Mars and Venus On a Date at FNAC

So on a friend's recommendation, and because it'll be funny and naff to discuss and because I'm curious if the advice in it will seem very culturally specific (i.e., American) or not, I picked up Mars and Venus On a Date. Yes, Venus and Mars of the the inter-planetary relationship counselling franchise. I counted no less than 8 Venus and Mars books on the shelves, some with vomit-inducing titles like, Venus and Mars in Harmony Forever, and Venus and Mars in Love 365 Days of the Year.

I clearly plan to read this book ironically. Ahem, obviously. Not that the state of my love life is such that advice wouldn't perhaps be useful... And to minimise the trash factor, I got it in French so I can try to convince myself that it's somewhat of an intellectual exercise during my non-French speaking vacation and not just the gender stereotyping fluff that it clearly would be in my native language (and the original language it was written in).

I might be the only person who enjoys reading anglophone books in translation because I think it's so interesting what translators decide they have to explain to a foreign audience. And do they keep to the original and explain it, or use a cultural equivalent? Like in the French version of the American TV show Veronica Mars set in Southern California, they made the poor kids from the Valley from St. Denis (a Paris suburb with a bad reputation). I love cultural footnotes in books, like in Bridget Jones' Diary, they footnoted Pride and Prejudice and explained that it was a famous Anglophone literary classic, that Jane Austin was a writer known for her social commentary, especially about the role of women in society and gave a brief plot summary. Isn't it intersting to imagine people reading that book who have NO idea who Mr. Darcy is? I mean, not that it's super deep or anything, but knowing who Mr. Darcy is does add a little layer to our girlfriend Bridget, don't you think?

I also figure if I ever apply any of the advice in the book, I'll probably do it in French, so might as well start with the French version, non? And when I handed in my attendance sheets for the last time ever at work, returned my key to the school and filed away all my course programmes and class notes, I happened to be near a bookstore.

A friend of mine swore by Men Are From Mars and I read bits of it, but as I'm not married, I didn't really relate. I think those kinds of books can be helpful because at best, they make you think about communication in a relationship and that different people have different ways of expressing what's important to them. At their worst, of course, those kinds of books become reductive gender stereotyping. So we'll see how Venus and Mars do on the Parisian dating scene.

When I went to pay for my relationship self-help book, I noticed that the guy in front of me was buying, of all things, Relationships For Dummies (Relations Amoureuses Pour Les Nuls). Seeing that this was clearly fate, or at least a pick up line made in heaven (and as a foreigner I have the priviliged positionof being able to start conversations with strangers and it's charming, rather than slutty or weird, as it probably would be for a French woman here), I hesitated and carefully evaluated how attractive this man was and if I wanted to use this golden opportunity or not.

I ultimately decided not to pursue this one, (would that seem really lonely and desperate? Just how good a pick up line is it really? "I see we're both single and looking for a relationship" is not exactly a huge thing to have in common, is it? Or is it? And what if he were in fact happily married and just buying the book as a present for someone else? That would be really embarassing...) and save my ace for a different card game. Although I'm waiting to see what Venus and Mars would have done...

Life, Love and Video Games

So I never play video games but I often think of them as metaphors. How pretentious, right?

Living abroad is like a video game (ok, I think of them as similes not metaphors, excuse me), an elegant intellectual one with good high-res graphics and many nuanced shades of grey (Paris is a very grey city) in that through trial and error you have to learn the right thing to do in different situations, the right words to use in a particular context or the right reaction to have and then this enables you to advance to the next level.

I have no idea how many levels there are total. Or what my all-time score is so far.

Welcome to the next level. Bienvenu au niveau suivant!

Self-Help Starts With... AAA? Or: Why Support Groups Are Inherently American

Student: "In America, you have AAA (pronouncing each A individually)?"

Me, fairly surprised: "Um, we call it triple A and it's a type of car insurance. Why?"

Student: "No, you know that group to help alcoholics. You always see it on TV. My name is... I lost my job and my house, ha ha ha!" (This was real laughter and mockery).

Me: It's called AA, it stands for Alcoholics Anonymous. You have it in France, too. There isn't a similar French group?"

Apparently, support groups are for whiny little girls. Or Americans, in the French mind.

Maybe I'm over-reacting to an arrogant corporate student, one who works in a oncology pharmaceutical, no less, but it made me think a little about national attitudes towards support (financial and emotional) and self-improvement, in general.

While the average French citizen/resident can count on government support financially through social programs like national healthcare (which I love) or unemployment (which I guess is generous but everyone I know who ever needed it had too many bureaucratic problems to get any actual money from the government ever), I don't think there's much public support for the old morale, no smiley "will that be all, is there anything else I can help you with today?" efficient bureaucracy or customer service. The French bureaucracy is generally acknowledged by the French and foreigners alike as heartless and as inconvenient as humanly possible. Prefecture officers are reguarly indifferent when they reduce my American friends to tears and no one I know has ever succeeded in talking their way out of a metro fine if caught without a ticket.

Systems aren't helpful, let alone user-friendly. The French fonctionnaire mentality, endorsed by civil servants everywhere, can often seem like "go sort it out yourself and stop bothering me." Outside of the realm of civil servants, it's still not always that easy to negotiate. Customer service, or what anglophones consider customer service, anyway, is non-existant here, unless you're a millionaire who shops at Prada. And you'd probably have to be a regular there to get good service. Anyway, these are some of the stereotypical run of the mill anglophone complaints about the hexagon and I must confess that even after living here 5 years, these particular issues do still get my goat, or chevre. But it's part of life as we know it and well, chevre is pretty good cheese, so that takes the edge off a little.

In terms of personal/emotional support, I recently noticed that in general people tend to pair off very early in France, like in their early 20s, which is a lot earlier than in the US or the UK. (The result this has on the 30-year old French man when, surprise, this relationship doesn't work out and the ensuing dating frustrations that this causes for women in their 30s is a blog post for another day). I'm convinced that this early coupledom has to do with how difficult the administration is, the 'sort it out yourself' attitude and how much you have to fight to get people to do things they should do anyway. Like what, you might be wondering? Recent struggles of mine include making my company pay my salary on time (yes, late pay checks are a regular occurance) and one still in progress: making my landlord fix the collapsed floor board in my apartment. This will easily take at least 4 months.

Other support that you can count on here besides your 21-year old husband, is the rest of your family. As a foreigner whose family is far far away, it seems like the French are highly family-oriented, or in other words, obsessed with their families and physically cannot go more than like 2 weeks without seeing the clan gaulois. A regular French reaction I get when I say I'm an only child is, "how can you break your parents' hearts like this and live so far away from them?"

So even if the administration is a cauchemar and a half, the family and your underage partner can help you in times of crisis. Just about everyone I know in Paris has moments of severe depression. France has the highest rate of anti-depressant consumption in Europe, which doesn't necessarily mean that they're the most depressed, just that they like taking meds the most. Honestly, I had a cold once and my doctor wrote me like 5 prescriptions for it. But medication aside, the French mistrust happiness, I think, and complaining and being digusted and existentially miserable show you're a sensitive intellectual soul. Blame Sartre for that one. The weather in Paris in the summer and the winter is also terrible with constant cloud cover which doesn't help. I almost took a job in Norway awhile ago and I honestly thought that the arctic winter probably wouldn't be that different from the sun-less French winter. But I think if depression really becomes a problem, most people here just take pills or call their aunts (I probably would as well, to be honest), rather than join a support group. The only support groups I've ever seen advertised here were in the English language paper.

The main reason support groups would NEVER catch on here is that the French don't often publically admit that they have problems or don't know things or need self-improvement in any way. Lest you think I'm being too harsh, consider this: self-deprecating humor, typical of the US and the UK, doesn't exist in France. The French would NEVER poke fun at themselves and they find it highly weird that we do. They often take it quite seriously and don't realise that it's a joke. Honestly, some French person I once met told me that he was shocked when he went to the US because Americans didn't know basic geography. He said when he told someone he met there that he was from France they answered, "I couldn't even locate France on a map, ha ha!" I had to explain that this was called self-deprecating humor and that is really means "I don't think I'm very worldly and am exaggerating and making a joke about it" and not "I have no idea if France is really in Western Europe."

There are, of course, exceptions, I have a couple French friends who DO make fun of themselves, but they admit that it's not typical French humor at all. French humor usually mocks OTHER people and I find it quite cutting sometimes. And it's not just me. The number one word that my friends used to characterise French humor when I first moved here and asked them questions like that was absoutely cassant or cutting.

So, this really is not a country where the national mindset seems that conducive to support groups, or admitting in public that you have a problem that you can't solve and need help with. Americans (maybe I just speak for myself here...) are all about trying to improve themselves, I mean this is the land where self-help is an industry, and a lucrative one, at that. I too consider all the self-help rhetoric in the US a little too Oprah for my taste, but at the same time, while I wouldn't hire a life coach or buy self-help tapes, I do set personal goals for myself, like running the Paris half-marathon, doing 15 minutes of Spanish a day, etc. becuase I feel like these will ultimately make me better in some way, like more fit and proficient in the most useful foreign language in the US and I find this motivating.

Strangely enough, the one time that I ever got a French recommendation for a support group, or a phone support hotline, at least, was an extremely strange (and, I thought, very funny) situation. Before I started my second year of university teaching, a colleague sent out an email directed to new foreign staff. He told us that he realised that being far from home could be stressful and lead to disappointment, frustration and anxiety. And he wanted to remind us that we weren't alone. How did this caring man show his humanity? Did he mean that he would be there to help us delicate fragile etrangers? No, of course not. He showed he cared by passing on the number of an English language suicide hotline. Ok, maybe it wasn't technically a suicide hotline, but it was called SOS Depression or SOS Loneliness or something. (If I were a real blogger, I would link to a previous post from a few years ago that reproduced the text of this famous email). At the time, I thought it was pretty funny and that the university was more or less outsourcing support and compassion. I mean, this guy or the uni could have implemented a buddy system/systeme de parrainage or organised an event for the foreign staff to help us integrate better or a number of other things. Now I think it really was meant to be thoughtful and it was actually quite considerate to acknolwedge a problem that had occured in the past, that the university can be a tough place to work when you're starting out in a new land and provide a resource to help. Especially in the world of "demerde-toi" (kind of a crass way to say, sort it out yourself).

Interestingly, I've long been frustrated that there isn't a direct translation of the adjective supportive in French. You litterally can't describe someone this way in this language. (You have to use the verb 'instead, i.e, you can say, he supported me during a tough time', or the noun, 'he gave me a lot of support', but you can't say he was supportive). I guess philisophically, in French, support can't a personality attribute like it is in English. Not that this proves that the French or the English are any more or less supportive, but can probably make a case that different cultures probably envision help and support somewhat differently and public group support, for example, seems typically American. An example of a different kind of helpful: something that has happened to me a few times is that if I go to the grocery store when it's raining and put my umbrella down on the floor while I bag, pay, generally have my hands full of stuff, someone will often tell me that my umbrella's on the ground. This really irked me this first time it happened, I know where it is, I put it there, I only have 2 hands and it sounds a little like a criticism. But I think it's honestly meant to be helpful and to mean, don't forget your brolly, which is how an Anglophone would say it.

So all that to say demerdez-vous, French alcoholics. But you probably don't really have a problem. Unless you're a foreigner.

Fame! I Wanna Teach Forever...

My professional goal is to be like the professors on Un, dos, tres (1990s Spanish version of Fame). They're all fantastically attractive, talented, dynamic, tough, devoted to their students and in turn beloved by them. They're all also unquestionably buenos profesores, without ever really bothering to show much of the content of their classes. Maybe that's the part that I like so much. Most of the classroom footage just involves the professor dismissing the class or if we catch a class in action, the prof is invaribly watching their students/stars of tomorrow dance.

Vague undefined course content and curriculums abound in public French universities, too. Although hopefully not in my classes.

My guilty pleasure (péché mignon, in French) is that I quite enjoy the 1990s Spanish version of Fame. I don't watch it very often but it's all over my free (and download/streaming-less) source of trash TV (M6replay) right now and I like the drama among the teachers, since I can relate to them more than to the students. I watched an episode yesterday and I found myself really sincerely thinking things like, I hope Adela ends up with Cristobel. They also have fun Spanish names like Adela and Cristobel, which helps.

In terms of actual pedagogy of the performing arts, though, I have to admit that classes on the show are not only vague on course content, they're really just excuses for professionally choreographed dance routines or inappropriate manifestations of personal conflict.

Nice Day For A... YouTube Comment

I think this probably shows me to be the biggest loser, since quoting these is way worse than writing them in the first place, but various You Tube comments that I read tonight included:

"I love this so much, I'm licking the screen right now." About the REM Out of Time album, no less.

And:

"Bill Idol gets laid every day."

(For the latter: would you ever have imagined reading that sentence, even if a computer program existed just to create random subjet, verb, object, and adverbial time phrase combinations? Plenty of unusual musings come readily to mind, but I honestly never thought about how often Billy Idol, um, rebel yells... Especially in 2011).

Most Frequently Discussed Topics, A Field Study

In my job of being an English Teacher Slave to the French ruling classes (meaning I teach Business English to French Business Professionals on their company dollar. Or Euro, as the case may be), I feel I do a lot of ethnographic fieldwork about the Busy French Executive. To share some of their joys and sorrows, here are the most frequently discussed topics by my students in my classes during free conversation breaks.

1. Vacation (ha, no surprise there, right?) :
-My Next Holiday
-My Last Holiday
-My Next Long Weekend (because no, just one day doesn't count as a real vacation).
-Where I'm Thinking of Going On Vacation but I Haven't Decided Yet.
-Where Other People I Know Went On Vacation and Had Either a Very Good or a Very Bad Time.

2. Work
-My Boss is Crazy
-My Last Boss Was Crazy
-The Last Time I Had To Yell At My Boss/Coworker Because He/She Was Being Unreasonable
-I Hate My Officemate
-I Hate Open Plan Offices
-I Hate Talking On The Phone In English
-I Have SO Much Work
-I Don't Want To Talk About Work (Although This Is Business English Training That My Company Is Paying For)
-I Don't Have Time For This Class, Can We Postpone It Although It's Supposed To Start in 2 Minutes? (You're not trying to make a living or anything, are you?!)

3. Family
-My New Baby Is Cute
-Teenagers Are Hard to Raise
-My Next Big Family Gathering (usually a baptism. These are still a huge deal, even in ex- Catholic athiest France. Although no one goes to church, we still celebrate every Catholic holiday known to man. And God. No kidding, things like Assumption and Ascension are days off when even grocery stores close).
-What My Children Are Learning In English In School Now. (Sometimes they even bring me their kids' homework and ask for help!)

4. Hobbies
I Enjoy:
-Gardening
-Home Improvement (constant kitchen and bathroom remodeling)
-Aquagym
-Sailing
-Having Barbecues
-Impossibly Cheap Luxury Trips with the CE (comittee d'entreprise).

Now That's Entertainment. Depending On How We Define Entertainment

So a French friend and I indulged in a typically French annual ritualistic passtime recently: looking up the questions that were on that year's bac (national exam to leave high school) and trying to answer them. I'm not kidding, the French love to do this and discuss these topics for fun and then look at the Official Answer (because there is, of course, one right answer). Every year, at least 1 French person has done this with me around national exam time and the questions are published in the newspaper. If I remember right, one year the philisophy exam question (this is generally regarded as the most intellectual question that requires the most cleverness to answer) was "why do people work?" This one made even more headlines than the bac philo question usually does.

The questions were (to me, anyway) typically French: abstract, general and philosophical. This gives you a little insight into how the French are taught to think in school, which is endlessly fascinating because it's really different from how Brits and Americans are taught to think. The French academic goal is analysis for analysis' sake: to demonstrate capacity for analysis by giving reasons in favor and in opposition to the question and maybe at the end suggest a possible compromise (general structure: "yes, no, maybe"). The anglophone academic goal is to persuade: choose a position, develop an argument and provide concrete examples supporting your position (for example, "yes, for these three reasons").

To be anglophone and example-driven, here are some concrete examples from this year's exam so you can see just how general, abstract and philisophical they are:

Can a theory be proven?
Does liberty threaten equality?

I think this explains a lot about why anglophone and francophone logic is so different. Put a question about that on next year's bac!

Kiss My First Conditional

Student: If I get a raise, I'll make a case to HR.

Me: Make a case means to argue in favor of something. If you get a raise, you should thank HR, not argue with them!

Student (to general student hilarity, titters and giggles): No, make this, mwah on the lips.

Me: Ah, the verb is to kiss.

Student chain sentences with the first conditional then went like this:

If I get a raise, I'll kiss HR.
If I kiss HR, I'll get fired.
If I get fired, my girlfriend in HR will help me find a new job!

At least they learned the grammar point.

Hey, Teacher, Leave Those Kids Alone!

I cannot express how excited I am to go back to university teaching (as opposed to teaching adult professionals as I do now). Late nights of course prep and grading, paid vacations, students who delight you and also make you roll your eyes so hard you think you might hurt yourself. It's worth it, though, to have something semi-intellectual and creative to do with your time. So far, this latest university teaching experience, a new adventure for 2011-12, has been very positive.

I'm Writing To Apply For the Position Of...

I'm pleased to report that Job Hunt 2011-12 is offically OVER and (even better!) that I have a good full-time (yay!!) university position in Paris starting this September! I'm 100% relieved to no longer have to attend job interviews, send out resumes and wait breathlessly for job decisions. The wait is really the worst and I had butterflies in my stomach every morning when I cranked up the old computer to check the old email to see if there were any decisions in my inbox. And I'm also so so grateful for practical details of my new job, like the fact that I'll have a fixed monthly salary and paid vacation next year! (With private language schools like the one where I currently work, these are NOT luxuries that they offer their woefully underpaid and exploited staff). I'm also delighted that I won't have to change the dates of my American vacation from mid-August to mid-September since the French academic year begins at the end of September.

Unfortunately, although next year should be great, I WILL have to go through the job hunting process again next spring, since my job is only a 1-year position, but I'll have another year of university experience, hopefully some new contacts and the place where I'll work is the largest uni in the Parisian region, so I naively hope that this means that they have lots of available jobs each year... I was also suprised by how many full-time jobs I saw advertised and how many interviews I was invited to, so I feel optimistic for next year. And next spring seems faraway now.

Now that this major life hurdle has been cleared, I can think about other goals for next year, besides repeating Must Find Better Job. Despite the obnoxiousness that is the metro, people in crowds, how neglected my apartment building is, etc., I'm so glad to be staying in Paris. That job I mentioned in Scandinavia? It was in Stavanger, Norway. (Google/wikipedia at will). What I can tell you about it: 3rd largest city in Norway and the oil capital of the country. And dark and cold in the winter.

I honestly thought that if it came down to another year in my current job or a better more stable position even if it were in Norway, I'd take Norway. But felt a little desperate about it, like it wasn't really much of a choice-- like when you have to decide between 2 presidential candadates, and it comes down to the worst and the not quite as bad. I'd still love to visit Norway, but I'm pleased that my final options didn't come down to these 2 possibilities only, as I'd feared.

This year in Paris should be a very different experience from last year, thanks to better pay and financial stability (i.e., the SAME salary every month!) I'm really excited about the possibility of traveling (since it's not something I can afford at the moment) and I already have a list of places I want to go! I took 1 trip all last year to Strasbourg for the weekend and it was ONLY possible because my lovely friends knew I couldn't swing both train fare and a hotel, so they paid for the hotel.

Anways, now that the job situation is taken care of and I should be able to afford both trains and hotels next year, I can move on to some other questions. Like what do I want out of next year in the city of light? Since I love list making and goal setting, (they make me feel so organised and in control), indulge me here.

Professional goals for next year, in no particular order:
-Prep excellent classes for next year!
-Work some extra vacataire hours on the side (at another university where I interviewed but didn't get the job of my dreams). This would be in online distance learning and I'd like to get some experience in this area since it's up and coming.
-Plan some career moves. I attended a TESOL workshop yesterday about career development and decided that what I'd ultimately like to do is be Ken Wilson. Which if you're not an English Language Teaching geek, means more specifically, write/edit ELT textbooks. I decided that I want to have a job in this field in 5 years (since I'm sure you need 10 years of teaching experience) so my deadline is June 18, 2016. Why not send CVs to the ELT companies next year when I'm job hunting, but I imagine that you'd need more than 5 years of teaching experience. I chose my 5 year goal b/c in 5 years, I'll have 10 years of teaching experience.

And some more fun goal setting...

Personal goals for next year:

-Little running goal: run a 5K on a Delaware beach the day of my 33rd (gulp) birthday. I think this would be a lovely way to spend that birthday.
-Big running goal: train for and run the Paris half marathon in March 2012! I plan to join a marathon training group in Sept/oct when their season starts and I'm already on their contact list.
-Continue to work on Spanish and take a class with the Mairie de Paris, as well as keep up my language exchange with a Spanish professor. Hope to place into the advanced beginner level and finish the year with an A2 level (elementary).
-Try to make this blog a little more focused and organised. With different tabs (um, however you do that!!) for running, health (like receipes and also management of a metabolic problem that I have) and funny stories about France and ELT teaching. Maybe these subjects are too varied, and I'll have to figure out the best way to organise them, but I think it's better to have 1 well-organised blog instead of devoting a different blog to each subtopic... I'd also like to get a digital camera so that I can post photos.

Let me just reiterate that it's really a pleasure to be able to move on and think about other things for next year, like blog organisation instead of job hunting!

What are your goals for next year?

Walking in an Alien World

"I feel like I'm walking in an alien world. But then again, that's how everyone describes themselves. We're all walking in an alien world. For our own reasons." -- From a Middlebury college recruitment video titled "How Did You Get Here?"

How indeed?

City of Light and the Land of the Midnight Sun

I've been feeling conflicted lately. I suddenly have the possibility of a good, stable possibly well-paying job-- which continues to be the elusive holy grail that foreigners can never find abroad. Unless they are very lucky or know with/date/sleep with the right people.

Since I don't have a stable job with paid vacation and a fixed monthly salary (I'm paid depending on how many hours I work, which just depends on the demand for English classes that month), they've become the most important things that I'm looking for in a job. Especially in a place where the job market is really tough post financial crisis. In France, you have to have VERY specific training for each job; foreigners usually don't have the equivalent of the exact degree necessary, not that the equivalent would even necessarily be recognised abroad. Foreign degrees and professional experience don't seem to count for much. And your great qualifications (like a BA and a BS from prestigious American colleges that are really impressive in your home country) don't mean anything.

However, this job? Yes, it would provide stability, but temporarily (a 1 year contract and the possibility to renew it once). It would probably pay well. It would have a fixed monthly salary (which I don't have now...), housing would be included and there would be loads of paid vacation (which I also don't have now). But the ironic thing is that I don't really want it. Because although it's in a French school, the job isn't in France. It's in Scandinavia. And thinking about this possibility, a temporary year in a country that I have NO connection to, where I don't know the local language and where the culture holds no particular fascination for me, made me realise that there are things I like a lot about where I live now, like:

-picnics in the spring
-stand up comedy (I LOVE this)
-free outdoor movies
-my friends
-speaking French
-free jazz festivals
-running in Parc Monceau, and doing organised races, something I just started in May.
-although I don't always realise it, I do feel a connection to France. When compared to leaving for another completely unknown country, at least.
-my balcony with its lovely view
-my neighborhood

I mean, I could also do a whole list of things I don't like, too. Like the metro, being in a crowd, the HIGH cost of living and the LOW salaries. But these suddenly pale in comparison when faced with the unknown-- especially when I'm not necessarily dying to know about it...

I also realised that there are some things I'd like to do here next year, like:

-keep learning Spanish-- continue my language exchange and take an evening class at the Mairie.
-perfect my French some more. (In the absence of a French-speaking boyfriend at the moment, I think I'll have to take an advanced language class).
-run the Paris half marathon and train with a local marathon group

It also makes me think that if I left France to teach abroad temporarily, I'd like it to be next door in Spain for a year. That would be fun, close to France for easy visiting and it's still mediteranean culture which I'm kind of used to by now. If I left more permanently, I'd like it to be someplace more familiar, like Montreal (still North American, but with a francophone influence). Some possible ideas to try to line up for next year...

Overall, this possible working abroad opportunity has been a very healthy and much-needed reminder of reasons NOT to leave Paris in impoverished disgust, disappointment and not necessarily financial ruin but definite inability to save any money and get ahead. It makes you re-evaluate your current city and realise what the positives are instead of just focusing on the negatives, as we so often do. Especially in France.

A study in the Economist recently named the French as among the most pessimistic people in the world. A stand up comedian I saw recently said it best, the French are never impressed by what's good and don't enthuse about it. "Pas mal" (not bad) is a huge compliment. But they have the rare ability to get extremely animated and excited about negative things, like how bad traffic is, what a jerk their boss is or how rude other parisians are. Parisians are fun to hate sometimes-- and of course, after saying something like that, I have to mitigate it by adding that I have lovely French friends and people are individuals and not cultural stereotypes. At the risk of being reductive again, the French are also often the first to admit stereotypical French shortcomings (since French culture is very critical). Scandinavians might be less fun. Or less endearingly irritating.

Ha!

Something funny I saw the other day. A sticker that said:

Do epic shit.

Nous Le Valons Bien

I live far far away from the alterna-hippy-surfer paradise that is Santa Cruz, California but I always loved to visit it when I lived in the SF bay area. Local attractions included some nice coffee shops, the beach, the amusement park, surfer-watching and the surfing museum (open like 1 hour a day) I've actually been there. Not that I remember much about it now. Just that it was really small.

Surfing museum aside, the 80s teen vampire flick The Lost Boys was set here, I once saw Don McLean in concert there and one of my few ever romantic getaway weekends was spent there-- even though it involved some serious camping misadventures like forgetting tent poles and realising that as romantic as sharing a sleeping bag sounded, we really should have brought 2...

It's also the home of a 5 and 10K run called She Is Beautiful which recently popped up on my facebook (I'm a member of a French running group-- custom advertising, go figure) about a million time zones away. Ok, maybe it's eye roll-inducing Oprah Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants marketing to women (obviously), but fit is beautiful is a good message, especially in a world of supermodels and more specifically, my world of anorexically thin Parisian women (I think this is representative of a certain social class-- the richer and more bourgeois, the more starved she looks).

I also really loved that the km markers had little messages on them instead of just giving the numbers (featured in the facebook ad). What a fun idea. The one that I really liked and that I now repeat to myself sometimes, on a run or in tough moments in daily life:

Nobody ever told you it would be easy. They told you that it would be worth it.

Pimp My... Run. If You Add Me As a Friend.

Determined to have a good group run this Saturday. Ok, a muy pequeno small group-- just a friend of mine and me!

Planned a nice route, thanks to modern technology. Can I say how great the website Map My Run is? I also like the 3 monosyllabic words in a row. For this reason, it makes me think of Pimp My Ride (not that I've ever even seen this MTV show about how to make your car look flamboyant and expensive). Although EVERYTHING is such a social networking site these days. To see other people's running routes, you have to add them as your friends. I swear, one day just to switch on your computer, you'll have to add it to your friend list.

I think a running partner is the way to go. Best to avoid unknown marathoners from Planet Jogging-- this is the name of the the sports store that sponsored my last race, but now I'm starting to think that maybe it's really some kind of home planet for unfriendly 8 minute milers...

Voyeurism at Work

You can take the title of the post fairly literally.

Pourquoi? (This is the most frequently asked French rhetorical question. With barely a pause, you continue with I'll explain).

This week's surreal experience (so far, anyway) was that as I was waiting to drop off my class attendance sheets yesterday (for some reason although this only happens once a month, it always without fail takes like 2 hours and like many things in the city of light, makes me want to kill myself. Lots of cross referencing computer data on computers with impossibly slow internet connections), I noticed... A man taking his clothes off in one of the windows across the way! Ever the classy and elegant professional, I subtly signaled this casual observation to my attendance-verifying coworker, "hey, did you know that you can see nekkid men from your office window?!!"

Turns out that we can see the changing room of the gay sauna from our school. And turns out that everyone at work had a tidbit of information about the gay sauna to contribute. Like that it was the subject of a recent documentary film. It's also connected via underground passage (or maybe a back door patio area) to the gay bar around the corner. It also boasts tous les plaisirs gays as well as excellent customer service because towels and condoms are given out for free.

The changing room is probably the tamest part of the sauna. The other windows are blacked out.

Upon sharing various window/changing room stories, a friend later mentioned that she'd known someone whose window had a view of the local firehouse changing room. This strategic view was optimised when the resident would invite her girlfriends over to check out the firemen and they would oblige by putting on a little show for the ladies.

I somehow doubt lady school teachers would inspire the gay sauna patrons in the same way...

Baby, we were born to run?

Runners in this new running group I just joined while we were waiting for the others to arrive:

Runner #1: ... I did the London marathon in 4 hours. But that was years ago, not very in shape now.
Runner #2: I could never do a marathon in 4 hours. My body just isn't made that way.
Me (relieved): Me, neither!
Runner #2: I did my last marathon in 5 hours.

I should have taken the metro back home then. Or turned around and run away. At my slowpoke pace. Although, of course, if they wanted to, they could have outrun me.

Not only were the other runners (with the exceptions of #1 and 2) none too friendly, but there was 1 pace group and it seemed like it was 8 minute miles. I was the very last, at least 1 city bock behind them. One other slower runner (although still faster than me) ran with me a little which was really nice of her. I only lasted half of the 9.5K planned. Everyone else already knew each other, had trained together all year and had just run the Paris marathon. Probably in impossibly fast times like 5 minutes, making the previously impressive 4 hour time seem as slow as I was.

A 5K-ish run is still good, right? Especially at around 10am on a Saturday.

Honestly, it's been a hard week, hard month, hard life, etc and running is the one time that I relax and DON'T feel stressed and inadequate (or worry about money-- that's another story). I don't need running to exacerbate these very things that it usually helps me escape. I wasn't enjoying that run. So I stopped.

Honestly, at the start when they ran farther and farther ahead of me, I was near tears and had no idea what I was doing there, in that group, on that run, in Paris, in the world. I haven't been feeling very good about life at the moment. I'm still waiting to hear back about a teaching/course development job that would change my life if I got it and I could have a normal life in Paris instead of living in marginal immigrant poverty like I currently do. And waiting for this decision is making me feel very very desperate.

Anyway, the only bright spots of this generally terrible experience were that runners #1 and 2 agreed that it wasn't normal to have a running group where all the leaders were fast and assured me that it would be worth coming back next Sat. Runner #1 even said that we could do slower Sunday runs together when I start working Sat am again.

Another successful Paris experience, n'est-ce pas?

The Matrix Has You... All Wrong

You know you're living in a virtual world-- and that computers are devoid of standard and respected social norms-- when Facebook suggests you make friends with the person who interviewed you for your dream job last week, whose decision you're desperately awaiting and who hasn't contacted you yet.

Oh, the irony of social networking.

Um, how did Hemingway pay for his moveable feast?

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." - E. Hemingway

I'm sure he left because he ran out of money. Or maybe he just stuffed his pockets with as much Fine French Cuisine as possible and fled the restaurant without paying...

My First French 10K!

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away-- back in a previous life in Northern California, anyway, I loved to run. I was never athletic as a kid, but I took up running in my late 20s in a half-hearted attempt to run a half marathon as a way to get over a bad breakup. I ended up alternately running and walking that race (the Nike Women's Half Marathon in San Francisco) and taking about 3+ hours to finish and a really long nap afterwards. The next day I thought, why not really, seriously run these things? I later successfully ran 2 half marathons.


When I lived in Berkeley, CA, I ran 4 miles every other day to deal with work stress and could comfortably run 10 miles. I was never fast (10-11 min miles), but I did a lot of races for fun, just as a way to be sure to get a nice run in that weekend in places where I didn't usually run. The longest distance I ever covered was 13.1 miles-- the 2 half marathons I did were the Avenue of Giants half in a beautiful redwood forest with my beloved cousin, who is like a sister to me (the only framed photo I have is of us after the race!), and the San Francisco half all by myself.


When I moved to Paris nearly 5 years ago, I found it impossible to keep up my running. Lots of adjustments to make. I was also a student again and after 6 years out of school, I really felt like I had no real free time and had to study so much, precisely because I'd been out of school so much longer than everyone else in my master's program. There were so many excuses. Here in the city of light:


1. The weather's really bad in the winter (it rains every day-- I find the winter really hard psychologically because we're deprived of sunlight for about 4 months).


2. If you don't live by a park, there's no place to run (streets are always too crowded-- unless you get up at 5 am to run).


3. Everyone stares at runners. Especially men. Especially at a woman in a sportsbra tank top. I could write an entire blog post on the regard parisien, or how women are stared at in Paris...


4. None of my friends run. In a huge change from life in San Francisco, I discovered that there wasn't a culture of fitness in Paris, more a culture of espresso, wine and restaurants. Or so I thought...


5. Finally, gyms are too expensive-- you pay upfront for the year rather than each month and it's a lot of money, even if you can pay in a couple of installments.


However, within the last few months I finally started running again. For real. And I wish I'd done it years ago. I had a gym membership and ran on the treadmill in February and March. Then my membership ran out and I couldn't afford to renew, but started running outside again, mainly from my house to park Monceau (about 3K each way) and each loop around the park is 1K. Running outside is good for the body and the soul. Running on the treadmill is phenomenally boring and I could never really force myself to do more than 5K on it.


So, to motivate myself, enjoy my newfound appreciation for my old hobby and spend time with a dear friend, one of my out of town besties and I signed up to do a 10K in the bois de boulogne last weekend. It was my first organised race in France. And like many things in France, there were several challenges involved-- these were the administrative equivalent of running 6 miles before actually doing it for real on race day!


Challenge 1: French websites. To sign up for the race, the computer refused to accept Tiffi's address b/c it was outside of France. After her non-French zipcode crashed with website 3 times, I just lied and made her my temporary flatmate in France c/o chez moi.

Challenge 2: The Certificat Medical. Then, we had to get our Doctor's notes. To run any organised race in France, you need a doctor's note "de non-contre indication." Seriously, this just means that they write a note saying that they didn't find anything that would prevent you from running the race safely. This was highly surreal, as my doctor is a sweetheart, but also easily 200 years old with a feeble little voice and fairly out of touch with the modern world of organised running. She asked, will you run all 10kms at once, or will you do half and then take a break? She also warned us not to push ourselves too hard or force ourselves and made the realistic prediction that "vous n'allez pas gagner cette course." (You're not going to win this race). We assured her that our goal was just to have fun and run the distance rather than trying to break records of any kind...

And besides reassuring elderly Geneviève the médecin that we weren' t trying to take on Kenyan olympians, what did we have to do to prove that there was nothing that would prevent us from running the race? To test our fitness, we had to do 30 squats and then have our pulses taken. I'm not kidding. She also listened to our hearts again, which she does with a stethescope (of course) and a travel alarm clock. I guess watches are too modern. You're also not allowed to talk to her during the Heart Listening/Alarm Clock Watching. She can only do so much at once.

Finally, Geneviève the Doctor signed off on her inability to find anything preventing us from running, gave us our notes and we were cleared to run 6 miles. Luckily, I can just keep showing photocopies of the same doctor's note for the next year, so no need to do squats for Geneviève again until next year.

Challenge 3: picking up race packets. This was actually easy, but we rushed there directly after getting the medical note, so we were a little worried. I expected the worst: terrible crowds, no record of our registration, refusal of our medical notes, etc. But it was fine. We had to go to a store called Planet Jogging (ridiculous name, huh? It must makes me thing of another Parisian establishment, a Japanese restaurant chain called Planet Sushi. Another shining star in the rich Parisian cosmos...) to get our race packets. Here, we were presented with our fabulous pink t-shirts which we fell in love with immediately. Best race shirt, hands down. Fancy dri-fit fabric, too. In our packets, we didn't have the usual American swag (like loads of power bars and sports drinks). Just one tiny granola bar about the size of a sugar packet and loads of brochures for other races ("Ooh, let's do this one! You run up a red carpet to a castle and the proceeds go to the Make a Wish Foundation for children with cancer!") I think that was when I realised that there was a running community in Paris afer all, and I was kind of part of it now. Ground control to Major Tom (I run to David Bowie an awful lot) on Planet Jogging!

Last challenge: pins! An épreuve the day of the race was that although we had our race bibs in the race packets, there were no safety pins with them (there usually are in the US). I asked some runners if they had extra pins, no one did and one woman showed me that she'd sewn her number onto her fantastic pink shirt, which struck me as exceptionally bizarre, but to each her own. Finally, we managed to track down some pins and I was proud of myself for dredging up the word épingle (French for safety pin). Thank my friend Odile for that one-- we once went to have her new coat altered and she and the seamstress had a lengthy conversation about how much to take it in and where to put the safety pins!


While the shirts were fantastic (as you'd expect from the world's fashion capital), I think most of the planning went into the shirts, as the logistics of the actual race were a little less impressive. It was a nice run in a forest and I really enjoyed it-- so much that I kind of sang along out loud with Blondie on my iPod, oops. Another really positive point was that near the starting line, they had the nicest portapotties I've ever seen. They had mirrors and running water.

However, the main logistical problems were that they ran out of medals and water at the end of the race! But, hey, we looked great in our pink shirts. Who needs water? Now we know: BYO water and safety pins...


Finally: my running buiddy kind of regretted not bringing her camera to the race, but obviously didn't want to carry it or check anything valuable (you could at least check a bag, which was nice. In retrospect, we should have checked on with some water bottles!)

But here are a few pictures, anyway. Here we are after about kilometer 8 each looking at a different photographer (and my glasses look really weird and heavily pixelated)! Although it looks like we're just standing around holding hands, I assure you we're running like the wind, ha! It's just that you can't see our feet. :)















Here I am, booking it to the finish line (booking it is a highly relative term...) In a philosophical, cultural difference, the finish line is called the arrival line (ligne d'arrivée) in French and the starting line is the ligne de départ. I was excited to see the finish line, since we had to run through a gate, onto the racetrack grounds, and past the clubhouse. I kept asking myself, are we done, is there no real finish line? Then finally, I saw the big inflated arch with the time clock. Ah, there you are, finish line!








All in all, great weather and great company! I'm really glad to have a friend who runs, too, and I'm delighted to be doing races again. It's so motivating and now that I'm running again regularly, I feel a lot less anxious about various ongoing existential crisis issues. And now, of course, I have a 10K time to beat!

So the next 10K? In late June in Paris!