Bad Romance and Post-Feminist Thought 101

My cousin, upon seeing Lady Gaga's weirdo Bad Romance video with all its futuristic sci-fi latex: "There are probably students at Bryn Mawr writing papers about this right now."

Ice Breaker

Me to a new student: Hi, there, I'm Blythe.
Student: Me, too.
Me: No, you're not! That's my name. It's not an adjective that means pleased to meet you!

The Next Level in 21st Century Dating

"I feel like I'm in so much more of a legitimate relationship, now that we've made friends on a social networking site."

Planet of the Absurd

"...So at the RATP (Parisian Transportation Authority), each department gets an end of the year bonus. Like people who work on weekends get one, people who work evenings, people who did extra hours, people who were injured on the job, etc. There's even a bonus for people who don't get bonuses."

Life, Love and Linguistics

L'amour est comme le 'e instable' en phonétique française-- parfois il est là mais non-prononcé, parfois il n'est pas là et c'est juste une erreur de pronunciation...

Iguana Alerts, Non-Violent Neighbors and Unpronounced 'H's

Some recent quotes:

A friend in Fort Lauderdale on the cold in Florida: "hibernating iguanas have been falling from the trees; the news said to watch out for falling iguanas."

My neighbors when the lights were out on EVERY floor in my building and I ran into them in the dark coming home at 2 am Sunday morning : "Don't worry, Madame, we're not going to attack you."

At a dinner party:
Me, reacting to hearing an anecdote: "What, another story about you in your underwear!?"

On discovering the joys of agriculture: "Woofing-- you know, that program 'Working On Organic Farms...'"

On English sentence structure (or um, the French advantage):

Me: So, in English we use compound nouns which often make English sentences shorter than French ones. Remember when I checked your translation? Everything is longer in French.
Male student (flirtatiously) : Why, thank you.
Me: I meant sentence length.

After a recent theater date:
Me, to my French cavalier: "I swear, I had no idea there would be so many naked men in this play..." I think he was traumatised, haven't heard from him since...

At the Irish dance lesson:
French announcer explaining a new step: "This is called 'i-gate.' For those of you who've studied English, it's spelled with an 'h'."
Me, to my adorable French partner: "yes, and you have to specify that because it's not like anyone in France would actually pronounce the 'h'..."

Smile, C'est La Revolution!

The Disillusioned Suburban Youth who usually drink, smoke and sexually harass women in one of my neighborhood metro stations (obviously, the sleazier one) had a new one for me today with was oddly sincere, charming and made me smile even bigger:

"You look happy, Madame, what happened in your life today?"

Normally, no one smiles in Parisian public transport. It's kind of against the Parisian code of life as we know it. I think I've never smiled in the metro ever before for this very reason.

Instead, you have to put on your "metro face" which is stony and expressionless yet also hints at deep overwheming depression and untold suffering induced by being forced to share space with your idiot fellow commuters and the bumbling RATP bureaucracy (the French transportation authority) that morning. Your general attitude should say something like, no one has ever experienced such soul crushing existential merde as I have this morning. It also helps if you sigh dramatically (the ever eloquent French "pfft" sound) and roll your eyes a lot.

I was glad that the local neighborhood thugs, in their devotion to rejecting the dominant paradigm, appreciated the deviant social behaviour which is a rebelliously irrepressible smile in the Paris metro.

Becoming Parisian, It's Easy...?

I had a drink with an American friend who loves to make these great vlogs (video blogs) and recently did one about the top 10 reasons that she'll never be Parisian and the top 10 ways in which she HAS become Parisian.

It's very Anglophone to have lists like these. My Dutch and Italian friends, for example, are UNABLE to name their top 5 breakup songs of all-time, if you can imagine. It is no coincidence that the author of High Fidelity (featuring about 5 million lists of this kind) is British.

Among the reasons in favor of Parisianess was that she now uses non-verbal communication. I must confess that I do, too. To express disdain, frustration or annoyance, the French (and some expats, too) just sigh dramatically. They huff and puff in annoyance. This sigh is even transcribed verbally in books, text messages and IM chats as "Pfft."

I've also noticed that when I visit my family in the American university town where they live, I am horrified on a daily basis by American college students who wear baggy sweatshirts, sweatpants and running shoes on a daily basis. To me, it looks like they're wearing their pajamas. In Europe, people only wear sweatpants when they're exercising. Which they don't do in public, but only in small, overpriced gyms or city parks.

For me, I think one of my most French habits, besides sighing and a physical aversion to baggy sweatsuits, is the use of terrible sentence structure in English. In French, you often introduce a noun or idea and then subsequently make a comment on it using the pronoun "it" with an understood antecedent. For example, "the snow, it's pretty." This is pure French ("la neige, c'est beau."). Obviously, in English, we would say, "the snow is pretty," as normal sentence structure is subject, verb, object.

Or as the French would phrase it: normal sentence structure, it's subject, verb, object.

But normal, what is it?

The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Czech Proverb

"Learn a new language and get a new soul."

Flirting Through Firewalls

Once women waited for men to call. Now we look for each other on Facebook or wait for them to email (or respond to an email) and worry that their spam filter-- or ours-- might prevent the beginning of a beautiful friendship...

As the Bangles asked in the 1980s, "is this burning an eternal... firewall?"

Our Father Who Art in English Class

I have a new student whose last name is God. No kidding, I'm teaching God English.

As you might expect, his level is quite good. God is from another country (God's country) and in his native language, his last name refers to a little black snake that brings good luck. If you see one, something good will happen.

This is why I enjoy teaching-- for the cultural exchange, what I learn from the students and exposure to different perspectives. Depending on the country, one small word can mean either 'basis of world religion' or 'good luck snake!' And both are culturally important, just in different contexts.

Running Down a Dream

Feeling like it's time to go back to an old source for some new goals. I loved running when I lived in California and did a few half marathons, one of which was a highlight of my short (hey, everything's relative) life. It's unfortunately not so easy to run in Paris, so I've lost the habit-- you either have to do it at the crack of dawn so that you don't end up trapped in the pedestrian throng or take the metro to various jogger-friendly parks. If you run on the streets in the evening, you get incredulous and bemused stares. Exercising in public is generally alien behavior in the French metrop.

However, too bad, because I'm looking for some new inspiration for an old habit that I once adored and I'm willing to take the metro to Parc Monceau 3+ times a week which is conveniently a 1 km loop.

Thinking a springtime half marathon is in order and this one caught my fancy, mainly because it is in one of the most beautiful towns I have ever visited: http://www.marathon-annecy.com/

Running 13.1 miles (or 20.1 km) is in many ways an easier goal to meet that my other big one for 2010 which is to find a better job. This one depends a lot on the whims of others, while half marathon training depends more on my own whims...

And the Cesar Goes To...

Paris, France can boast many titles-- city of light, centre of culture, home of great wine, cheese, museums, artists, some musicians.

Here's a new one: the highest concentration of unhappy people, possibly in the world. France has the highest rate of anti-depressant consumption in all of Europe and most of the French population lives in Paris.

It doesn't seem to be helping.

As Tolstoy once said (ha, try to work that into everyday conversation!), all happy families are boring. Unhappy ones are interesting, since there are so many ways to be unhappy. I don't agree that being depressed makes you especially deep or complex, let alone intriguing. It seems like it mainly just makes you rude in the metro.

The End of the Affair

A disillusioned ex-pat friend of mine told me that she sees Paris as a beautiful glamourous ice princess like Catherine Deneuve or Carole Lombard with a blond chignon, big dark sunglasses, expensive jewelery, a trenchcoat and heels, who you're initially fascinated and seduced by and then when you get to know her, you realise there's nothing inside.

A little extreme, maybe. I'm sometimes (ok, often) disappointed in my Paris experience, too, but I also think that there are some very positive points about Paris-- the shallow ice queen probably still goes to amazing museum exhibits and the comedie francaise, takes classes at the louvre and has become more or less bilingual-- even if just seems to serve to show her how she will never feel truly at home in French culture because it's too different from the Anglophone world, this is still an important realisation.

Living in 2 languages-- or more like one and a half, since I spend most of my time teaching English and much less time socialising in French, we all end up collecting lots of little vocab/cultural differences. For example, when my expat friend mentioned that Paris seduced her, it makes me think that in French, you can use the verb seduire in a very casual way to mean something you like or something that impresses you. Like an effective tv commercial can seduce you. Or a cute baby can seduce everyone (I know, it sounds weird and incestuous). Or a student can seduce the jury. One of my students once told me this in English and I told him, no if you say you have to seduce the jury, it sounds like you will compliment the jury, bring them flowers, invite them to dinner and then take them back to your place. We generally are less figurative about seduction in English.

Paris still impresses, I guess in that sense I'm seduced, but not completely convinced or conquored, as they say in French. I don't always like her, but I'm not at the point where I'm about to move away. However, at the same time, there are probably other cities that would suit me better.

Living abroad makes an ordinarily introspective person about 10 times more so. To some extent this is probably good for you. Taken to an extreme, it's probably a waste of energy. I'm still trying to find a balance.

I imagine a more down to earth and friendlier city like Montreal would wear a ratty old ski jacket because what's important is that it keeps her warm not how she looks in it and she'd laugh loudly and smile a lot and maybe have messy hair instead of a perfect platinum knot a la Catherine Deneuve. But then again, I also don't really know what seduire means in Canadian French. Life might not necessarily be easier to negotiate there.

"La prochaine fois, je prendrai le bus."-- Grand Corps Malade

Like everyone who lives here, I sometimes find this city spectacular and I sometimes find it unlivable (sp? I only created that word after saying "invivable" in French...) Lately, I've been oscillating between the 2 extremes, as usual, but ultimately this week, I ended up leaning more towards the unlivable side of the spectrum. I still have a hard time dealing with how inconsiderate most people are in public. There's an agressivity that you see here-- especially in the metro during rush hour-- that I sometimes find truly upsetting.

A recent torturous metro commute:

A man pushed his way onto the crowded metro during rush hour, we're talking human bulldozer. After he shoved me, I said, 'I'm sorry, monsieur, there isn't any room, please don't push us.' He replied, 'yes, there is room. If I push, it's so I can stand at the back of the car to leave room for other people. You should think of other people, madame, you're not the only one on the metro.'

Incredible, eh? I'm selfish because he pushed me. Perhaps he expects the nobel peace prize for pushing people on the metro for the greater good of humanity, for the hypothetical comfort of future passengers, a small sacrifice for the selfishly non-pushy passengers actually on the train.

Honestly, only in a Parisian's twisted and self-absorbed world view would this make *me* the rude one.

Semantics

I realised today that I'd completely misunderstood the lyrics to this one song I like (an electronica bossa nova rap called Dans La Merco Benz by Bemjamin Biolay). Instead of professing his love, the singer actually says he doesn't feel it anymore.

"Mon amour est lasse," not "mon amoureuse."

Funny how these can sound similar.

Blog posting?

Who has time for that?

I've been working a lot lately. Honestly looking forward to forced vacation over the holidays (which I thought I would dread). That would be when all my students take their vacations, thus forcing me to do the same, as I will have no one in Paris to teach English to. The week of Dec. 21 should be relatively quiet. But it's crazy busy until then.

Ultimately, I'm happier working more hours but with interested, motivated adult students in Paris then fewer hours with bratty, unmotivated ones in the suburbs. But it's tiring, allright. I often need a lot of quiet time in the evening since it's draining being dynamic for a living. Especially if you do it for 32 hours a week, like I will next week. Yikes. I recently moved to a new apartment which I love and this has been a great place to come home to and cocoon after a long day of being winsome, patient, interesting, engaged and capable of explaining English verb tenses.

Today I had some cancellations (free time during the week for the first time in ages) and how did I spend it? Doing errands and French administrative tasks, of course. Things like updating my carte vitale, laundry, updating my address at the bank, scheduling future classes with my students. I guess stuff that regular people do on weekends. I, however, work on Saturdays. While Sunday is my day of rest, nothing is open then and I am therefore always one step behind the French administration. Not that they really advance that much, though, so it's usually easy to catch up.

Boxes make me nauseous

I'm moving again. But this time I'm being an adult about it. Meaning that I hired a mover with a van. He calls it the Man Van, or the Camionnette de l'homme. Packing things in boxes to take in the van instead of suitcases to take in the metro. Which I guess shows that my station of life has slightly improved since my last metro/taxi moves. Although I did have an actual boyfriend who helped for one of the past moves. But then again, he had a bicycle, not a man van.

All that stands between my nice apartment with a balcony with a view of Sacre Coeur and me is: 6 flights of stairs, a giant suitcase, 12 boxes, 3 pieces of furniture and a cross town drive.

Ils twitent, donc ils sont

Doesn't Twitter sound like the most boring thing imaginable? I don't think I could ever really care about it. I think it's for the same people who feverishly update their facebook status from their cell phones. Because they just have to tell everyone when they're eating a bagel and are so caught up in the urgent nature of this breaking news that they can't wait for the old computer to crank up. I mean, that takes like 30 whole seconds and by then they might be done with their bagel and doing something else. Like drinking orange juice. Oops, time for a new update.

Even this post about Twitter is boring. And while Twitter is also boring, this post unfortunately is not, therefore a Twitter update. It somehow escapes this syllogismic logic because it's not appopriate Twitter length as it's over 140 characters, making it too long for our short attention span self-obsession. And uses complete sentences.

Twitter might, however, be useful for ESL lessons working on use of the present continuous, though. Perhaps this will change the way we teach English verb tenses abroad.

Although if Parisians twitted, they'd probably stay away from hyperactive Anglo-Saxon "I'm making coffee, and reading the paper, painting the house and investing in the stock market" twits and might find this a very foreign concept. They'd probably tend to write things more like, "I hate all of my fellow metro commuters." Or "bof" or if feeling more eloquent, their unique brand of incomprehensible philosophy like "modality is at once a concept and a theory." Ultimately, though, perhaps they'd try to put into words the most eloquent of French sentiments, "Pfft."

Getting the Message Across-- in Innovative and Delicious Ways!

What's the most effective way to send out a national message about breast cancer awareness? Advertising in the metro? Articles in the paper? TV spots? Organize fundraising events? Print up t-shirts?

Mais, non.

Ask all the bakeries to print it on their baguette wrappers.

This week, the bakeries in about half of the districts in Paris all wrapped their baguettes in paper containing a breast cancer awareness message informing women over the age of 50 that they needed breast exams every 2 years. Even more bakeries will participate in the older woman breast cancer awarness campaign next year.

France is serious not only about its baguette consumption, but also about the health and well-being of older women's breasts.

See the link below if you read French and don't believe me:

http://www.paris.fr/portail/accueil/Portal.lut?page_id=1&document_type_id=2&document_id=74545&portlet_id=21961