C'est Nice

I was down in the Cours Saleya the other day, doin' my thing. Actually I was doing penance: when I'd gone to pick up the suitcase I'd left at the Lycée Masséna with Jean-Jacques, I'd knocked over and broken a little vase that was sitting on a nearby table with the suitcase. I know, I know, I'm an idiot. I know! Anyway... so I felt real bad about doing it, and had been thinking vaguely about getting him a new vase. Then I got back to Lycée Parc Imperial and realized that I'd left a bag of stuff back at Masséna. Ergo: the new vase went from polite gesture to mandatory for retrieval of items being held hostage. Right, well, it's not quite so bad, but you get it. Anyway, so I was down in Vieux Nice having just dropped off the new vase when I came across a cute lil' dog by the name of Ulysse (pronounced You-Lease) who Suzanne, Meaghan and I had met earlier this summer. He belongs to one of the people who sell stuff in the Brocantes market on Mondays. I took a picture of him, which he wasn't thilled about. Here he's barking his head off at me, and didn't stop until I was out of sight.
The real question is, does Ulysse know how that beard looks? Do you think he's developed a complex around it? I certainly hope so.

Anyway, this week has been fairly busy. I managed to get my bank documents in under the wire, in the hopeful anticipation of my salary. We're supposed to get an advance for the month of October, about 70% of what we're really paid, but who knows. One of the things you have to love about the French are sentences like: "Nobody ever gets the advance, but if all your paperwork is processed, you might get it." What? That was courtesy of the secretariat of the school, who's actually a very nice and rather funny woman who seems to have a fairly good command of English, although insists on talking to us in French, except for a few nuggets of English. Last week, while we were waiting for the keys to show up for Annapaola and Hector's rooms, I asked her if they have the saying "Qui sait?" And she said "Oui, who knows?" Then she took a well-timed pause, and followed it up with "God." Okay, so maybe that's not that funny, but I sort of thought it was hilarious. Oh, it's a wonder why I'm single.

Anyway, yes, Tuesday and Wednesday, we had a Stage de Formation or training course. I don't want to say it was a colossal waste of time, because that's not nice, but it was a colossal waste of time. We had more classic French sentences like: "Everyone's teacher will tell them exactly what they should do in each class. You should not need to prepare anything. This, of course, never happens, and many of you will just be thwon alone into a classroom." It just warms the cockles of your heart, don't it? Okay, I just went to double check that cockles isn't some word that I Freudianly made up, and it turns out that not only have I used it correctly, but cockles are the family Cardiidae of bivalve mollusks. So, there's something you didn't know before. Unless you did, in which case you are a marine biologist.

Then, yesterday, I had my first day of real classes. It went pretty fine. It's funny: I don't quite have all the different levels of advancedness worked out in terms of which students are supposed to be better than others, but at the moment, the best students I have are young'uns. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. Anyway, for the classes I played them songs and had them write down teh lyrics. We listened to "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong and "Natural Woman" by Aretha Franklin... I thought some nice, enunciating American classics would do them some good. They seemed to respond to it well enough. I was worried that all the boys would rebel on the chorus of "Natural Woman," but the funniest thing to them was the line from "What a Wonderful World:" "I see friends shaking hands/Saying how do you do/They're really saying/I love you." Of course, when I had them read the lines back to me they said "Zey're really sayeeng, I luz you." Oh, they're all just so French!

Today was day two of real classes. It being October and all, I had them read a part of David Sedaris' essay "Us and Them," part of which deals with an errant family attempting to trick-or-treat on Nov. 1st. Crazy mofos. Anyway, I think it was a bit over their heads... I hate to say that aiming low looks like the best strategy at this moment, but I think it's true. *sigh*. We'll see. I'm hoping to be able to show some Lost at some point, but that too might be a bit too ambitious.

Well, I think that basically takes care of things for the moment. I've started checking in on a French television show called Star Academy, a kind of cross between what I imagine American Idol to be (I pride myself on not having watched an entire show) and the Real World; you've got all these performers living in a house together. It's supposed to be insanely popular here, and it's on every night, with Friday night being the big night of voting and what not. I may peek in, you know, if only to keep in touch with what my students are watching.

And that takes care of it for me. I'll see you all 'round the way, hopefully.

Mot à tes mères.