The French lady in the corner

So for the past few weeks, I've had my corner.

Please calm down, we're not talking about a street here! I'm the French lady in charge of the language corner. Yes Mame! Offering French and Spanish tutoring to the good people of the DC public schools.

In the begining, this was going to be a one-on-one tutoring exercise like everyone else. A church near work organizes this Thursday night study hall for kids from all over the city, where tutors are matched with students from 8th to 12th grade, to help them do their homework. After a stint as a substitute teacher for a few weeks (for students whose tutor didn't show up), I had decided I was ready to commit the time and attention to my very own student.

That's when someone came up with the idea of a language table where other tutors could bring their protégés when facing the troubling challenge of French or Spanish homework.

Why not? After all, there already was a similar math corner. And was I really ready to have my own student, with SAT tests to get ready for when I have never seen one in my life, and American history and all these foreign things to me? So I accepted and when my first Thursday came, I stood as calmly as I could next to the chief supervisor announcing my début (looking as French and Spanish speaking as possible), grabbed a few books from the library (thinking a dictionary and a couple of verb books would add to my legitimacy) and took possession of my blue, rectangular table.

I hadn't counted on the math table's hostility to my coup over their coat table.

My blue table, the new language corner table, had actually been till that day what the math table crowd used to dump everything they didn't want on their chairs and turning it into a language corner certainly took them by surprise. So I had to face some disapproving looks and some (faint) protest when I took over. And I sat there, slightly awkward, slightly embarrassed, but still feeling I belonged, and waited for my first clients. I mean, students.

But math nerds are not so bad and they are opening up little by little. Even though I always wonder whether they are always well meaning when asking me whether I am getting a lot of interest (can't you see it?! I want to ask).

And so far the experience has been quite positive. First because it keeps me on my toes. I kind of learned Spanish through my Argentinian friends and boyfriends so my grammar is far from perfect (perhaps the verb book was for me after all!). As for French, I caught myself brushing up on my imparfait du subjonctif a few weeks ago! Granted, not a tense I would use every other day, but I briefly felt ashamed nonetheless.

And what of the kids themselves, you will ask? It depends on the day, I will say. I am not going to complain about a commitment of barely more than an hour, however challenging (for my patience, mainly). This big crowd of black kids helped by this (mainly but not only) white crowd of volunteers is an excellent exposure when you spend your day surrounding by people looking like you.

But given where these kids are from a foreign language is not exactly a priority.

What's striking me is that none of them seems to understand that to learn a foreign language you have to accept to sit down and just learn some things by heart. Some things can be understood, others come by instinct, but sometimes when they are so foreign to you, some things just have to be learned. And learning for the sake of it is not what these students are used to doing.

So when they have a test coming up (a classic reason for their visit), I often end up just going through some vocabulary or basic rules with them (singular la, plural las, or the whole family members père, mère, etc...), over and over again until I have some hope part of that will stick with them. Remembering my old student days where I would ask my parents to interrogate me until it was clear I knew the answer to every single question (well, it's more the contrary going on here but you see the point).

I've had moderately motivated students, I've had some frankly reluctant students, and one student that looked enthusiastic but only because he wanted me to translate the lyrics of a Lady Gaga song.

At times it's challenging, when you realize some of the kids are used to so little attention that they have very little self confidence. All of that burried under a thick layer of displayed confidence of course. When I asked one girl a question in French a few weeks ago, as she sat, the first thing she did was to raise her hands in defence: ""Wo wo wo! Let's calm down here" she said.

Another night, it took a student's tutor and I one hour to show her that she could actually understand some words in Spanish. I was worn out by the end of it.

So in my last session, when chubby Dennis came by my table just to work on his French pronunciation, I was in heaven. We went through some grammar, some vocabulary. Etrrreeeuuu, etttrrreeuuu (that's him trying to pronounce the verb "être"), he went, marveling at this new sound, certainly not the easiest one to master for a beginner (ask Lumberjack!).

I felt carried away, wanting suddenly to share all the secrets of my language, offering him words like I would with a delicate present, awaiting anxiously his answer to my conjugation question, scrutinizing his face hoping to read his mood inflections.

So that's what it is about, I thought. That's what makes my parents' day even when most of the kids are wild, uncooperative, difficult, if not worse. You put a lot of effort and for a minute, for a second, it's paying off.

I'll have to pause for a second next time I'm about to complain about my job.

The evergreen class of 1950

And here I am again, after some adventures carving a pumpkin for Thanksgiving, scaring off a young doctor clearly not used to finding his patients already half naked for examination and dressing as a cowgirl on my first Halloween party (I had forgotten we're supposed to look scary. Guess I'll try that next time.)

You imagine how hard it is to pick a story among all the little anecdotes that make up the big ``jellyfish in Washington picture!''

That's why you most likely won't understand why I chose to speak about a group of people in their 80s, with hearing aids, little hair left and a good deal of money!

Probably because they had a good sense of humor.

It was at an Ivy League university last Friday evening and I was clearly not happy to be there. First of all because my original plan had me dash off to New York after work, not take a train to the middle of nowhere for an assignment.

Then because it was raining, that my work day had started at 8 a.m. and that I was going to have to sit through dinner before being able to accomplish my mission, wrap it up and have a life again.

So when people moved to their tables I had no real plan and that's how I ended with the class of 1950. Yes, CLASS of 1950, not born in 1950.

As I prepared to sit and lower the average age by 15 years all by myself, one guest at the table shouted: ``What are you doing at this table? You have no friends?!''

Pretty funny, eh? Maybe it wasn't going to be that bad. As I tried to answer gracefully, he picked up the accent.

``You are French?" he went. ``I used to sleep with a French woman!''

Nothing like a good ice breaker, you will admit.

So under the classy dark wooden ceiling and stained glasses, I had a nice little chat with my dining companions.

Take the two next to me. They had been in the Navy and the Air Force and one had been a cardiologist for 40 years. They were almost fighting trying to show off their French, and their German. Sharing their memories of Paris decades ago while grilling me on what brought me to the U.S.

Meanwhile on the other side, one alumni was explaining me why the only reason he had been invited was because he had been giving money to the research center organizing the event, while the French woman's lover's wife (!) gave me the detail of their children's degrees and various jobs.

Shortly after tiramisu, I was called back into 2009 and ran to start my assignment.

But long after, thoughts borne during the dinner lingered. Here are the movers and shakers of their times, I thought. People who lived history, traveled the world, saw it change and are now on the twilight of their life, having fun in the hushed atmosphere of an elite university.

And nobody will sit with them.Isn't it sad? For them, and for what will become of us when our moment in the sun is over?
How come I had more patience with them than with my own grandfather?
Would I have liked these people when they were younger, or was it the way they aged that I liked?

After all, with all the political correctness around here, I doubt I will hear someone trumpeting about their French lover any time soon!

Istanbul fever

Hello! Do I have any readers left?

It feels like I was gone for ever, and in a way, I was.
I was a world away, overlooking the Bosphorus, at times out of breath (that would be when climbing the hill to our hotel), at times dizzy with all the movement and life of the city. Oh, and working the most time, long hours. But nothing a nice dinner of mezze and fish dinner can't fix.

From my shopping spree that left Lumberjack asleep in stores (that was at the end of our nine-day work marathon!) to late-night meals in backstreets with exhausted colleagues, Istanbul was a window on the world outside DC and baklava for the soul.

In the Turkish bath at the end of my last work day, when the matron in her bathing suit ordered me to lie down as she prepared to exfoliate all that dead skin of mine, declaring ``Now you're my baby,'' I just had one thing to say: ``Yes Mom!''

It was good to be taken care of, at last. After all, I had had my share of emotions: I briefly thought I was going to die in a suicide bombing (How was I to guess that the Angry Turkish young man shouting and running towards the head of the IMF was just an old-fashioned protester?!), was treated like a spy by someone to whom I had only offered to have coffee, missed by minutes demonstrators and tear gas on Taksim Square and thought several nights I had lost Lumberjack when he was still not back `home' past midnight (don't worry, he was simply making sure no one else beat him at the ``I'm the last person in the press room'' game.)

I only got a glimpse of Istanbul really. But I drew on its energy. Usually I flee pedestrian streets, especially when they are crowded, but somehow I didn't mind Istiklal Caddesi. Perhaps because I sensed seeing all these people outside, pouring into the cafes and restaurants of Cihangir and Galata, would give me a lasting boost for my return to Washington.

So here I am on a rainy autumn Sunday in the capital. So grey and so sad that I may have to dig deep down in the Istanbul memories fund to find it tolerable. Or I may tap into my emergency fund. It's called Turkish delights and it works pretty well.

Vaquera loca

I was stressed out, I was tired, I had to rush to the airport and by then I was seriously starting to wonder whether that was a good idea to hop on a plane to Texas for just two days right before three mad work weeks that would take me from DC to Pittsburgh to Istanbul.

After a crazy attempt to innovate and taste a meatball sandwich (I know, I know. I thought I'd be adventurous. I won't do it again) which promptly ended up in the trash, I was delirious enough to buy the "cheese and crakers" pack sold on the aircraft, only to discover that if there were a lot of crakers, the cheese (and it's quite flattering to call it that) was the solitary type.

By the time I landed in Dallas, waiting for a hotel shuttle that was in no hurry to come take me to a charmless Hilton nested between two highways, I had made up my mind: this was a mistake. This wedding of a friend I hadn't seen in several years, whose wife to be I hadn't even met, with friends of his who would barely remember they'd hosted me seven years ago in Mexico.

That was last weekend by the way. And I had a blast.

Why? Because Texas with a group of Mexican, and handful of Colombians, some Spanish-speaking Americans and a fellow blond French girl is hard to compete with.
Because swapping the golden sandals that match my fancy dress for cow-boy boots that match my cowboy hat was exhilarting and much better for my toes. And because cabron, it's so good to be around spontaneous and affectionate people!

From the moment I met these guys in the lobby on the Friday, it was easy. Easy to talk to the people I didn't know. Easy to switch from Spanish to English in the same conversation without having to think. To wander down the old streets of Forthworth on Saturday, looking for the hats a bunch of us had decided to wear. To discuss the charms of Palenque in Chiapas, from where Raul's family is, while sharing a turkey leg. To set my DC life aside for a moment and not even talk about it.

It was such a relaxed afternoon that it was after 4 pm when we left Fort Worth and after 5 when we managed to make our way back to the hotel (east Texas seems to be just an endless ballet of cars on infinite highways) for a wedding that was due to start at 6. Even though that was just the civil ceremony, a sort of rehearsal before the massive Mexico-based sequel in November, I would have lost my nerves hours earlier if I had been the groom, or, as a matter of fact, the bride waiting at the hotel!

It was not about the food (hum!). It was not about the setting. It was about a great mix of people grinning under their sombreros, celebrating the marriage of two cultures and dancing to the music of a Texan country band (who thought they were never going to be able to leave when Raul grabbed the mic to sing whatever he could find on his ipod!)
And I got invited to dance! After weeks of not being invited by anyone even to grab a sandwich, that was like breathing in my native Alps.
And did I mention the crazy cousin who offered her affection to all the males in the room? She dropped half dead on a table around 2am and was reportedly picked up by the police.

So, sure, there was Texas. The hotel patio where a sign warns you that you can't enter with your guns. The pink plastic riffles for ladies at the outdoor shop (yes!). The buffalo steak that reconciled me with food for the weekend.

But most of all, there were people. And not even the report on financial stability that I painstakingly tried to read on the flight back could spoil that soothing feeling at the end of the weekend.

Now I just wonder: when am I ever going to wear this vaquera outfit again?

Mademoiselle Simone

She's short and chubby, always in good spirits and she laughs at my jokes. She says Lumberjack's my "booboo" and keeps track of my crazy traveling. She calls me miss Sandrine and I call her miss Simone. We officially became friends tonight.

In this haze of crazy work days which I am afraid are to become the norm, Simone (she said it's spelt Samone but it can't really sink in) brings me back to a sunnier place. This crazy 21-year-old Californian, who got her huge tatoo in the neck on a whim this month, adores a puppy who won't let her sleep and is friendly to everybody coming in and out of my office building, is the one person in my daily life I feel comfortable chatting away with.

So tonight after my volunteering (an experience which will no doubt provide material for many future posts!) I stopped by her booth and spent a while there, discussing the dress I'll wear at my Texas wedding this weekend, what it takes to make a trip special and how hard it is to make friends in Washington. I got updated on the puppy, found out about the nearly two hours it takes her to get home and heard stories of her Internet chatting with what turns out to be freaks.
A few late workers went by. So did a few buses. There was nowhere I would rather have been than this building lobby.

When I was 18 (don't remind me how old I am now) my close friend Gégé and I traveled to Crete for a week of interesting adventures that could only have happened to a naive and insane pair like us. One day a local guide, on the grouchy side but who didn't resist the French charm for long, declared he had found the perfect nicknames for us: little smile and big smile (I bet you know exactly which I was.)

It looks like I've found my big smile partner here. It's certainly no Crete, nor even a place where you can picture yourself sipping ouzo. We may never do together all these things we deam to do with the friends we don't have yet. But it's much better than a day without sun.

Oh my God, the accent!

Good evening readers. Your jellyfish has been following the current this week and finds herself in Lumberjackland for a few days (I'm going to watch him play hockey tonight! He is terrified, evidemment, even though he got a taste a few months ago for the type of hockey I'm used to seeing in my little alpine hometown, which I don't believe is very impressive for a Canadian!)

Not a good excuse for a blogging silence, especially with all the new experiences last week had to offer. But one post at a time, so let me give you a glimpse of my Wednesday night and my first encounter with the ``change your accent'' attitude.

I have traveled a fair bit and it's my pride to have friends from all over the place but never before had I been in one room with such a wild mix of nationalities. My ``standard speech class,'' a polite name for the ``reduce your accent and blend in, you foreigner'' class, was like the United Nations. From Mongolia to Italy to Brazil to Russia, here we all were. A dozen eager adults who, for a variety of reasons, were willing to shell out a few hundred bucks and spend two hours a week forcing unnatural sounds out of their Colombian and French and Italian jaws.

And what was the main reason for that? Well ladies and gentlemen, that's where I felt moved. For a majority of attendees, the main motivation for this class was...simply to be understood by Americans!
Quite logical, you may say.
Except that all these people had a respectable level of English and that they were all perfectly understandable to my ears.
So in the end, for at least half of my classmates, this is what it comes down to: an extra effort so that their American interlocutor won't put an early end to a potentially fruitful dialogue by exclaiming ``What's that?!'' (one of my top three most hated phrases in English.)
I found it admirable.

Beyond that, the cases varied: if one was tired of not being called back after auditions, most of the group didn't have the ambition to act for a living but simply felt it would help them in their daily life. I begged to differ (after all, a French accent has never hurt any woman trying to make contacts in Washington, so why would I want to drop it?) and commented that the speech class had been presented to me as the key to an acting class, which I was longing to take.
But I tried to convey that with humour. I don't think adding to the sulking/blase French stereotype would have been a good idea.

That said, in some ways, cliches caught up with us in that empty classroom. My Brazilian colleague was attractive and tanned; the Chinese student wanted to reach ``excellency;'' and the Slavic late comer -- I think Russian, but I need to check -- confirmed the bluntness we sometimes associate with that part of the world.

My Slavic classmate entered just as my Indian colleague was standing, explaining her decision to attend. A long and lively speech, full of anecdotes and smiles. Sergei, when his turn came, fired right away. ``I came in, I thought she was the teacher,'' he said. ``I thought `Oh my God, the accent!'''

All that said without a smile, of course.

I think even though I'm note taking an acting class this semester, I may still be in for standup comedy every week.

The teacher is friendly and is trying to learn French (which gives her an automatic good ranking on my likeable scale) and she trained journalists seeking to lose their regional accent for years before focusing now on little creatures like us.

The one thing I came away with during that first session is simple but huge! While we were repeating weird phrases like ``what a to do to die today, at a minute or two, to two, a thing distinctly hard to say, but harder still to do,'' she ordered us to say them with a smile.
That's because Americans speak with a smile, she said, which helps explain the way they pronounce their vowels in an horizontal way, as opposed to a vertical one (like the Brits who wouldn't be caught dead smiling.). So try the ``what a to do..'' with a smile. Isn't it amazing?

I should be careful though. I have been told in the U.S. that I don't smile enough. A little more work on my zygomatic muscle and my core Frenchness may be endangered.

Leaves also fall in Washington

This morning I received a nice little note from Lumberjack describing his impressions while waiting at the bus stop. "You can tell the summer is ending in this government village," he wrote. "There's more traffic and the light is different." (He also lives in a government village. Even smaller than mine though.)

The light. The coming out of a long nap. In a few words, Lumberjack brought me back to what I will be missing this year: la rentrée in Paris.
La rentrée is a big deal in France. That's when we officially resume working after the summer break. That's when we make good resolutions and start all sort of activities that we'll struggle continuing a few months later. The air is chillier, the days are shorter, and yet there's so much pleasure in observing the capital getting ready for the cold!

I see la rentrée like a Sempé drawing where a man with a floating smile would stand on a bridge, eating le croûton of his baguette while watching the bateaux-mouches below, school kids running past him, drivers insulting each other in the background and blasés students smoking in a corner. One of his signature captions would say something like "The simplicity of this moment, so full of peace and harmony, made him wonder whether he should indulge and eat the artichoke and the paté en croûte he had bought earlier when returning home."

"Leaves also fall in DC," a friend told me tonight.

To me la rentrée is a spirit, a feeling that I belong to the city, that the urban poetry also is mine. That's why I am so nostalgic of my city tonight. I have yet to find Washington's poetry. I haven't given up trying.