Le Café.

Lately I've been fighting a lot with my internal clock.

American internal clocks and French internal clocks are very different. For example, normal dinner time in America is around 6:30, right? But none of my French friends start thinking about dinner until 8, and they usually eat around 8:30 or 9. So I have two choices: I can eat alone at 6:30, or I can starve until 9. (Which, by the way, is when I get tired and start thinking of bed...)

I also find that back home during the week, we don't do much socializing. The work week is focued on work. You go to work, you come home tired, you cook dinner, you read a book, watch TV, or visit facebook, and you go to bed. Then you wake up and do it all again.

One day last week, I went to work. I came home tired. I made myself dinner. I started to read my book (Misery, by Stephen King. It was terrible, but it's slim pickins for English books at the public library). And that's when, at 8:00pm, my friends asked me to go to the rec center and play a game of squash with them! (Thank you for gasping over-dramatically at this sentence with me.) 

Basically, I told them: you all are crazy, it's entirely too late to go run around a squash court for two hours, and...don't you all have work tomorrow? Then I explained to them how you are supposed to conduct yourself during the week. They laughed. «So...all you do is just work and sleep? When do you see your friends?» «Well, on the weekends,» I explained. «On the weekends you can do whatever you want.» A pause. «So I have to do five days of unhappiness for two days to see my friends? This is life?» ummm......

Ok touché. Good point. But even so...where do they get all this energy? How do they stay active all day long?? 

I figured it out, the next morning over a cup of coffee. (Which I desperately needed, because of course after that conversation I reluctantly forced myself to go to squash...). It's coffee. Coffee is the source of all the French people's power. This is why they are never tired. This is why they wake up at 6:00 and work all day and cook all night and then go play squash for two hours with their friends. This is why there are entire stores devoted to some VERY special coffee machines and colorful coffee capsules. And why every.single.person. I know here owns one (or two....they also make them for tea!)

Fancy Coffee Maker

The coffee comes in capsules

You buy the capsules (which are the colorful boxes behind the counter) at a store like this...

  

...where they are displayed beautifully like this. And you can sample them for free! 

I never really liked coffee. But I also don't really like the way my head hits the table when I fall asleep either.

Les boîtes de nuit

Last night I went out with some model friends to my first Réunionnaise night club. The night clubs have big patios with breezy palm trees, soft strings of lights, and giant dance floors. They play a surprisingly catchy techno mix of English and French pop songs. Everyone dances. Everyone sits at small round tables, and everyone buys bottles of Smirnoff vodka that cost 100 euro.

Going out with my model friends is quite terrifying. They aren't like my other friends here, who don't mind speaking slow for me and repeating themselves several times. My model friends speak fast and a few seem slightly annoyed if I ask for a repeat. The conversation feels like I am balancing on a giant ball that keeps moving forward...with or without me still on top. At any second, I could fall off. I'm always nervous, I'm always straining to catch any word I recognize in the sentence as it flies by, so I can make some educated guess on what they are saying. It's a stressful game, but I confess that I kind of like the adrenaline. The chance to succeed or fail. To practice.

In the nightclub, though, everyone speaks the same language. The music is too loud for words, so people resort to a kind of sign-body language. I'm good at this language, thanks to the years I spent waiting tables in front of live bands. Last night, I sat back and just watched the conversations for a little while. The girl next to me was complaining about how big her nose was and how she wanted to cut it off (cue scissor hand movement across the nose.) The girl across the dance floor was telling her friend to cheer up (cue constant «smile» movement with fingers across an over dramatic grin). A couple at the table next to ours was arguing because the girl wanted to dance and the boy wanted to leave. (There was a certain amount of  flailing of arms in this conversation). It made me laugh because these are conversations that could happen at a club anywhere in the world. Nightclub language is universal. 

The parties here don't stop until 6am. As an ex-bar employee, I cringe at this. You also don't tip, so I wonder how the bartenders are paid. Maybe it helps that a vodka red bull costs 12 euro. The music is predominantly American, which I found a little surprising because no one knows what the words mean or what the song is about, including the best of my English-speaking friends.

Mostly, I learned that in nightclub language, words don't matter. 

Just dance. 

C'est la vie.

Things have been busy. This American girl finds herself now with three jobs. How did this happen, you may ask? I don't know. I think it is in the water we drink.

Teaching is going very well. I even love lesson planning. The kids are no longer afraid of me, though, so this makes class a little more difficult and I always leave totally exhausted. How do parents of young children manage this for more than a few hours at time? I have no idea.

I also started to nanny...not sure exactly how this happened, it just kind of did. Other American assistants give English lessons for extra money but I'm not really interested in that...I'd rather do something where I can speak/learn just a little French too. My first family has a little boy who is seven months old. His mom is English and his dad is French, he is in the Navy so they live on post. Being back on a military base is a little weird. Mostly, I'm just jealous that the French military gets to wear shorts...

My second family has three little girls and spent 3 years in California. They now own the only frozen yogurt place here...brought the idea back from Cali. Genious. The girls still speak pretty good English and it's what they use when they talk to each other. However...when they want mom to know they are fighting, she tells me, they switch to French. I find this hilarious. Mom worries they won't progress much anymore, with no one here to talk to and the English in schools far beneath their level. So I pick them up from school once a week and we speak in English for a few hours until someone comes home from work.

I have had maybe two modeling jobs per week...nothing big just standing around in heels, being a live advertisement. These jobs are valuable all the same...I am constantly meeting people, speaking in French and um...finding myself in some bizarre situations...

There's time for a social life after all this, of course. I'll write more about that later...

So this is life now. It's settled a bit...not to a normal routine...I suspect I'll get that down a few weeks before it's time to leave. Isn't that how it always goes? :-) But it's good. I'm happy. 

A Very Réunion Thanksgiving!

The cool thing about teaching kids about the United States is that I end up doing research on things I've never had to think about before. For example, I never knew that Lincoln was the one who first declared Thanksgiving a National holiday, set on the last Thursday of November. Or that Roosevelt changed it in 1941 to the 4th (and not always last) Thursday in November to give the economy a slight boost. Or that Thanksgiving is a blend of already existent Native American and European end of harvest festivals.

My kids knew a little bit about Halloween, but this was the first time they were hearing about Thanksgiving. To help give them an idea, I brought in my laptop with pictures of my previous Thanksgivings, got a Thanksgiving song off of youtube, and made my own flashcards depicting important things like family dinner, turkey, and parades! Then they made cards for their parents :-)

Why did I not become an artist? I mean really. 

Thanksgiving Stickers, sent to me by my lovely friend Kara! The kids loooved them.

My roommate and I decided randomly at the beginning of the week that we would host a small dinner for all the assistants in our city. We had everyone bring in a dish, and we were in charge of the turkey. Which....I might add, is not something you find too often here. Luckily...my friend Yazid's sister is a butcher! So on Tuesday, she, um...prepared our turkey for us, which was available for pick up Wednesday. It all came together wonderfully.

We are still in France, after all! 

Don't forget the wishbone! 

I won! Don't worry, I made a very beautiful wish :-)

And of course, we played the game where everyone goes around the table and says what they are thankful for. I played this game with my students as well, and they said adorable things like "chocolate!" "my sister!" " my clothes!" "jewelry!" "puppies!"

It made me think this week about what I am thankful for. Honestly, I don't even know where to start. I live on a tropical island. I'm getting paid to play games with kids and sing songs and learn French. I came home from work Thursday to find three boxes of candy, stickers, books and love letters from my amazing friends back in Texas. My friends on the island have done nothing but miracle after miracle for me...and I've only known them for two months!! My family never once has made me feel guilty or discouraged me from traveling the world to follow my dreams, even when I have to miss weddings, birthdays, holidays, funerals. I have a crazy Aunt and a Jimmy who have never given up on me. And a very supportive, loving boyfriend who has never once complained that I left him (on his birthday none the less) to go on this adventure all alone. And of course I have a little puppy waiting for me to come back and get him one day. 

Things aren't always easy...and there are some days when I just wanna give up and go home. But you know...no matter how scary the future is...how unsure...I have a really strong support system and a really amazing life. 

And that is definitely something to give thanks for.

Oh, The Places You'll Go!

This past week, the assistants who teach elementary school levels had a kind of "teaching workshop" where we learned about the French education system and methods for teaching young children a second (well in this case, third) language. In general, it was pretty helpful...but it definitely would have been more helpful to get this info before I spent a month teaching blindly...

The workshop was held in a city called Le Tampon (...) which is an hour away by car, and two hours away by bus. They told us we were on our own for lodging, travel, and food...so I was a little stressed. That's when Sylvie came to the rescue. It turns out that her boyfriend, Manu, lives in Le Tampon, just a short distance away from the place where the workshop was being held! She goes down there almost every night, and said they would be glad to have me stay with them for the week!!

It was amazing to be part of their lives for a week. Here are some of the things we did:

Went to go watch Manu's handball team. Handball is a riot to watch. The spectators are very into it, the game is slightly...violent, and it's pretty fast paced! 

Watched Sylvie at choir practice....the two guys to the right are Pascal and Theirry, an amazing couple who live in a big, gorgeous house with a lovely pool. They let me swim in the back while I listened to them sing beautiful four person hymns...then suddenly they started singing White Christmas ( my favorite Christmas song!!) and I admit, I might have burst into tears a little. Later, though, they let me come sing the English songs with them and it was incredible! 

A big group of Sylvie's friends came with us to her mom's house in Cilaos. Cilaos is easily my favorite city here so far. You have to swerve up a mountain side in your car for an hour and a half to get there, but it's so worth it. It's this little city tucked in the middle of all the highest mountains. Everywhere you turn, they tower above you. We went on a  breathtaking hike there and had a lovely Creole dinner after. 

Rafted down the rapids in Saint-Benoit. The pictures are from this one part where you get out of your boats, walk back up the rapid you just went down, and then go down the rapid without the boat!! I was terrified, but if you lay right, you just kind of slide over the rocks when you hit one....Sylvie was a little sick and the water was really cold, so she stayed out of this one and took pics for us :-) 

I got a French boyfriend. His name is Blackie and he is one of Manu's dogs. He loves me a lot. Every time I went outside, he would run up to greet me and jump up and give me hugs and kisses. Then...I learned one of his brothers at Manu's mom's house has babies now!! You have no idea how thoroughly I considered taking one back to Texas with me....

Checked out the market in Saint-Pierre. Strawberries and mangos are in season...my favorites!! 

It's been a pretty amazing week and I have some wonderful friends.

The Art of the Table

After I was accepted into this program, I found out that one of my college professors grew up in La Réunion. I told her I was coming to teach here for a while, and she was thrilled. Her mother, who lived here longer than she did, came to visit Texas this past summer, and Madame Rebourcet arranged for us all to meet and discuss life on La Réunion. It was very sweet, and Mother Rebourcet was very helpful and very excited to talk about her island.

Mother Rebourcet lives near Paris now, but this month, she is visiting her brother here. When she sent me an email to say she was coming, I of course invited her over for dinner, which we had last night. 

I was so SO nervous. I've entertained back in the states a few times...threw a couple parties...but it was very different. There are very foreign social etiquette rules here. Like, for example, if you invite someone out to do something, (it seems) like the inviter always pays. Any time my parents invite me to lunch, or Yazid and his friends take me to do some activity, or Sylvie invites me to coffee, and I try to pay my part, they all say the same thing in the same way: "No, I invited you." And give me some strange look like I should know better. Maybe I'm wrong and they are just being nice to the foreign girl, and maybe they know we are getting paid minimum wage....but still, I feel like there is a strong rule about invitees vs. inviters here. In America, it seems like we all understand we are all broke, so someone proposes a get together, and everyone takes care of themselves, or they don't go if they can't afford to. Even with family things...if my brother ever invited me to a restaurant with him and his family, I usually paid my own tab. 

Anyway, I knew I had responsibilty as the inviter. So I was determined to make everything right. I asked Yazid about some etiquette rules: do I need wine? Do I use my wine, or the wine they bring? Do I need a salad if I have a quiche for an appetizer? Do I serve the salad with my shrimp pasta? What kind of bread do I get? Is it always on the table or just at first? 

I went to the farmer's market and got fresh veggies. I went to the fish market and got fresh shrimp. I went to a fromagerie for some good wine. Then I spent two hours dicing vegetables, peeling shrimp, getting ready. I was SO nervous when she finally arrived. 

Everything etiquette-wise went very smoothly...except maybe I didn't plan on the french habit of dragging out courses with conversation, because the quiche and the pasta were kind of cold when we got to them. But it was wonderful!! Mother Rebourcet (Rosemonde) doesn't speak much English...maybe a word here and there, and after three hours of non-stop conversation...I was thrilled. 

Three hours of non-stop conversation in French? When did that become something I could do? 

She brought us fresh melons from her brother's garden for dessert, and then I walked her down to her car, where she started talking about the Haunted House across the street! Apparently, when she was little, she would always walk down here just to see that house, it was her favorite. A rich old lady lived there with her maid, but when she died, she had no one in her life to leave the house to. So it just sits there. Rosemonde was very sad at it's current condition...covered in weeds and graffiti. I told her about my obsession with it. Even in its current state, the house is still a breathtaking sight. 

It was a great night. And totally worth the two hours it took me to clean the kitchen and do the dishes (sans dishwasher) after. It just means that after I perfect the art of entertaining here...it will be twice as easy to do back home :-) Leave it to France to domesticate me....

the little things & the real things.

The last week was rough.

It all started when my french parents took me to the travel agency to reserve my tickets home for Christmas. Instead, however, we found that tickets off the island have already doubled...to about $2000 to even get just halfway to Texas. It totally broke my heart, but you know...it's ok...I have friends here who have invited me to be with them for the holidays, and it can never hurt me to try something different...to stay here and speak French instead of going back to America for a month and possibly losing everything I've learned. Sure I was sad, but it's not the end of the world.

But then....

I filed for a 70% salary advancement when I first got here. Usually, assistants aren't paid their first paycheck until Dec 1st, which includes two month's pay. But you can ask for the advance, which I was told, would arrive on Nov 1st. So that's what I planned for. That's how much money I took out from my American account, and that's what I counted pennies to make it to. Except Nov 1st was a random holiday. So I waited a day. Then two. Then three. By the 5th, I still had not been paid. Which means I was also 5 days late on my rent, my wi-fi bill, and that my account was now in the negative because they even charge you some fee for not having any money!!

After this, the prinipal at my school gave me a packet of papers saying in two weeks, I am to report to Le Tampon (...) for a week long workshop about teaching english. How I get there, where I stay, and what I eat is all on my own dime. (Or in my case, my already negative dime).

Later that day, I find out some loose ends I had to leave open and in the hand of friends in Texas (my car, my dog, bills in the mail etc) because I simply ran out of time--were still unfinished and now late and/or causing problems with people.

And finally, it turns out that as nice as my roommate is...this apartment is just too small of a living space for two people! We are constantly running in to each other cooking, doing laundry, sleeping, in the shower...it's terrible. And to not have my own room to retreat to for some alone time is wearing on me. On top of this, a few of my french friends have offered me a free room in their houses...so paying 1/3 of my pay to sleep on a couch is suddenly something I wish I was not doing.

soooooooooo i guess you can say i've been worrying a lot the last couple of days, and this is in direct contrast to one of the first phrases I learned on this island..."Pas de soucis!" I locked myself in my apartment for a day and read an entire book in bed.

Saturday night, I forced myself to get up. I had a wonderful creole dinner with PA, Nathalie, Stephanie, her boyfriend, and little Jeremy, and I was snapped back into life.

Everything is going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay.

Today I layed on the beach with Yazid and Noemie, and our relationship graduated to the next level because we had these great talks about religion, love, and friendship. Eventually, they both fell asleep in the sand right before the sun started to set. I walked closer to the roaring waves.

When I was little, my dad took my brother and I to Canada for a couple of weeks. I remember running as fast as I could down the hill behind the house, stretching my arms out like wings, and leaping straight over salty waves. For a few seconds, I really, really believed I could fly.

Standing there in the sand this afternoon, I felt my heart skip a few beats...that feeling of reckless freedom and hope faintly crept back into my blood. What was it that had me so worried, again?

I turned around to head back to my friends. But they were already right behind me, watching the waves break.

We smiled at each other.