Here is my favorite photo of the my trip to India.  It may not be the best photo in a technical sense, but it best captures the spirit of my work as a fifth grade teacher at a tiny village school in Himachal Pradesh.  In the background you can see the other fifth grade teacher, Sam, making sure no one gets kicked in the face during this photo shoot.  Climbing up the wall you can see Vijay, with the thousand-watt smile, and Atul, with the missing tooth, and Kailash, looking down.

Vijay was quickwitted and stylish, and he brought me an almond every day.  This is a pretty generous gift as almonds are not cheap in India.  I met Vijay in town one afternoon when he was sitting with his father, a farmer who was selling vegetables on the side of the road.  He saw me before I saw him, and then he said “Ma’am ji, ma’am ji!” until I took notice.  (Cries of “Ma’am ji” or “Didi” or “Sister” were constant in the classroom, as that was how all of the students got my attention.)  When I looked down and saw him, he grinned at me, the same grin he has in the photo.  I wondered if I should talk to his father, and tell him how smart his son was, but I was too embarrassed to initiate a conversation in Hindi, so I just smiled back at Vijay.  He seemed satisfied.

Atul was more mischievous than Vijay: if I ever left the classroom when something was written on the board, the board would be erased by the time I returned.  Atul always admitted his crime, so I suspect he did it mostly to get my attention.  He also brought me flowers on many days, as well as prasad (sugar clusters) from the nearby temple.  I saw Atul in town one day as well:  I was walking through the main bazaar and someone ran up to me, grabbed my wrist, said “Ma’am!” and ran away.  I looked over my shoulder to see Atul grinning at me for a second before his parents chided him to catch up.

Kailash was also a troublemaker, perhaps because he was one of the smallest boys in the fifth grade.  Sam often had to lift him off the floor and move him to a different place in the classroom, to stop him from hitting the other boys.  That probably encouraged him, really, but sometimes it seemed like the only solution.

All of our students really loved coming to school, even the ones who were lagging behind in their studies.  (To give an idea of what I mean by “lagging,” the smartest student in the class would read in English for fun and could do simple algebra like 10 + x = 15, and the slowest students in the class still did not know the alphabet and had some trouble adding large numbers.  There may even have been a student who could not really count in English, but I never really got him alone to find out for sure.)  The school did not look like much to us, but the kids had never seen anything better.  When it rained outside, it rained in our classroom.  The playground was a patch of dirt next to a pile of bricks and rubble.  There was very little furniture, so the students had nothing to write on but their books.  Every day the kids laid this long, skinny carpet against the wall, which they would then sit on.  Every time they moved the carpet, a cloud of brown dust would fly out of it, so I don’t think it was actually any cleaner than the concrete floor.  All the textbooks in the school had shredded covers and missing pages, not to mention that the content of the English textbook was ridiculously advanced for these students and boring and inaccurate, to boot.  While there was a small amount of electrical wiring in the school building–say, enough for two light bulb sockets–there was only one bulb.

Sam and I were shown the light bulb on the first day, when the Indian teachers interrupted our class for ten minutes to screw it in with an air of great ceremony.  It provided about ten watts of light.  Later, they took it away, probably so they could read the newspaper in their office, which was what they did most of the time.  One day the daily rainstorm came early, and it made our little classroom very dark.  The students were doing math and it was hard to see their papers, so I asked if we could have the bulb back.  The answer was no.

The Indian teachers were one of the most frustrating elements of my work.  Teaching public school is a cushy government job, which basically means it is hard to get fired.  The teachers sat in their office most of the time, ignoring the students.  Every now and then they would come out and hit a kid who was making too much noise during recess, or who had forgotten to bring their plate for lunch, but that was the extent of their participation.  I know it was not the presence of volunteers that made them sit in their office, because we did not have enough volunteers to teach every grade.  The grades that had no volunteer teacher had no teacher at all.  (This is not to say that all Indian teachers are so irresponsible, and there were some people working at the school who I liked.  One day I saw one of the cooks, a skinny older guy, sneak out of the kitchen to comfort a little girl who was crying after a teacher had slapped her for forgetting to bring a lunch plate.  Just to make you cringe a little more, this poor girl also had a raging fever that day, which I knew because she said “Didi, bukhaar!” [Sister, fever!] and made me feel her forehead.  A lot of the students would come to school sick and tell me similar things.  I didn’t know what to do.)

Despite all the frustrating parts, the kids were adorable and their enthusiasm for learning really made my work easy.  I wish I had stayed four more weeks, or longer.  I almost feel like I could do that kind of work my whole life, if I only I weren’t so attached to people who don’t live in India.

The Alchemy of Curry is a great post by cookbook author Raghavan Iyer at jugalbandi that makes me excited to go to India and try new food there.  Look at those photos, and that chart!  I want that cookbook.

This article on McCain’s temper will make you worry.  Just in case you want something else to worry about.

I am looking forward to reading some of these articles on molecular gastronomy by Pierre Gagnaire and Hervé This.  (Link in French.)  Joe and I missed a chance to see Hervé This speak in Paris–he gives a free lecture once a month–because, of all things, we had to work.

This is old news, I know, but I forgot to write about it earlier:  I have been slowly, slowly making my way through these 763 six-word song reviews.  I have liked almost everything he gives five circles.

This photo will amuse you, unless you are my mom.  Then you will be worried, because your daughter is going to a tiger reserve in India.  But she’s pretty sure nothing will happen.

This job leading a group of high school students on an international trip really appealed to me.  It doesn’t pay much but your travel is covered.  I started a job application with them and never finished because I decided to go to India instead.  But it sounds like a great program to me, and if I don’t work in the summer during graduate school, I might apply again.  (Not working in the summer seems pretty unlikely to me, too.)

Some flickr photos of Himachal Pradesh, where I’m going in a few weeks.  The low temperatures are now down to 66ºF, which is better than the 88ºF I was seeing a few weeks ago.  The high temperatures aren’t even that close to 100ºF any more.

I’m sorry I haven’t written anything here for ages.  Moving out and flying home were both hectic, and then once I had arrived there were people to see who were all going to graduate and leave me, and then there were vaccinations and visas to be obtained for my upcoming trip to India.

Yes, India.  I haven’t even finished uploading pictures from France yet, and already I’m planning to go somewhere else.  After hearing this in conversation, lots of people have rolled their eyes and said “Of course.”

Anyway, now I’m going to distract myself from the thought that I might never see my friends from college or Dijon again.  Maybe later, if my life calms down a little bit, I’ll tell you about the end of our stay in France.

I passed this sign while walking down Rue de la Liberté a few days ago, and it took me awhile to figure out what was wrong with it.  Later I went back and photographed it, as proof that it’s not my fault if I mélange the French and the English un peu, okay?

I bet if those clerks at the Préfecture had been cheerful, everyone would complain about how they smiled too much.  One day at lunch, some of my colleagues were complaining about the terrible healthcare in France.  It costs too much (!).  You have to wait a long time to see a doctor.  The horrors.  I was too stunned to say anything sassy about how much it costs to see a doctor or buy medicine in the U.S.  I’m not very sassy in French, anyway.

I’ve only had two bad experiences with French bureaucracy.  The first was this summer, trying to get all the paperwork necessary to enter France.  It was frustrating, but it all worked out without any screaming, so it can’t have been that bad.

The second was this week, when Joe and I received a package that we had mailed to the U.S. at our apartment in Dijon. The box was full of books and clothes, and we had sent it home ahead of us so that we would not have to carry extra weight in our luggage.  It cost 40 euros to mail the box but we thought it would be worth it.  I did check on the label that in case of non-delivery, I would pay for our package to be returned rather than “traité comme abandonné.”  I should have known, I suppose.

It was all torn up and there was no explanation why it had been returned.  The mailman was apologetic, and he said maybe if we asked at the post office, they could explain.  So he took the box to the post office, and we went the next day.  The woman at the post office was also apologetic, but she could not explain why our package had been sent back.  She did point out that it had clearly made it to the U.S., as there was USPS blue tape covering all the rips.  She said La Poste could not refund our money because it was the USPS who had rejected our package.  I’m sure if we go in the US, they will tell us it’s all France’s fault.

Then she charged us another 40 euros for our package’s return voyage across the Atlantic.  There was a lot of grumbling in English between Joe and me at this point, but I didn’t say anything to her.  How could yelling at that woman possibly have helped us?  I didn’t want to ruin her day, too.

Seriously, though, 40 euros!  Actually, 80 euros, since our original 40 was wasted as well.

I was most annoyed when the clerk helpfully suggested that in order to get our refund from the USPS, we should keep not only all the forms we had filled out but also the box itself as proof.  We were trying to free up space in our luggage, not bring home more stuff.

Anyway, I suppose it’s good to reflect on this because I’m supposed to be telling one of my classes what has “shocked” me about my stay in France.  So.  (1)  Bureaucracy isn’t nearly as bad as expected.  (2)  People complain about healthcare.

Another mystery is that in some ways, such as willingness to give a large percentage of their salary to the government so that everyone has access to healthcare, the French are very community-minded.  They won’t, however, clean up after their dogs.

This morning I had my last class with rowdy, lovable 2de 5, the sporty class whose students assured me last week “We are not the children.”  I made them chocolate chip cookies and they were really pleased.  I was sad to say goodbye, but it didn’t seem to have occurred to the students that we would never see each other again, so we didn’t talk about it much.

Instead we discussed the song above, “Four-Eyed Girl.”  I had them guess what it meant to be “four-eyed,” and almost all of the groups offered the explanation that the girl in question, a teacher, had eyes in the back of her head.  Nobody in this particular class wears glasses–except me, of course, which they don’t know because they’ve only seen me in contacts–so they were unable to put this new expression to use.

The first three groups of students were generally not impressed with the song, but the last group informed me that they were going to sing it.  ”Madame, now we chante!”

Well, okay, if you want.  And they did, with great enthusiasm and lots of air guitar.

After our week in Paris, Joe and I hopped on stood in line for hours in order to get on a plane to London.  My great-uncle and his wife picked us up at the airport.  We stayed the first night at their house in a little village in Buckinghamshire.  They made us a nice dinner and then we had really great conversation.  They are probably the two most well-traveled people I know.  I think they’ve been to every [permanently inhabited] continent.  I know for sure that he has been to 44 out of the 48 continental states.  (Keep in mind he’s English!  Otherwise it won’t be as impressive.)  Since retiring, they usually take six trips a year.  That is what I aspire to do in my retirement.

The next morning they drove us to the house of my cousins, who live in a little village in Oxfordshire.    We spent a few hours at their house, and then all six of us drove to suburban London to stay with some of their friends.  We had never met these friends, but they were very generous and had offered to let us stay at their house for the night.  They fed us an amazing New Year’s Eve dinner, and then we all stayed up to watch Big Ben strike 12.  The fireworks show was impressive, although I did hear a lot of comments like “How many hospitals could we have built with that tax money?”  Also, last new year’s I remember watching some crap band like Panic At the Disco on American TV–no, I am not putting their stupid exclamation mark–whereas in England they show Paul McCartney.

The next morning we were also fed an incredible breakfast (poached duck egg with fried haloumi in a yogurt-dill-garlic sauce) before we put on borrowed wellies and went out to hike in the mud.  This was epic mud.  Several inches deep at least, and looked like it had been churned with a rototiller before we arrived.  The hike was followed by (what else?) cups of tea–I’ve been forgetting to mention how many cups of tea we drank, but it was a lot–and then we went back to my cousins’ house.

My cousin’s husband is an amazing cook, and their gorgeous house is always full of gorgeous food, so being a guest there is great.  We played board games with the whole family, and had lots of conversations about American and English accents.  (We scandalized them with our pronunciation of “saxophonist.”  The English pronunciation is more like saxOPHonist, rather than SAXophonist.)

The next day we took the bus to London and wandered around, saw about 1/100th of what there is to see in London–if that even much.  We visited the British Museum, in which almost nothing is actually British, and Westminster Abbey, where we arrived too late to visit the Chamber of the Pyx.*  Not that the rest of the abbey wasn’t beautiful, of course, but what’s the use in telling you that?

It was bitterly cold and windy in London, but the sun did come out.  We walked all over, and sadly only arrived at St. Paul’s after its doors had closed.  We still got a good look at the outside, though.

The next day, still bitterly cold and windy, we took the bus into Oxford to meet one of Joe’s high school friends who is now studying at Exeter College.  We had a long lunch with her, catching up on everything, and by the time we finished eating, it was dark outside!  That’s England in January, I guess.  We had a brief visit at the Natural History museum, having seen many of the other sights of Oxford on our trip in May of 2007.  Then we revisited an old pub called the Turf Tavern, which was mentioned in an article in the New York Times recently.  I love pubs, and the Turf Tavern is a really excellent one.  They must have had at least ten real ales.

For our last night with my cousins, they took us out to an Indian restaurant.  Prior to this, I had a bad impression of Indian food in England.  I thought that, much like Indian food in France, the spices had been suppressed to appeal to local palates.  We ate some very bland Indian food in Oxford on our trip in May.  However, there is great Indian food available in England if you know where to look, or if you have my cousins to guide you to it.  My dish had real chillies in it!

So anyway, here ends my long-overdue account of our short trip to England.

*The Chamber of the Pyx is of special importance to us since we are fans of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, a series that we refer to so often, we usually just say “The Books.”  Going to London after reading The Books is exciting because you feel like you know the landmarks really well.

Bret’s Angry Dance, Flight of the Conchords episode 12.

On par with Napoleon Dynamite, I think.

I went to a Montessori school from pre-school to fifth grade, and I loved it.  In the Against School article, the author talks about his grandfather slapping him for saying he was bored.  One teacher at our Montessori school, still one of the best teachers I have ever had, used to tell us “Only boring people get bored.”

When I entered public school in the sixth grade, I used to go home from school in the afternoon and cry.  I can remember having a conversation with another desperately bored Montessori graduate, that same year, about how the only possible purpose of school was to keep us occupied for seven hours a day so we wouldn’t cause too much trouble out in the world.

I heard some parents talking recently about their elementary-school age child who had recently stopped going to a Montessori school and started going to a public elementary school.  He, too, would come home from school and cry.  After a few weeks, his concerned mother asked him if school was any better, and he responded “I think I’m getting used to it.”

When I arrived at the conclusion of the “Against School” article, and even before then, I was thinking of Maria Montessori’s educational philosophy.

Scientific observation has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment. The task of the teacher becomes that of preparing a series of motives of cultural activity, spread over a specially prepared environment, and then refraining from obtrusive interference. Human teachers can only help the great work that is being done, as servants help the master. Doing so, they will be witnesses to the unfolding of the human soul and to the rising of a New Man who will not be a victim of events, but will have the clarity of vision to direct and shape the future of human society. - Maria Montessori, Education for a New World

Let them manage themselves, indeed.

The woman at my school in charge of all the finances, the intendante, is very sweet.  I’ve been to see her a few times to buy lunch at school, so she knows who I am.  She is always smiling and very talkative, and she doesn’t like to pronounce my name so she calls me “la petite.”  As in, one day when I was in her office, she said to herself:  ”Oh, la petite, quelquefois je la vouvoie et quelquefois je la tutoie!”  (Oh, the little one, sometimes I call her “vous” and sometimes I call her “tu”!)

A lot of the professors and staff at school refer to me as “la petite,” actually, since that day the first week when I was sitting in the teachers’ lounge before class and they demanded to know what a student was doing in the teachers’ lounge.  The German assistant is equally petite, but apparently the title is mine.

One day I needed the key to the régie, the little room full of TVs, computers, CD players and other equipment at our school, so I could show my students a film clip.  The woman who is normally in charge of the keys was out, so the intendante came upstairs with me.  She unlocked the door on this dusty closet of technology, and gasped as if she had stumbled into the Cave of Wonders:  ”Mais c’est quoi, tous ces trucs!”  (”But what’s this, all this stuff!”)

Joe and I have adopted this phrase and we say it often–entering a cathedral, opening the fridge, admiring a view on a hike, sweeping out the dusty corners.  Tous ces trucs indeed.

And one last little tidbit:  This morning I offered my class of secondes (sophomores) the chance to name their own teams, given that yesterday so much joy was taken in changing the team numbers.  The first match was the Dream Team versus the Kebab Team.  The second was the Best Team versus The Winners.  Also in the first match, I had a member of the Kebab Team say to his teammates, exasperated after a poor showing, “Maintenant, eux, ils vont faire du speedage!”

Speedage!  I thought that was great.  The whole sentence could be translated as something like “Now, they’re gonna go really fast!” but I don’t think that has as much character as “du speedage.”

I was keeping score on the board, where I had written “team 1″ and “team 2.”  When my third group of students came in, one of their first questions was “Madame, can we change the team name?”

“Okay,” I said, “but nothing vulgar.”

I hesitated to say that last part, worried I might be giving them ideas, but this class has proudly demonstrated their large vocabulary of English curse words in the past.  The third group is also particularly notable for silly stunts–these two footballeurs who sit together in the back, the ones who were pushing for the team-name change, have been insisting to me for weeks that one was raised in Madagascar and the other in Brazil.  The first boy has given me a lot of details on his fictional upbringing in Madagascar, and he has also recently informed me that he is the best player on Dijon Football Côte d’Or, the League 2 football team in town.  I usually play along with these lies because they are always in English.

“No, madame, we just change the number.”

So one kid from each team came up to the board and teams 1 and 2 became, respectively, teams 4 and 7.

The new numbers were still on the board when my fourth group of students entered.  There was some whispered discussion of the odd new team-numbering system.

I explained:  ”The last group wanted to change their team numbers.  If you want to change your team numbers, too, you can do that.”

Two boys in the front of the class, both rugby players and both smart but also big goofballs, conferred for a second and then one of them said, very solemnly:  ”No, no, we are not the children.”

“You’re going to the Reserve–”  I started to ask one of the three men hanging around the dock in Porto.  I had planned on finishing my sentence with of Scandola and the village of Girolata today at 9:30?, but one of them saved me the trouble.

“Absolutely.”

“Get in,” volunteered another.

“Well, I’m waiting for my boyfriend, he–”

“Oh, you’re waiting for your boyfriend?  Well, then you can’t come.”  He grinned.

I laughed but it was mostly because how the hell else was I supposed to respond?  The three men were silent for a moment while I anxiously looked up the street for Joe.  He was at the other end of Porto, which is a small town, but a long one, stretching almost two kilometers from the sea to the top of the nearby hill.  He wasn’t with me because neither of us had any cash and the cash machine was a long way off.  We were short on time, so I had gone down to the harbor to find the boat and make sure we could get on it, a task which possibly included begging them to wait a few minutes for Joe to arrive.

The men on the dock, too cheerful and chatty to let me worry in peace, picked up our conversation again.  ”English?”

“No, American.”

“American, yeah!” said one.  I’m sorry for the lack of distinguishing description of these guys, but I was squinting into the sun and they were all sort of scruffy and lanky and cheerful and friendly while still being just the tiniest bit lecherous.  Anyway, back to the conversation:  ”Las Vegas!”

“Yeah, I want to go to Las Vegas,” said another of the men.  This is a familiar sentiment, because my students talk about Las Vegas fairly often.  They don’t seem to be able to differentiate it from Los Angeles, or have any idea where it is or that its most famous attractions are forbidden to high school students, but boy do they want to go.

“Where do they have the guns and the cowboys?” He mimicked pulling a pistol out of a holster at his hip.  ”Texas?”

“Yes, Texas.”  I thought about adding something here, about my family maybe, or how Texas is really beautiful in some parts, but I didn’t.  A lot of the students and teachers at my school have asked me about guns in America with a mixture of curiosity and horror, and I didn’t really feel like tackling that topic with strangers.  I’m a quiet person in French.  (Maybe you think I’m quiet in English, too, but believe me, you ain’t seen [heard] nothing yet.)

“I want to go to Texas!”

All three men nodded and laughed.  I shouldn’t have been surprised, having seen the piles of shotgun shells collected in the roadside ditches around Porto.  Hunting is clearly popular in Corsica.  I suppose guns must be, too.

After this revelation, I smiled at the men and briefly turned around to look for Joe.  When I turned back a second later, the next question contained a French word I had never heard.  Ee-la-ree.  Ilari?

Half a second later, on hearing the word Obama, it dawned on me.

Oh.  Hillary.  Lots of people at school have asked me questions about the US elections, but very few seem to know who John McCain is.  My students think it’s a only contest between Clinton and Obama, and they love Obama.  McCain is the name of a brand of frozen French fries here, so my students always giggle if I mention him.

“I’m going to vote for Obama,” I said.  The question had actually been “Who’s going to win?” but the answer to that is a much less interesting “I don’t know.”

“Good,” said my Las Vegas- and Texas-loving dock friends.  ”That will bring change.”

We have returned from Corsica.  We went hiking every day, tried regional specialties like brocciu and vin de myrthe, stuck our feet in the Mediterranean, met local characters on the bus and saw hundreds of lizards.  It was great.

The rest of my pictures are on flickr, as usual, and Joe’s will be available once he goes through all 800 and carefully selects the best.  I’m not making up that number, by the way.

Also thanks to Joe for helping me make the little ten-pointed star image that now appears next to the post title.  Go math!

I considered tricking my students but since they often don’t understand me when I’m telling the truth, it seemed too mean. Instead, I tried to explain what happens in the English-speaking world on April Fool’s, but I didn’t have any good examples of hoaxes. What I needed was this list.

When my students are good–as they were today, which I should mention so you don’t think they’re horrible all the time–I love my job. When the secondes fall all over themselves to be the first to answer a question, and when the terminales walk out of their mock oral exams grinning instead of trembling, I feel good. Even when the students are bad, it’s still a good job because I only work twelve hours a week and I have a lot of paid vacation, and I live in France. But getting paid to write about food and travel? Yes please. And I wouldn’t turn down a chance to study linguistics.

There’s nothing stopping me from being a freelance writer, except a nagging feeling that I am neither good enough at writing, nor do I possess the dedication necessary to improve. Ever since confirming my acceptance at the University of Wisconsin, every other option suddenly has a shiny new appeal. Writing, law school, investment banking, you name it–if I’m not remotely qualified to do it, I’ve thought about it.

But the light at the end of the long, long tunnel of dissertation writing is that maybe some day my real job would be like the assistantship, except better. And since I’m just barely qualified to go to graduate school in French–sometimes my students smirk when I mention my plan to teach French, due to the enormous amount of mistakes I make in front of them, and also the fact that smirking comes naturally to them–I guess that’s what I’ll do.

On a slightly different subject, but connected to making French mistakes in front of French adolescents, this Wednesday a group of American high school students on a spring break tour of France stopped by my lycée. They did make me feel a little better about my French, if I didn’t think too hard about the fact that I’ve had twice the amount of education they have. They did not, however, make me feel better about my ability to motivate my students to speak in English.

Apparently I’m too old. What I needed to break the silences, all this time, was a group of American sixteen-year-olds to come to the classroom. They danced the Soulja Boy, but thankfully did not explain the lyrics, and said things like “Noo, um, boovay, um, BOW-COO lay weekends!” and my students could not have been more smitten. I was proud of my students and their comparatively excellent English.  I was also proud of the American students for being so openhearted and eager to meet new people.  We’re a nice country, we really are.  Not to say I wasn’t a little bit embarrassed about my country’s attempt at foreign language education, because I was. Also, Soulja Boy. I’m embarrassed about that too.

My other favorite part of the day was playing interpreter for some of the adult chaperones as they went on a tour of the science classrooms. The discussion did not take long to turn to evolution, and the way nobody bats an eye about teaching it in France. That was the most difficult part to interpret, but also the most interesting.

Many of the students volunteered to accompany the visiting Americans on their walking tour of Dijon, just to talk some more. It was great to see them so interested in speaking English. In their words, “C’était trop bien!”