le rêve de californie

You know how sometimes a light and easy breeze can kind of hit you right between the eyes? A wave of nostalgia and you realize you miss something so desperately that just a few seconds earlier was miles from your thoughts.

I've had a stupidly busy week at work with lots of test preparation which, while straightforward enough to do, is exhausting for everyone involved. It's simply just repetition of the same concepts over and over again, correcting mistakes and reading and rereading long texts and explaining grammar rules in lots of contexts. It's not like I can just shut off and give them the right answers -- I also have to understand and explain them too. I would compare it to something like the SAT, for reference. The hours are long and even though the students are very nice and motivated, at the end of the day I just feel like collapsing. It feels a little something like spending the day in a library, pouring over a final essay or revising subjects for your end of year exams.

So when I buzz out of the building and walk down the chic street, sun in my eyes and a gust of warm summer wind blows my hair over my shoulders, it strikes me as eerily Californian, which is absurd. Toulouse is a few hours from the sea, I'm located in the city center with towering buildings on all sides and it's July without air conditioning. But somehow, there is something very sea-like about this breeze -- like I could stop and close my eyes and imagine seagulls above me or sitting at Kono's with a towering stack of pancakes, staring into the breaking waves of the pacific.

I try to remember what it was like living in San Diego, the way the wind feels whooshing past as you speed along the freeway or the thickness of the air in the morning. I can try my best to imagine, but it seems very far away sometimes, like it was a different lifetime ago. Maybe it was clouded by thoughts of coursework and classes and papers, but it seems to be fading -- the tactile memories of living in what I still claim to be my favorite city in the world.

In the world. 

Meaning, if I had to choose between living in France or living in San Diego, it would rip my heart out either way, but San Diego is pretty damn hard to beat.

PB

"i'm gonna go talk to some food about this."

"[People] cheat. People fail. This is an immutable fact of life. I think we think we’re defined by our successes like weddings, and promotions, and crazy vacations. But I think it’s our disappointments that make us who we are. The way we emotionally adapt to a world that won’t give us what we want is the secret to human uniqueness. Some of us negotiate this chaos and behave exactly as expected—we claw, we hoard, we deceive. Some of us surrender to our lot and find that love is forgiving someone for the embarrassment of being human. Those people are special, and no one writes opinion columns about them."

ça m'a fait lol, deux.

Another collection of quotes, most of which are from my hilarious students.

[standing outside a restaurant with a few people when a group of guys who I think were out for a bachelor party approaches us... ]
Drunk French fool (in French): Is there someone here who speaks English?!
Me: ...Um, well, yes...
Fool: Do you speak English really? Because me, "Aye cahm frahm Lawse Angellees!" You see?
Me: Seriously? That was the worst American accent I've ever heard.
Drunk fool: Why you don't believe me !?

[discussing internet related vocabulary]
Student: I use the internet to google search monkey forests.

[searching something on the computer]
Student: You will be your big hands.
Me: Pardon?
Student: You don't know the French expression? Tu tapes avec tes gros droigts!
Me: I type with my fat fingers?
Student: Yes... They're quite big.

[speaking of hobbies/interests]
Student A: I like wildlife photography.
Student B: -looking around incredulously-
Me: What? Is that strange?
Student B: Wildwife photography???? You admit to our teacher that you like wildwife photography????

Student: I never tried drugs when I was young.
Me: That's probably smart.
Student: Smart... ? Like the car?
Me: No, like intelligent.
Student: Smart is the same that intelligent!? I thought it's the name of the car! Incredible!!

[talking about air travel]
Student: I have a very racist joke on this subject.
Me: Let's hear it, then.
[My boss walks through the room and smiles at us both, closing the door behind her]
Student: (whispering) ok, she's left so I can tell it now.

la vie française, c'est parfois abrutissante.

Somedays are good. Other days, you get your spirit crushed by a French person.

Good days are what? Finding $10 on the ground, being told that you're doing a great job at work, having a moment of self-discovery, a smile from a cute dood on the metro even. Yeah, I'd say all of those would fall within the limits of what a lot of people would consider a happy boost in their day. For me, what would really make an average day great is being given a compliment in my French level. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be told I helped someone at work, or maybe to have more hours, or hm, perhaps even a work contract?! But in the meantime, I'll settle for a "your French isn't bad, you know."

Recently, I went to the movie theatre to see a film with friends and when it was my turn to approach the woman behind the counter, I asked (in French) for "one ticket to Source Code, please. And I'm less than 26 [so I get a discount]." The woman glances up at me and in taking my money, asks me whether I know that it's in original version, which is English, and only the subtitles are in French. My friends and I start laughing together, as one of them exclaims, "She's American! Of course it's not a problem!" And the woman gives me a smirk as I smugly take my change and ticket from her, feeling elated that I somehow managed to pull off a decent enough French accent to fool someone into thinking that I was French. Granted, I'm sure there was a lot of noise and maybe she couldn't hear me that well, but I couldn't help feeling smooth anyway. Instant day-maker.

But bad days? Mildly bad days can involve maybe slipping on the subway grate, or going into a bakery to get a delicious brioche only to realize you don't have enough money, or realizing your umbrella is broken as you step out the front door to pouring rain. Well, if there's one thing that French people seem to be really great at, it's piercing your spirit with a soul-crushing yet plainly stated piece of brutal honesty and that can ruin more than just your day.

For example, after exchanging emails with a friend of a friend (in French), I admitted to him over coffee that I tend to have mental roadblocks which keep me from speaking French at a level I would like. Instead, in order for me to really be able to carry on a long and, indeed, quite interesting conversation would be to find that limit between 3-6 drinks where I'm uninhibited enough to try out those new words I saw on Plus Belle, La Vie but not drunk enough where I forget how to say basic things like "I'm gonna set my alarm clock now" or "your friend just vomited under the table." In explaining this mental problem to him, he casually told me between sips of his drink "yeah, I notice you make particularly a lot of mistakes when it comes to tenses. And you often use a lot of expressions incorrectly. And it's true, when you're drunk you really can't speak French at all. It's actually hilarious." And I'm thinking... Wait. You're not supposed to whole-heartedly agree with me! I then found it even more difficult to speak with him -- it seemed that suddenly, he was speaking two times faster and my blood alcohol content had increased ten-fold, but without the fun side-effects. As if he had taken my ability to speak at all and crushed it under his thumb, the way you would a stray crumb on the table: absent-mindedly.

I experienced one other particularly soul-crushing situation, which left me feeling entirely helpless. After a long day at work, I was walking towards the metro when I was thinking about a few things I needed to pick up -- a light bulb to replace the one that broke, a new dishcloth, maybe some hooks to hang stuff. As I was pondering to myself, I noticed two people standing outside one of the many designer shops along this particular street. One was an older woman dressed sleekly in crisp off-white pants and matching slick blazer with light-brown high heels and bouncy blonde hair and she was standing next to a man who I can only assume was gay, dressed exactly as you would expect a French gay man to dress (that is, impeccably). As I walked towards them, I noticed they both give me the once-over -- admittedly, I was dressed quite plainly for such a chic street: a pencil skirt, flats, a cardigan: your basic plain-Jane getup. But as I passed them, I noticed their reflection in a window straight in front of me. I saw the man saying something to the woman, his eyes still on me, and after she turned to watch me walk away, they both put their heads back in loud ego-bruising laughter. Simultaneously my jaw and stomach hit the floor as I hurried behind the corner. Now feeling too self-conscious to get that new dishtowel, I rushed home to be sure that I didn't leave toilet paper treading out of my skirt or had traces of hangover on my face from the night before. Once home, I saw that there was nothing worthy of that mortifying laughter to be found and I still have no idea what made them laugh like that... But the fact that I lost the courage to even finish errands for the day is just pathetic... Isn't it?

A French stranger somehow harnesses the power to insult and injure my ego like no other random American has been able to do to me thus far in my life. And you know, sometimes I chicken out of doing even basic things, like going into a hair salon to ask about the prices or going into a pharmacy to get ibuprofen, simply because I get a nasty look from someone behind the register. Why must they make it so difficult?!

I think this is why, when I return to the US, I'm only too happy to talk to everyone and generally feel more at ease at home.

[Obligatory French-people-suck-sometimes-but-I'm-still-here-so-that-clearly-makes-me-some-sort-of-masochist comment]

xx