by the woman on duty because apparently you're supposed to check in at the gate and apparently you're supposed to be either clairvoyant or just not very self-sufficient.

There followed an awkward conversation wherein I was speaking French (and not even badly) and the woman in the guardhouse was insisting on speaking to me in English despite having initially called out to me in French. I relinquished my driver's license in exchange for a badge that said "visa section", wondered how I was supposed to present my ID at the visa office if they took it from me at the gate, and headed up the hill to the consulate. Inside, I took no chances on repeating my faux pas from outside, and approached the woman sitting at the desk in the lobby to ask for the visa section despite the fact that the door was right next to her and clearly marked.

Beyond that door was a large waiting area full of rows of plastic chairs. If you don't have an appointment, you get in line to get a number and then wait until you're called, which I guess is just whenever they get a chance, since most people have appointments (I was told it was required, so I'm not really clear on what circumstances would bring someone to the visa office without one). If you have an appointment, you just sit and wait until they call your name "at your appointment time", or ten or thirty or ninety minutes late, depending on how far behind they are that day. They were running way behind the morning I was there, but then there were several people who apparently failed to show up for their appointments (WTF?)*, so I got called up only a little bit late.

Before that, however, I'd already been forewarned of the next annoyance by others in the waiting area. Along with the visa application form, we were theoretically supposed to have filled out part of a form that gets completed after we arrive in France and sent to the local immigration office to finalize our visa status. Said form is available as a PDF on the Embassy's website along with the application form, so pretty much everyone present had printed it out and filled in what we were supposed to have filled in, not realizing that the form on the website was outdated because A) there are no dates on the form itself, just one in some fine print in the corner of the page that seems to just indicate the year the form was created, and B) there's no reason to think there should need to be any changes made to a basic name/birthdate/passport-number type form. But apparently it gets updated every year, somehow. And apparently the one on the website was last year's.

Now, it seems to me that if you're going to make the form available online, you should update it as needed to keep EVERY SINGLE PERSON from having to fill it out twice. Or, if you're not going to update it, you should just take it off the website. I mean, it's not like it's January and they just haven't gotten around to changing it. It's August. At this point, why bother?

So I was irritated about that, because I'd spent ten cents and wasted two sheets of paper on a form that no one wanted.

Oh, but it got better.

I should mention here that there are some questions on the visa application form that it's not immediately clear how one should answer ("occupation", for example—the vast majority of assistants seem to be in the same position as me: no longer students, but not really anything else yet, either) and others that most people can't answer ("address in France", for example—we're not there yet, and the vast majority of assistants are not provided with housing and won't have a physical address in France for several weeks after arriving). Not wanting to screw anything up, I had found a page on one of the help websites for language assistants that spelled out how one should fill out the form to make things simple for everyone.

But Lesson #3 about French bureaucracy (right after "Everything moves slowly" and "Make copies of everything, not just to be safe, but because someone will want them") is "Do not expect consistency." From anyone. Ever.

The woman who called me up to her window in the visa office when it came to my appointment time was in a bad mood (or was just generally unpleasant, it's hard to tell sometimes) and I'd already overheard her being fairly curt with everyone she's dealt with previously. I handed over my passport and application form and she looked them over, then asked, "Are you returning to continue your work as a language assistant?"

And that's when I knew I was in trouble. The website I'd looked at had recommended writing "language assistant" under "occupation" and using our assigned school as "current employer" as well as "employer in France".

"... No, it's my first time as a language assistant."

"Well, then you've put down false information." She shoved my forms back under the window. "You' are not a language assistant until you've begun your contract. You need to cross all this out and put down your current employer."

I pondered that for a second or two. Leaving aside the fact that that sounds ridiculous (Have you ever had a job where someone said, "Okay, you're hired, but you're not allowed to say you have a job here until after your first day, even though everything's already official. Oh, and you especially can't say you work here on the forms that will allow you to come work here."? Because I haven't.), I didn't really have an alternate answer. Would my unpaid summer internship count as employment? Probably not, and even if it did, it was six hours away from the address I was already hoping not to have to prove was really my address (having already overheard someone else being told that the same parent's-driver's-license-and-a-utility-bill-in-their-name solution I'd been told to use was not actually valid), and I did not want to raise any eyebrows about that.

So I said, "I don't have one."

"Then you need to cross this out and write 'unemployed'."

Now THAT sounds like false information to me. Because I AM employed. My job just hasn't started yet because it's still summer.

So I did that and handed the forms back to her.

"And I see you've also put down false information here." She pointed to the "address in France" section, where I'd repeated the information for the school yet again. "I don't think you're going to be staying in a spare classroom."

She seemed to think she was funny, or my attempt to sneak past her was laughable, or something, but that one I could argue, and I did. "Actually, I AM going to have lodging at the school." She looked confused. "It's a boarding school; they have housing at the school and they've set aside a place for me."

"Well, then you need to put that address."

I gave the address for the ENTIRE SCHOOL. Even if that's not specifically the building where my room is, wherever I'm actually living is associated with that address and I can totally be reached there.

"That's the only address I've been given." I was starting to get frustrated with her at that point.

"Then you need to indicate that you don't know your specific address."

I'm pretty sure that by now she was just making shit up to keep me from being right about anything, because what could possibly be the point of that when it's a perfectly valid address and I've just explained the situation to her in person.

She accepted my form after that, and things went pretty smoothly from there. I had the other documents she asked for, which mercifully did not include proof of my American address, I filled out a new copy of the "outdated" immigration form, I was electronically fingerprinted and had my picture taken (so I was asked to procure and bring additional passport photos... why?), and I handed over the prepaid envelope in which my passport was to be returned to me when the visa was ready, and that was that. I was dismissed and left to hope that not being told otherwise meant I would, in fact, be receiving a visa. I remained mildly worried about the alternative until I was able to confirm a week later that the package had been delivered to my parents' house.

But now I have a visa. And a plane ticket.

I'm moving to France.

* As much as I don't understand missing your hard-to-get visa appointment without even bothering to cancel or reschedule it, that's nothing compared to the girl who didn't even have a visa application form and acted like she had no idea she needed one. I REALLY don't understand how that's possible—it's been in all the information we've received from the program, it was all over the appointment-scheduling website, and it and other visa requirements have been a major topic of online discussion all summer. I don't know how you can be oblivious to that many opportunities for you to become aware of something you need to do. Life must be exceptionally difficult for people like that.

I Like Counting. (AH AH AH.)

On Saturday, I am moving out of the apartment I've lived in for most of this summer. Saturday is also, if I remember correctly, the one-year anniversary of my departure for Ireland. I find myself missing Dublin lately (and Cork, and all of Ireland, but Dublin specifically for some reason), and it's crazy to think it's been almost exactly a year since those first three days I spent there alone. Nothing like diving right in to all that independence you experience as a young person living abroad...

It's also crazy that just one year later, I'm preparing to move abroad again. Which brings me back to my original point: My move to France at the end of September will be my seventh move in just over thirteen months. Granted, I've mostly been merely moving back and forth from my parents house to temporary locales, but to put it in perspective, I moved about the same number of times in the THREE YEARS before that, and it was always between home and school, with no additional places. So after the last year, I'm honestly almost as excited just to live in the same place for more than four months at a time as I am to live in Europe.

This will be the sixth time I've left the U.S. in my twenty-two years (assuming two days in Canada even counts), and the third time it's been for more than a short vacation. The second time in my life (and in a row, actually) I haven't been home for Thanksgiving, and the first for Christmas.

It will be the second time I've been to France (although the first time to Brittany), and that raises an issue I have managed not to give a lot of thought to until now. My first trip to France was in high school, the summer before my senior year, with some of my classmates on an ostensibly educational trip organized by my French teacher. My boyfriend at the time also went, having fought his parents tooth and nail to be allowed and worked his butt off to pay for part of it himself, and we had a fantastically romantic trip despite being in a group and under pretty constant supervision. I have a blurry photo of us kissing on an upper level of the Eiffel Tower (we kissed in front of my teacher!), with the lights of Paris spread out below and the rose he'd bought me minutes before in my hand. At the time, he and I had been together for about nine months, which was long enough, even at sixteen, for us to start to function more or less as a single social unit and to convince ourselves and everyone around us that we were going to finish growing up together and stay together through college and get married young and have beautiful babies.

To make a long story short, that didn't happen, but only after three more years and a truly devastating breakup. I know couples that have gotten divorced with less emotional bloodshed. That was almost two years ago now and I'm basically over it, but I have yet to return to a lot of places and do a lot of things that I associate with that relationship—including going back to France. And Brittany should be fine, but I wonder what it's going to be like to travel to places we did go together, if I'll be able to enjoy places like Nice and Tours where I have strong, wonderful memories about being young and in love with someone who's no longer in my life. I want to go back to the places I loved then, but I wonder if it's too soon to revisit them while I'm still so young and still very single.

But anyway. I suppose I can't cross that bridge until I come to it. In the meantime, this upcoming voyage is also the first time I've actually needed to go through the process of obtaining a visa, which will be the subject of my next post...

Mini-Update: Documents and Dilemmas

Things are progressing. The Great International Move of 2011 still feels very far away (in actuality, we're down to about two and a half months), but here are some developments:

* I have a visa appointment at the consulate in D.C. next month. I am already paranoid about being late, and it requires an absurd number of documents—not just the obvious things like my work papers and my passport, but also, for example, proof of address. Let's recall for a moment that I am a nomadic recent grad (as are many many many of my thousands of fellow teaching assistants, making this all the more absurd). My permanent address (which is not where I currently reside, complicating matters even further), and the one listed on my driver's license, is my parents' address (or one of them, as they are in the process of moving, but let's not even get into that difficulty right now). Is my driver's license valid proof of address? Nope. Is a bank statement or a tuition bill or SOMETHING among the very few things actually in my name that gets sent to that address? Nope. Voter registration card? Nope. My packet of paperwork FROM THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT was actually sent to a different address, but would it work even in theory? NOPE. Has to be a rent bill or a utility bill (from a very specific list of utilities, mind you). I do not even have those things in my name for the place I'm currently living, let alone my parents' house. A quick search of the TAPIF forums revealed a convoluted solution: take proof of address in a parent's name, plus a copy of their driver's license to prove who they are, plus a copy of my birth certificate to prove they're my parent. All of this... and when I go to the appointment they might not even ask for proof of my address at all. The bureaucracy nightmare is already well underway and I'm not even in France yet. And let's not even talk about how I [might] need to be able to prove where I live solely so that they can give me a piece of paper whose entire reason for existing is to allow me to move somewhere else.

* Speaking of the moving somewhere else, I have also been in touch with both the head English teacher at the school where I've been assigned and the girl who had this assistant position last year, and among other things have learned that *dun dun dun* my school does provide housing for me! Remember how I mentioned that that was less likely because of the urban location? I subsequently discovered that it's a boarding school and got slightly optimistic again—apparently with good cause. There are still some significant cons: It's a single tiny room, a fifth-floor walk-up, and shares a "prison-like" (according to the former assistant, who didn't actually live there and encouraged me not to, either...) shower and toilet with three other rooms. While it has, at least, a stove and possibly a microwave, no one has mentioned a refrigerator, which I'm not sure I can realistically live without for a whole school year, and while I could theoretically buy a mini-fridge, there's still the issue of getting it up six flights of stairs. I would also be at a distinct disadvantage in meeting/interacting with other people due to the lack of French flatmates (or any flatmates, for that matter). But... 0% of my salary would be going towards rent, effectively eliminating financial restrictions on my weekend/vacation activities. So I'm torn. I'd be stupid not to give it a shot, but I'm afraid once I get there it will seem stupid to live there for seven or eight months when there are better options, albeit not free ones. I guess I'll just have to see.