Cauliflower, Fennel and Wine

We’re starting to settle into the routine of life. Even in a foreign country, in time, comes routine. And, a regular part of my daily routine involves a trip to one of the local markets, which is one of the best parts of Paris in my mind.

We’re adopting a “European model” of life—our small fridge holds just enough groceries for a few days and most of the regular guests in our dorm-size fridge are things that are unlikely to be found in our fridge in the States.

We always have at least two types of cheese (and one of them is probably smelly in a good way), a variety of yogurts (this week we have coconut yogurt in small glass jars that is both cheap and tasty), diet coke (ok, not everything is a stranger), red wine (honestly a bottle lasts us a couple days here and the Gibson House Wine costs under two euros and its perfectly tasty—really!), and a collection of whatever other ingredients I have stumbled upon in my market journeys.

Josh refers to me as “MacGyver” in the kitchen—each day’s menu is based more on vision, intuition and improvisation, rather than planned menus. I tried a few recipes and they didn’t work out so well—I think I felt confined.

My favorite way to shape the menu is to find the “sale bins”. Each produce guy at the market (and yes, it usually is a man for some reason) has bins for a euro or a euro and a half full of things that are still in good shape, but are ripe enough he knows they won’t last more than a day or two. It’s a cheap way to buy a good amount of produce that is ready to eat immediately—perfect!

This week, I found a great deal on tomatoes (we’ve had tomato sauce, roasted tomatoes, sliced tomatoes and we still a have a few left), fennel (we’ve had fennel salad, sautéed fennel and we’ll keep having it for a few more days), eggplant (we’ve had roasted eggplant and I am considering making ratatouille) and clementines (which have been the omnipresent fruit since our arrival and have been in a part of at least one meal each day since our arrival). I also noticed that cauliflower is starting to show up (so we’ve had roasted cauliflower and cauliflower soup).

Josh is more than a good sport and has nearly stopped questioning the random mounds of produce that greet him each evening. He did ask today while staring at three enormous heads of fennel (when one head will usually last at least two meals)—“Was fennel having a going out of business sale?” For some reason he didn’t even take note of the five eggplants that were also on the table. And yes mom, I only paid 3 euros for all of it! [Note: Josh is also already predicting that one of my complaints about the states will be the lack of fennel. If you happen to be out and about and see fennel—can someone tell me how much it is a pound?] I think we might even be getting our five veggies a day.

We’re having a dinner guest tomorrow and therefore a trip to the market is on tap after French lessons. There is a market at Place Monge on Wednesdays and its on the way home from my teacher’s apartment—how convenient! We’re having pork, which I bought today, but I still need fruit for the tart—though I wonder, how bad could a fennel and cherry jam tart really be?

sPg

Equal but Separate, Part Two

Here, beloved readers, is part two of my manifesto (be sure to read my last post if this is going to make even a fragment of sense). Stay tuned next week for something more in line with the light-hearted drivel you expect from me.

FREE SPEECH
Both France and the US hold liberty dear, and no liberty is more central than the freedom of expression. But once again, the two countries part ways on how they allow this right to play out, or the limits to its exercise. The US again pushes this freedom to the limit, banning only expressions like the famous “shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater,” where speech directly creates danger or harm to others.

France honors the same principal, and includes the same limit, but defines harm quite differently. In France, it is illegal to deny the Holocaust happened. It was within the past couple of months made illegal to deny the Armenian Holocaust happened. You could either face steep fines, or literally go to jail, for either. In the aftermath of the Danish/Mohammed cartoon scandal last year, a French satirical paper re-ran the same cartoons out of solidarity, and currently the newspaper is facing charges. Perhaps the French mood is changing—at the trial for the newspaper, several presidential candidates showed up to testify in support of the newspaper.

When the French see American neo-Nazi or Ku Klux Klan marches covered in the media, they take it as additional evidence that our culture is more anti-Semitic and racist than theirs is. The difference is similar to the equality question above (maybe our country has too many shrinks) — we thrive on tearing the scab off our problems, admitting them, wearing them on our sleeve, letting it all hang out, perhaps bordering on a sick obsession. The French, on the other hand, take a more ostrich-like perspective—if they don’t see it, it doesn’t exist. My opposition to the French model is on two levels—first, what if the speech (even if it’s something as hateful as Holocaust denial) is the canary in the coal mine? What if it the hate speech allows the nation to see that it’s profoundly failing on a basic public policy basis, and inter-group resentment (think this summer’s French suburban riots) is brewing. I think it’s better to find that out. I also believe very strongly in the idea of the marketplace of ideas. Sure, let the neo-Nazis or Ku Klux Klan march, because they’ll turn out a few dozen people, whereas the protest will draw hundreds or thousands, and an impressionable young child watching the events will take away the correct lesson on who to emulate.

A pending counter-example to the general American openness is the long-term effort to ban flag burning. I think it’s another case where you let the moron do whatever s/he wants, and you trust your compatriots (and perhaps yourself) enough to let the transgressor know that this kind of behavior is problematic. But the idea of flag burning leads us to our next subject, that of patriotism.

PATRIOTISM
People in both France and the US clearly love their countries. But in France, strong declarations of patriotism are considered to be dangerous potential rightist tendencies. Whenever French people visit America, they are shocked by the number of American flags they see. In France, you only see French flags that are flown at government offices, and perhaps those for sale in tourist shops. The 2002 soccer World Cup was a rare exception to this tendency, with French fans painting their faces red, white, and blue and their team’s ultimate victory triggering celebrations by millions in the street. But, even in the aftermath of this good fortune, the French examined their patriotic response, wondering how fragile the distinction was between a stadium full of patriotic soccer fans, and an excessively whipped-up rally of pre-fascists.

Perhaps, with patriotism as with Holocaust denial, the much more immediate historical relevance and/or complicity of the French during World War II, leads them to better understand what’s really at risk if things go too far. They would rather bring things to a stop too soon than too late, risking a small preemptive loss of freedom to prevent its wholesale loss (such as what they directly experienced just 60 years ago.)

GUNS
Speaking of war, both countries love their guns. Both nations have their interest groups that fight tooth and nail to maintain their rights on this front. In 2002, Jean Saint-Josse, the leader of the French Hunt, Fish, Nature, Traditions (Chasse, pêche, nature, traditions) Party received 1,204,863 votes, or 4.23%, of the votes in the first round of the presidential election. The French presidential election consists of two rounds, the first which involves all possible candidates running in one field and the two highest-scoring candidates advancing to a winner-takes-it-all second round thereafter. The popular saying among the French is that they vote with their hearts in the first round and with their heads in the second round. All this to say that at least 4.23% of the French thought hunting an important enough issue that they put their vote where their heart was and voted for a presidential candidate uniquely on this front. This party would seem to be the group that the National Rifle Association in America once was, or in times of criticism, still claims to be.

Yet, French opposition to handguns, automatic weapons, and the like is nearly universal. They just don’t understand the American fascination with these kinds of weapons, and they constantly wonder when we’ll decide that their impact on our society is too tragic to be allowed to continue. Most French people don’t know about our Second Amendment, and trace our gun obsession instead back to our cowboy history (?!?). But just because they try to contextualize it doesn’t mean they understand it.

Sadly, in the aftermath of the shootings in Utah and Pennsylvania last week, the French all-news radio network led with the story, and editorialized that the two shootings should reignite the debate in our country about the impact of guns on our society. Sadly, later that same day I checked the Washington Post website, and the Utah story was listed as a minor, headline-only link, and the Pennsylvania story never made it into the website headlines at all. For the American debate to be reignited, it would have to be taking place, I suppose.


The conclusion—I don’t really have one. I just find it fascinating that two countries with intertwined democratic histories and overlapping core beliefs can exercise those principals in such different ways. I love to collect anecdotes and examples of how each countries’ freedoms play out. So, let me know what you think, and stay tuned for updates as the year continues.

Equal but Separate, Part One

Sorry, faithful reader(s), for the delay in posting my latest blog entry. I guess I fell off the blog wagon (who knew blogs had wagons?!?) Inexplicably, our schedules have felt quite tight, even once we found our apartment and I got settled at work. So far, our year seems to be the ultimate proof of Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” (I meant to compare it to Murphy’s Law, but who has the time?)

Doubly sorry to those of you who love my “vignettes” series of postings, because this is not one of them. Stay tuned to my next missive for more random mental wanderings. Today’s blog is more serious/political/academic/reflective, and it’s the anti-vignette in terms of length. Don’t worry, this will pass, more levity soon…

A disclaimer: as I say at the start of my tours of Paris for visitors: everything I say will be more or less “in the ballpark” accurate. Be inspired by the general principles and ideas, don’t hassle me with technical historical specifics…

INTRODUCTION
First, a basic bi-national history lesson. During our Revolution, France greatly aided the Colonies financially and militarily (admittedly mostly to piss off the Brits). [This is the counterpart to the cocky American rejoinder to the theoretical rude Frenchman—“If it wasn’t for us during World War II, you’d be speaking German. Well, if it wasn’t for the French during the American Revolution, we’d be speaking, well, at least with an accent.]

Lafayette (of Lafayette Park fame, or vice versa) volunteered to lead American troops into battle, and George Washington served as a mentor and father figure to him. During and after the Revolution (the treaty ending the war was signed in Paris), Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson served as the first US ambassadors to France, and became part of a bicultural mutual admiration society there. Our fledgling democracy served as a role model to French revolutionaries, but much more importantly, the dire straits the French economy found itself in (due to their going greatly into debt while helping fund us during our Revolution) led to great dissatisfaction among the masses, culminating in the French Revolution. To thank George Washington for the inspiration and assistance each had provided the other in times of revolutionary need, Lafayette provided Washington with one of the very few keys to the Bastille prison (it still hangs today at Mount Vernon).

All of this is a long way of saying that our two democracies were founded at nearly the same time (1776/1787 and 1789) and our two revolutions were in indirect relation to each other. We share many of the same founding principles: separation of church and state, liberty, equality, free speech, and the like. But what is most interesting to me is that, in many cases, our two nations interpret these founding principles entirely differently. That’s what I want to talk about today.

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
Let’s look at the separation of church and state. A bit more history: after the Revolution, the insurgents strove to suppress all signs of the Catholic Church, which they considered elitist and anti-democratic. They commandeered churches and converted them to civic purposes (even storage spaces such as salt vaults), smashed statues they thought evoked religious (or royal) figures, tossed holy relics into the Seine, and chiseled the letters “St.” (meaning “saint,” not “street”) out of saint-named street signs. They even created a new calendar, replacing our “Anno Dominis” year count with a new start at Year One, and replacing month names (since they are all part of the Justinian or Gregorian calendars created by popes) with new names based on nature and the cycle of the harvest. Long story short, they strove to create a civic space that was entirely free from any religious influence or even presence.

This period, though obviously long-since renounced and regretted, seems to have left its stamp on the French version of the separation of church and state. The French still want their government institutions entirely religion-free. In the States, we (and by “we” I mean most Americans, plus or minus a President or two…) believe in the separation of Church and State as well, but by that we usually mean we don’t want the government “playing favorites” among religions, or supporting any religion at the expense of the others. But we don’t usually insist that our government spaces be entirely clear of religious expressions by individuals. (Government religious expressions that most Americans, for better or for worse, take for granted—like “In God We Trust” on currency, the “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, having prayers open sessions of Congress, having the President take his/her oath on a Bible, and having court witnesses swear on a Bible—would and do baffle the French.)

An example of the contrast: for a decade, France has been undergoing a very public debate about whether Muslim girls can wear headscarves to school. The vast majority of French people say no, the public schools are religion-free spaces, and bold brandishments of faith have no place there. In America, on the contrary, the separation of church and state would likely prevent a teacher from wearing an “I [heart] Jesus” t-shirt (since this could be interpreted as a governmental endorsement of a particular religion), but a student could likely wear such a shirt with no problem.

Interestingly, rules are made to be broken, and in France, for centuries, the “home team” has been Catholic, so guess which way the exceptions break. So, while French school rules now ban “ostentatious” religious garb, more modest symbols (such as cross pendants on necklaces, or sometimes yarmulkes, are permitted). In other words, if the minimum physical manifestation of your faith happens to be something tiny, you can wear your faith on your sleeve, but if it’s larger, say, a headscarf, you are out of luck. [I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Patrick Weil, the professor I’m working with this year, served on the President’s headscarf committee, and supported the no-scarf policy, saying that many girls were forced under threat of violence by male family members to wear it, and that the public schools were the only “bite of the apple” that the French government got to teach these girls democratic principals, and the only chance the girls got to escape repressive conditions and improve their fate.]

Another coincidental convenience and church/state exemption for France’s majority Catholics: most French school cafeterias do not serve meat on Fridays, but there’s always plenty of tasty pork products. Kosher food is generally available on request, but again, it must be requested, while Catholic-friendly grub is the default for all students. Many French schools have half-days on Wednesdays and on Saturdays, remnants of former Catholic school carve-outs, but the Saturday school days are obviously difficult for orthodox Jewish students. Also, a look at the school calendar (and the general government holiday schedule) shows that it lives at the rhythm of the Catholic Church, with holidays for Easter Monday, Ascension, Pentecost, Assumption, and All Saint’s Day. A final loophole in the French separation of church and state, more charming than harming, is the fact that virtually all French weather forecasts list what saint day tomorrow will be.

Of course, our own separation of church and state can have its excesses. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, a group I normally support, has sued the US government to stop it from using federal funds to rehabilitate deteriorating Spanish Catholic missions in California. I understand these are churches, but they’re historical and architectural treasures first. I’ve seen signs in Paris listing the City of Paris as one of the funders for the renovation of some ancient churches, and as long as this support extends to significant places of worship for other faiths, and funds their architecture and not their worship programs, I think this is a reasonable expense.

EQUALITY
Another key shared principle between our countries is equality. The French list it second only to liberty in their national motto “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité,” and clearly we’re all familiar with America’s somewhat tortured respect for the principle (The Declaration of Independence’s “All men are created equal” both proves our love of the principle and pointed out the galling gaps in our equality spectrum.)

Again, France and the U.S. share this key principle but differ sharply on how to make it a reality. In the U.S., we see equality as a future goal which can be accelerated through pro-active means such as affirmative action. In France, they feel that the only way to achieve equality is to create institutions that treat everyone equally, immediately. As a result, minorities basically don’t exist in France. Their census is entirely free of “race” questions, and most surveys are forbidden by law from including racial questions. All students nationwide are given the exact same tests, and, in a meritocratic manner, may the best (wo)man win. “We are all French, there are no minorities” is the almost painfully noble and optimistic principle.

Of course, by not collecting statistics by race, painful realities all too familiar to Americans can safely remain in the realm of ignorance or at least unproven speculation in France. The U.S. knows that there are still disproportionately high levels of poverty, illiteracy, alcoholism, health problems, unemployment, exposure to crime, participation in crime, and other sad scourges in many of our minority populations, not to mention the ongoing discrimination they face. Interestingly, because these statistics (sad though they may be) exist in the U.S., they are frequently used against us by French intellectuals who decry a persistent racism in America. France has no statistics, no minorities, and no problems like these—that’s the implied result.

I am moved by the idealism of the “we are all French” mentality, but the weaknesses of the principle were proven by an exercise I’d do with my students back when I was a language assistant in a French high school back in 1994-1995. I would ask “Name a famous French minority person who is not an athlete or a musician.” The students would then either name an athlete or musician (before remembering my rules), or, after reflection, would name a semi-obscure famous person, such as a deputy cabinet secretary or the anchorman on the 1PM news on the second-place, government-run TV station. I would then trot out the contrasting list for the U.S. (here’s an updated 2007 list: Condi, Colin Powell, Oprah, Barack Obama, Bill Cosby, Denzel Washington, etc.—literally, the headliners of the nation). In other words, the short term results of the “to make an omelet you have to break some eggs, wear your guilty feelings on your sleeve, make people less equal in the short term to make them more equal down the road” strategy practiced in the U.S. seems to have borne some fruit.

[The French would argue that there have been African Americans in America for several centuries, almost as long as Caucasians, therefore, they have had more time than the much more recent African and North African immigrants to France to integrate themselves into majority life. That is to say, one would expect African Americans to have done better in the US than North Africans in France, because of the historical head start African Americans enjoy. A better American point of comparison to France's North African immigrants might be Latinos, historically more recently arrived, where the US has had success but fewer “headliners” fame-wise.]

Recently, skirting the edges of the law banning racial surveys, an organization of black French people (there’s no PC term for black in French, there’s no “African American” equivalent) and two media outlets conducted a survey to determine the size of the French black population. Interestingly, the news of the survey results (4% of the French are black, and over half reported suffering from discrimination in their daily lives) was quickly overcome by the backlash to the survey’s mere existence. On the lips of virtually all of its critics was one word: “communautairisme,” a word meant to describe the American reality, where people are seen as breaking into separate and divisive identity groups. Long story short—the realities of the survey were lost in the furor over whether it ever should have been conducted in the first place.

There are clearly flaws in both models. The “race-blind” French system of “concours,” or mega-tests, to determine advancement in the educational system and into the most renowned institutions of higher learning is of course 100 percent egalitarian, but clearly rich, white students who live in neighborhoods with the best schools and have parents that have already passed similar tests a generation earlier have a “greater than equal” chance of succeeding at these challenges than poor minority immigrants in neighborhoods with shoddy schools and who may be the only generation to receive formal schooling in the first place.

But is the American model, where, in some cases (the number of which you will over- or under-estimate, depending on your views of affirmative action) less qualified minority students are admitted to universities over better qualified majority individuals, hence reinforcing their differences and perhaps stoking inter-groups resentment, better? To me, the “results” piece I mentioned above is determinant, but then again, there are no provable French results (see above), so it’s hard to say.

STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO OF THIS TREATISE IN A COUPLE OF DAYS. Will Lassie save Timmy from the well? Will the General Lee actually clear the lake it was trying to jump over? Stay tuned...

Daily Bread

As a good Catholic, I have always felt that “Daily Bread” was not just an important phrase in the Our Father. Rather, I think that if Jesus thought the phrase important enough to put into the prayer he told people to pray, than I should take this part of the Bible literally. So, I love a bit of bread each day and Paris is the perfect place to take an adoration and make it into a near religious quest.

Josh and I have been on our own personal Quest for the Holy Grail—aka The Quest for the Perfect Baguette, or lacking that, at least a baguette we can clearly agree on. Few things will bring tension to a dinner table faster in France than a baguette.

This is a bit more complicated than it may seem. There are just so many choices! In our immediate neighborhood, there are at least eight bakeries and that doesn’t count the others that are a mere stones throw away. Frankly, if any one of these bakeries were in Washington, I would walk miles to them and would be happy with the least of the lot, but here, I do not have to settle.

NOTE: Its worth mentioning my other small obsession here. I have been reading two books about Julia Child. While one book should be enough on most topics, I have read two back to back, because Julia was a bit of a crazy American, who came to France in her 30’s with her Francophile husband, and fell in love with the food. I love how in each chapter she describes entire meals, including exactly what wine she had. Now, that is a role model I can take seriously. Julia also loved French bread—so much so that in her second cookbook, there is a reliable French bread recipe.

Anyways, the first few days, we were happy with all bread, because it really is all better than what we can get back home. I found myself wondering, “How can my country put a man on the moon, but not be able to make a reliably good loaf of bread?”

But then, the squabbles began. Josh likes the outside of the bread best and prefers that it not be too brown. He feels the inside of the bread is mostly irrelevant and breaks his bread into small “outside” pieces.

I think that the mark of a good bread is as much the “inside” as the “outside”. I like big irregular bubbles inside the bread. I also like the outside crispy and more “done” than Josh.

So we began to compare. Josh generally is in charge of buying the bread—he picks it up on his way home and in the interest of science, he would bring different baguettes most days. We only buy a demi-baguette, not that we wouldn’t eat an entire baguette, but this is as much of a nod to Adkins as I can muster.

He bought one from the Middle Eastern Baker (I liked that one, he thought it was ok), he bought one from the baker at the end of our block (he liked that, I thought it was too puffy on the inside), I bought one from the Artesian baker on the other side of Arago (I liked it a lot, he said it tasted like a pretzel—which I guess is bad), I got one from the baker enroute to the internet café (I thought it was entirely forgetful, so I had it for lunch and didn’t even enter it into the competition). Josh claimed Leigh liked a boulangerie on rue Mouffetard (which is what the word for bread maker is here) and got one from there (he liked it; I thought it was puffy and couldn’t believe that was the one Leigh was talking about). We tried to get one from the Asian baker, but they never seemed to be open and as it turns out they are a “patisserie”—which makes baked goods, but not bread.

I was starting to think that one of us would always be at least 25% unhappy with our bread options. BUT, then, a miracle! We think we found at least a temporary solution. There is a baker that is three doors down from the other baker on rue Mouffetard and this baguette was something different.

It was a bit more expensive—0.70 for a demi-baguette, rather than 0.40, which is typical elsewhere, but it had bubbles on the inside and crispy, but not too crispy outside.

I was in love and Josh was at least in like (he says the white flour on the outside makes a mess, but otherwise seems to agree that it is a good baguette). I’m sure this is the bakery that Leigh was talking about and I can tell you that it is the bread we now have most nights here.

Josh also suggested that this was an entirely different product and this was country bread, not just a baguette. I’m not sure about that, but all I know is that it was what they gave me when I asked in my halting French for a demi-baguette.

So, the Gibson family boulangerie of choice is at least named for now. It’s a cute little stand and they also have a great little bread with cheese in it (now we’re talking!)

Maybe next week I’ll be brave enough to go there and ask for something besides the baguette (though I will have to learn more vocabulary first). But for now, je voudrais une demi-baguette s’il vous plait.

sPg

Frenchlish

“So there I was, dressed in black. The tension was palpable. The man on the radio kept trying to tell me what which wire to cut to defuse the bomb, but his words sounded exactly alike to me. O-dessoo, o dessooo sound exactly alike to my untrained ear, but I knew one meant over and one meant under. This wasn’t looking good.”

The good news is that this didn’t really happen, but this was the scene in my head as we attempted to learn and understand the subtle differences in pronunciation between “over” (au dessus) and “under” (au dessous).

I am prone to this kind of Ally McBeal Moment”, which are those times when I have a whole scene play out in my head, with only a small link to what is actually happening. I actually did giggle in class as I pictured the trouble I could imagine if I couldn’t grasp this French language nuance and as I wondered, are there many other things as humbling as learning a language as an adult?


The Lanugage

I just finished my “French Boot Camp”—two weeks of four hour a day French lessons and I absolutely think that taking the class was one of the best decisions we’ve made so far.

I was a bit sad, to be honest, in leaving the class yesterday because I really learned a lot. Though I had studied in the States, I was almost entirely mute beyond “Oui”. And, in two weeks of lessons, I went from a near total lack of French, to at least the vocabulary of a toddler. Now, that’s progress if you ask me.

I now can explain: what my name is, what my husband’s name is, where I am from, how old I am, where I live, what my phone number is, what my address is, what I like, what I don’t like and I can even ask some important questions like “where is the bathroom” and “how much does that cost”.

With my new found knowledge, Josh has even considered removing the bi-lingual “Please return me to 75, rue Broca” note I have pinned to my jacket. [and no, I don’t actually have a note like this]


The Class

And aside from the French, I really enjoyed my classmates and I think that was the icing on the cake. There were 16 of us ranging in age from 16 to 42 and from countries as far and wide as Indonesia, Iran, Macedonia, Canada, Turkey and South Africa. I was one of only two Americans (and she is from the South, so maybe we aren’t even from the same country—sorry Carey.).

I also learned a lot about these people in a short period of time. It’s a natural side effect of the verbs we were learning. When “I am” and “I have” and “I speak” and “I love” and “I detest” are some of the only phrases you know, you get right to the good stuff fast.

The one Chinese student smoked, but she loved the clarinet. The 16 year old Brazilian had a (gasp) 22 year old boyfriend named Patrick. The South African guy, who moved here for his fiancée, trains horses and has chickens and goats back in South Africa. The Iranian doctor hopes her son is a doctor one day too. The charming and funny Canadian woman learned that pharmacies had to let you use the bathroom if you say you are pregnant and the Korean student with funky red glasses only watches television on Sunday.

Learning what languages everyone spoke was particularly interesting and made me wonder why on earth we wait until high school to learn other languages in the States. My sentence was humble: Je parle anglais. I didn’t even claim Spanish on the chance that this was the only language I might have in common with someone. My classmates spoke at least two of the following languages: Russian, Persian, Zulu, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Macedonian, Arabic, German, Korean, Czech, and English—which everyone spoke and it was the unofficial language of the classroom. I calmed myself the first few days by thinking, “Well, they may be able to speak a LOT more languages than I can, but they don’t speak French yet, so at least we are in the same boat on that front.”

I also have a renewed appreciation for “being in the same boat”. We all laughed with and kindly (at) our own mistakes. The Turkish journalist had a great French accent and helped me learn a specific form of question. The Macedonian math professor had trouble with remembering his numbers, which made us all feel better. The other Chinese girl would just freeze sometimes when the teacher asked her a question and start giggling because she had no idea what the question or the answer was.

Our teachers was a 35 year old woman originally from a small town about an hour from Paris. She really did a great job (which is why I am continuing to study with her). She seemed to know exactly when to make us say it in French and when an occasional English question was ok.

Josh said that the “recognized term” for a combination of French and English is Franglais, but I think that term applies to those lucky ones who actually claim to speak some French. I think for now, I am really speaking Frenchlish---my own crazy, mixed up, basic marriage of two languages: one I know and one I hope that I can crack (at least a little) in the next year.

sPg