I had a revelation when I realized I would be writing this entry in hip café with free wi-fi. I’m enjoying a big chai latte looking out at the bustling street of brunch-goers and shoppers. There are some bubbles floating by the cafe entrance and, across the street, a poncho-wearing mouse who’s handing out flyers is talking to a headscarf-wearing canvasser for Oxfam. Collectively, I think they’re trying to tell me something. It’s something along the lines of, “Readers, we are not in France anymore.” I’m pleased to announce that for the HMS Vicky is now based out of Montréal, Québec, Canada.

This week I started my internship at enRoute online, the website for enRoute, Air Canada’s in-flight travel magazine. I’m mostly working on the blog right now but I’m sure the full extent of my responsibilities will reveal themselves in the next six months.

First let’s do a little recap and wrap-up. When I left you, I had just arrived in Strasbourg after escaping Barcelona via Lyon. I had two weeks left in Strasbourg to finish up work, see a little more of the Alsace and say goodbye to my friends. I flew home at the beginning of May and had one week in Toronto to eat all my favourite foods and say hello/goodbye to my friends. My parents and I took a brief trip to Ottawa to attend the tulip festival. My former roommate came along for the ride and helped me fulfill my lifelong dream of going to Zaphod Beeblebrox and having a pan-galactic gargleblaster. My parents and I continued up the 401 where they dropped me off in Montréal. And voila!

I’m still trying to unravel my overall thoughts about France and my time there. Regarding my big dilemma at the beginning about whether to live in Strasbourg or Séléstat, I’m glad that I chose the former. I’m not an expert on the countryside, but in the Alsace it’s beautiful. It consists of tiny villages of houses painted in Easter colours nestled around the Vosges mountain range. When you drive down la route du vin, the only thing separating you and the villages is a field of vineyards. I feel a tinge of sadness I didn’t spend more time in the countryside, but no regret. At heart, I know I am a city girl but I honestly can’t say what will happen if I have the option to choose the next time.

I enjoyed teaching more than I thought I would, but I still wouldn’t want to do it for a living. Would I do it again? Maybe. If it was the right place, the right students and the right time. My students, for the most part, were nice and funny people. They reminded me of myself and my friends at that age but, at the same time, still made great anthropological subjects. Being able to make them do ridiculous things was great. When I think of the time I made each student say “happy new year” in Cantonese or read tongue twisters filled with “th” sounds, I laugh. But then I remember the time a teacher asked me to teach a class on the history of Canadian immigration to her Terminal class and I’m relieved it’s over. Life in the teacher’s lounge wasn’t so different from high school. There are still cliques and there are still popular kids. I’ll miss the cafeteria and a certain class of secondes but that’s about it. I will never have such a sweet job again. It’s the kind of sweet job where you work 12 hours a week and get two weeks of holidays every month and half. Those days are over and people who have never been part of the French education system will never understand it.

I haven’t done a good job documenting my working, travel and living experience during this trip for a variety of reasons. Part of it was that I was having an awful time at the beginning. I try to stay away from blogging when I feel like this for fear that it will turn this site into LiveJournal or that it will come off like I’m whining about my life. In hindsight this betrayed the purpose of this blog. While I generally try to keep this blog light, I write to honestly share my experience in other cultures and life abroad. And as lucky as I am to be able to live around the world, there are difficulties and lonely moments that come along with it.

France was difficult because I had the option to integrate for the first time. I had a job and the chance to build relationships with real French people. This was the one country I’ve lived in where I actually spoke the language before I got there. While it was a great opportunity to improve my French (which it did), that only happened after a lot of guilt and failure.

Speaking English in my foreigner bubble and not being able to make French friends (at least not ones I spoke in French with) always left lingering feelings of guilt. I felt angry at myself for retreating into the comfort of speaking English instead of forcing myself to speak French. I didn’t want to be one of those people who hung around at Irish pubs, spoke English with my American friends and wondered after seven months why my French hadn’t improved. In the end, I made French friends who I communicated with only in French but my closest group of friends were other anglophone assistants. Meeting both groups is actually what turned my experience in France around for me.

Presently I face the challenge of improving my French but also trying to understand the Quebecois accent. I already feel more intimidated speaking French here than France since the majority of francophones seem to speak English so well. A common anglophone complaint is when locals hear your accent they will automatically switch over to English–something that never happened to me in France. I’m still undecided whether it’s a snub at your language skills or a courtesy to make you more comfortable. Or both. I’ve also realized how big language plays in your personality and identity. As much as I need to practice my French, I can’t exist without at least an equal dose of English. Living in France has shown me that I can deal with everyday things in French but socializing is another story. The task I’m charged for the next six months is trying to find myself and develop my personality in French. It’s a tall order but I’m trying to answer the question of whether it’s question of time or even possible to be yourself completely in another language. Bon courage à moi.

posted by vicky at 7:17 pm under France, Learning French, Montréal, Sélestat
1 Comment

Wintzenheim – 24/02/2010 

posted by vicky at 12:22 am under Europe, France
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Today I finally understood why Albert Camus could write about such length about “the absurd.” He’s French. Of course this revelation came after a dalliance with the Office of Immigration and Integration. The way things work in this country is so preposterous sometimes, it could only be described as absurd. Sometimes the people, offices and bureaucracy make no sense whatsoever. On days when when these things converge and conspire against you, you can’t even feel upset, just numb. And you honestly just can’t be angry at the absurd.

Here is a list of things that irritate me about France:

-A general lack of communication between people/organizations. This is the worst and most evident when you deal with any government-run organization. New laws get passed and the people whose jobs are to deal with the general public have not received or read the memo. Of course, there are always people who are up-to-date and know what their doing but even they will tell you that getting things done or approved is a matter of luck. Different French people give you different answers to the same question. In fact the same person will give you different answers the same question. The official word that is posted on government websites takes ages to trickle down and come into effect in real life. The best people to turn to with your questions are other foreigners. Somehow they are always-up-to-date on new laws and procedures and have experiences to share about how they convinced French people that they weren’t just making these things up.

-The inability to say “I don’t know.” Instead of admitting they don’t know the answer to your question about how to do something or who to see, French people like to send you off to someone else. Sometimes this is done under the guise of telling you this is the person you who can help you. Other times, when it is honest, they send you to the person they think will know the answer. Inevitably, this person will not know the answer, do the same and pass you along. It’s the French version of pinball.

-Everything is more complicated than it needs to be.No one does this better than the French. If I need to deal with bureaucracy, I need to leave the house with every single piece of paper I have to prove my identity and whatever else they feel they need to know about me. Every single piece of paper requires a stamp or another piece of paper from someone else. Why not make it easy for everyone and making ridiculous and irrelevant demands? I complain about red tape in Canada but lately, I’ve found myself saying, “This would never happen in Canada.” It’s a little sad when you grow to appreciate your home only by living through a lower standard elsewhere.

-Opening hours of offices/stores/organizations. If you want to get something done you either need to get up at 8.00 or do it after lunch. The entire country shuts down at 12.00 and does not start up again until at least 13.30. (Sometimes it takes until 15.00 to get going again.) Everyone is on their lunch break except for restaurants, bakeries and some of the bigger stores. Even some supermarkets close for lunch. This collective shut down makes it impossible to run errands during your lunch break. Things re-open for a few hours and only to close between the hours of 16.30-20.30, depending what it is. Most things are closed by 18.00. Naturally, nothing except restaurants and cafes are open on Sunday. And how many times have I showed up at the library on Monday to try and return some things only to realize it’s closed?

-The lack of English speaking people. Yes, I know I came to France to speak French. But when I’m talking to the director of Office of Immigration, it’s not a language exchange okay? I’d prefer things to be clear than to practice my speaking. How do people who don’t speak English get hired for jobs that revolve around dealing with foreign people? It’s a running joke among my roommate (who is on exchange from Spain) and her friends that the international relations officer for their department doesn’t speak English. It’s kind of funny, except not.

-Grèves. Far be for me to tell people they can’t strike but the way the French go on strike makes no sense to me. Workers for the trains, schools, libraries go on strike for a day and then resume normal service. How does this help you get your demands? Yes, I am inconvenienced but too briefly to get really angry about it. The exception happened this week when the cafeteria workers went on strike and German food day was canceled as a result. A few days before the strike, the principal made a cheery announcement about it over the PA and told everyone to bring sandwiches.

In the interest of fairness, here is a list of things I like about France and wish existed in Canada.

-Opening hours of offices/stores/organizations. The fact that the whole country shuts down for lunch is a double-edged sword. It really bothered me at first and does remain an inconvenience sometimes. But there is something incredibly egalitarian about such strictly enforced dining hours. Sure you can’t do anything during your lunch hour, but neither can anyone else. Everyone is required to take a nice, long, unrushed break. I also feel like the principle applies for the month of August when the whole country goes on vacation. The French are on to something with this almost universal vacation time. It’s only an inconvenience if you’re not on holiday with them (i.e. if you’re visiting France from abroad on your own holiday and nothing is open.)

-Overwhelming number of student discounts. If you’re under 26, you’re golden. You can buy a train discount card that gets you up to 50% off. In Strasbourg, as a student or young worker you can get a culture discount card that gets you into the movies, theatre orchestra, opera, museums and concerts for free or super cheap. Unemployed people get discounts too.

-The holidays. The French school system has tons of holidays, many for no apparent reason (at least to me.) So far I’ve had week and a half  off for the Toussaint holiday (October), two weeks for Christmas, two coming up in February (informally known as the French ski vacation) and two more for Pacques (Easter) in April. I will have been on (paid) vacation for two out of the seven months of my work contract.

-The CAF. This is a program that refunds the rent of low-income people. One of the really interesting things is there is no sense of stigma like there is with applying for welfare in North America. They calculate how much money to give back to you based on whether you live with roommates, if your apartment is furnished, how much money you make etc. All students are on it and actually know all the little tricks to get more money back (like pretending you are in a common-law marriage with one of your roommates, regardless of gender.) Actually this entry is tentative in the “like” category and is pending the day when I actually see this money make it into my account. (If ever.)

-Telecommunications. With basically any provider you can get television, internet and a landline for 30 euros. The kicker is you can call landlines in certain countries for free! Canada, United States, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and all of the EU, aka all the countries where I could ever possibly need to call, I can call landlines for free. Recently, I found out that I can call cell phones for free in North America too, since there’s no distinction in the phone codes between cell phones and landlines. When it comes to cell phones, you’re also allowed to cancel your contract at no cost if you can prove you’re moving to a place where your company can’t provide service. This is unbelievable when you come from a country where a town 20 minutes away with the same area code is considered long distance. Don’t even get me started on owning a cell phone in Canada.

Whenever things aren’t going my way, I tend to blame France, the easy scapegoat. I try to be as fair and realistic about these experiences as possible but there is no denying that the French have their own special way of doing things. If you want the good, you have to accept the bad–merde and all.

posted by vicky at 8:06 pm under Europe, France
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Once I get settled into a city, it can be hard to get me to leave it. I attribute it to Torontonian syndrome. This means always paying lip service when friends suggest you visit them in Ottawa or Kitchener, but secretly loathing the idea of taking a Greyhound out there. Those who live downtown are even worse and balk at the idea of getting out to the 905. Somehow this complex has dogged me during my stints living in the Netherlands and Taiwan. But this weekend, for the first time since arriving in France, I traveled outside of the Alsace region. I took two high-speed trains across France all the way to Rennes. Of course it would take a music festival to get me out west. And the Transmusicales Festival, or Les Trans as the French call it, was a good enough reason for me.

When I decided to do this program, I was convinced I was going to go to Nantes for the longest time. I had met a few Nantais during my travels and was charmed by their friendliness and impossibly cute French accents while speaking English. I thought if they spoke like that in English, if I learned French in Nantes, maybe I would sound like them. In the end, I chose to rank the Strasbourg academy as my number one choice, instead of Nantes. Since then there has always been a little pang of longing for what could have been if I had chosen to live in the Brittany region instead of the Alsace. (And yes I know Nantes is no longer a part of Brittany but I’m talking historically/culturally.)

Even though the festival was in Rennes and not Nantes, I figured this was my chance to see Celtic-influenced French culture (as opposed to the brand of German influenced French culture over here.) I never cease to be amused by the pride the French have for their home region (or their disdain for Paris.) In the Alsace, people tell me it’s not French at all and the Bretons were only too eager to tell me the same thing. One of my students told me how in “Little Brittany,” the Bretons eat crepes and wash it down with cider. Oh cider, I thought, how very English. Here, you will never hear the words choucroute or brezel without the words “regional specialty” following them. I know these things as saukerkraut and pretzel (or at least bretzen, since I learned the German word first.) I love how these regional specialties are just things that, for me, come from other countries.

I was surprised to see quite a few half-timbered style houses in Rennes since I thought they were characteristically Alsatian. However the ones in Rennes looked more rickety and purposely historic while Alsace ones are painted pleasant pastel colours and look like they come out of  fairy-tales. While I thought living in one of these houses in 2009 is quaint (Sélestat has its share), it’s nothing compared to the typical Breton digs. With the celtic culture, comes stone houses and medieval villages that people continue to live in.I took a little excursion to Dinan on my last day in Brittany and it blew my mind that medieval castle is only minutes away from the downtown. I know it’s all perfectly normal to the French but the North American suburbanite in me is still amazed at the idea of growing up with among this kind of scenery.

The vibe from Rennes itself was the opposite of old age. I knew it had a reputation as a student city but was surprised by the extent of it. I had inklings that Strasbourg felt a bit like an old person’s city but going to Rennes confirmed it. Rennes is an anomaly (like the university towns Kingston or London in Ontario) in France because of the disporportionate number of students it has compared to residents. It immediately felt much younger to me as soon as I looked around. There were university students everywhere and the clothing stores were noticeably more interesting to me than the ones in Strasboug. Another thing Rennes has a surplus of is police presence. Around downtown, especially at night, I saw on average seven carloads of police wearing special protective gear while patrolling. I was told this is normal in Rennes in order to control drunken students when they spill out onto the street after last call. Since it was Trans (which brings in its share of drunken tourists) it was only natural that they beef up the force.

The festival itself was a fantastic atmosphere. It was held at Parc Expo, a collection of airport hangars just outside the city. Each hangar had its own line-up and one hangar was a dedciated bar, lounge and water bar. There was a consistent crowd of people who spilled on the tarmac to get fresh air after dancing or to smoke (but those might be the same thing for the French.) The reason that I came to Trans was to see Fever Ray. This tour was the first and only tour for the group and Rennes was the second-to-last show. While I’ve never seen The Knife (and probably never will since they refuse to tour again) seeing Fever Ray was the next best thing. I was so close to the stage I could smell the incense, but not close enough to get a good look at Karin Dreijer, the singer of both bands. The Knife are famous for their stage fright and standoffish ways and seeing Fever Ray confirmed this. Dreijer was positioned half way back on the stage, clad in full on black-and-white face makeup and a witch-like robe. The antique lamps surrounding her and her equally spookily-dressed bandmates flashed while smoke swirled around stage. It was dark, slightly unnerving and great.

I only planned on going to the festival for one day but I unexpectedly came into a ticket the night after, the techno night. Commanding most, if not all the of the hype, was Mr Oizo–best known in North American as that fuzzy yellow bear puppet, a.k.a Flat Eric. I was most excited to see the French reception for their homeboy. By the end, my companion and I had come to the same conclusion. The first half-hour was great but it really petered out by the end. Significant numbers of the crowd were leaving and those who stayed was just because it was, well, Oizo. I was pleased that he played “Blood on our Hands” by Death From Above 1979. (It was the Justice remix, for the record. It’s a fine remix but is it mandatory that everything is Frenched up?) At times it felt like he was falling back on the popularity of other bands to keep the crowd interested. How else do you explain playing two Daft Punk songs in one set? The highlight of the set, hands down,  was the sample he made with a robot voice. It gleefully (as much as a robot can be) declared to the crowd that: “Nous avons le grippe A” (We have the H1N1 flu) and “Nous allons tous mourir à Rennes” (We are all going to die in Rennes.) A cheap trick for sure, but it worked. But hey, to paraphrase Morrisey, if ten-tonne truck crashes into us, to die in Rennes, well..it might be a better way to go than in Strasbourg.

posted by vicky at 11:08 pm under Europe, France, Music
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Two weeks I ago I taught my class before the one-and-a-half week Toussaint holiday. This terminale (the final year of high school) class was the first class I ever taught. It consists of mostly boys who told me about the virtues of pimp rap during our first session together. They were opinionated, funny and pretty good at English so for the next two weeks I looked forward to the vacation and teaching them again. To reward them for being the most animated class, I took printed out the lyrics to “Gangsterz,” a song by English rapper Wiley, blasted it several times and had them play fill-in-the-blanks. This activity meant I got to explain what it meant to “squash the beef” or when “the shells start spraying.” It was an amusing way to end the day, the first two weeks and to send me off on my holiday to London.

My last stop on my backpacking tour last summer was two weeks in London and I absolutely fell in love. After a month and a half traveling nonstop, it was a relief and luxury to have such a long time to spend in one place (especially since I had one friend kind enough to let me stay with her for the entire trip.) This time coming from Strasbourg to London, I felt a culture shock that I never anticipated.

While I’m frequently clueless in France because of a language barrier or the French way of doing things, London makes sense to me but is so big it becomes a mess of logic. The quintessential London experience for me is going through a series of false starts before I finally head down the right road I meant to follow. Londoners are pretty useless when it comes to giving directions. The city is so big even people who have lived there their entire lives plead clueless when asked how to go somewhere. The sheer number of people constantly milling around made me feel claustrophobic. I remember feeling the same way last year but somehow this trip, the feeling was much more intense. Somehow it felt like I had come from the countryside and was being overwhelmed by the city. I had obstained from buying winter clothes in France because I knew I was going to London. When I worked in flagship stores in downtown Toronto, we got people driving from small towns in Ontario and even from Ottawa to do shopping. I had always looked at those customers with amusement and a little pity; travelling so far to Toronto, all just for a shopping trip. And now, here I was, one of those people.

Both times in London I’ve been pumped full of stories by the people who live here about the dangers of the city. Last time it was my friend’s roommate who was off-work during my visit because he was recovering from having his jaw bashed in a pipe in a random act of violence. What happened to him was scary but seeing how much he enjoyed telling the story and watching him smoke weed to cure the pain lessened the impact of his story a little. This time most of my trip with my friend Mark’s apartment in Walthamstow, a borough in northeast London. There I faced foxes running through the streets and in our backyard at night. Bulletholes in windows in windows of stores were pointed out to me during our hurried walks through the streets. I earned the respect and awe of Mark and his roommate when I returned home at 2 a.m. after taking the night bus alone.

Maybe the most bewildering part of my trip was the culture of poverty that exists in London when you look past tourist hotspots of Zone 1. Houses aren’t billed for their gas consumption but instead you top-up your gas credit like a mobile phone. This is why during the first morning of my stay in Walthamstow I had an icy shower and couldn’t turn on the stove to cook. As spoiled and naive as it sounds, the concept of not having credit automatically extended to me is strange. When people here forget or have no money, they just have to do without. Something so basic and essential, like gas, for me, was just always, by some mysterious force, just there.

I regret now not taking any pictures of Walthamstow. It’s the kind of place no one would take a picture of for aesthetic purposes, which is why I forgot. (Apparently, it’s also not unheard of to get jumped for your expensive technology there.) The only reason anyone would is to document what normal London is outside of the glamourous bits. It’s unremarkable, dirty and even ugly. I’ve been told by teachers that my neighbourhood in is dodgy but Strasbourg wouldn’t know dodgy if it got bit in the face by it.

What people will give up and put up with to live in London is both sad and admirable. Surprisingly, living in Strasbourg is slightly cheaper than Toronto. While I don’t earn much or live in luxury, I can live comfortably. People in London pay twice as much as I do for half (or less) of what I have here. After leaving, I could feel already how more culturally alive I felt there. I found myself in an old factory on a Wednesday at what may or may not have been “a dubstep rave.” On a lazy Sunday I sat in on an afternoon of children’s activities at the Victoria & Albert museum. I made my own bejewelled Indian headpiece and followed barefoot women  in saris in a parade around Hellenic sculptures. When I flipped through a copy of Time Out and saw both Morrissey and Brett Anderson (of Suede) were playing on the same night, I really felt like I was at the centre of the universe. I didn’t go to either, but I could have and that felt amazing.

posted by vicky at 8:36 pm under England, Europe, France, Teaching English
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Since I arrived I’ve been avoiding the question about what I think about France. Each time I answer, ” I’ve only been here for (such and such time.) It’s too early to tell. Ask me later.” Then one week grew into two, two grew into three and now I’ve been here a full month and I still have no idea. My hesitance isn’t out of politeness, so I don’t have to utter secret grievances. One month has gone by in France and I have no idea where it went.

I’ve spent the last month not having much of a life while I tried to get my life set up. Going to Ikea, making appointments at the bank, buying a bicycle: these were the building blocks I decided were absolutely crucial for the life I was trying to construct. Indeed, I am grateful for my dish rack and being able to bike the library. Now comes the hard part: making friends (foreign and local), learning the language and mustering up the courage to teach a room full of teenagers English 12 times a week.

For the first time in months I’m waking up at 7 a.m. regularly and I’m back to the commuter life. This time, instead of waking up early to catch the bus and subway from Markham to Toronto, I take the train from Strasbourg to Sélestat.The 20 minute train ride is a little deceiving since it’s about 10 minute walk each way to the station (from my apartment to the Strasbourg station and from the Sélestat station to the school), plus buffer time to catch the train. Although I can’t deny that staring out the window at the Alsatian countryside is a little more enjoyable than taking the TTC at rush hour.

I feel completely wiped after a few hours teaching at school, even though I only teach for a few hours a day. I work with nine teachers this semester (which runs until mid-January), teaching 12 classes. About half of the classes are oral examination classes where students read an article or look at a picture and then make a 10-minute presentation about it to me. Usually I’m lucky if they last three minutes. To get them to the 10-minute mark usually takes a lot of prompting on my part. I have ask countless questions about the same boring articles about the economy or the workplace. This is all in an attempt to get more than one sentence at a time out of them so I can fill out an evaluation form.

In the other half of the classses, I actually teach. Teachers send me one-half of their students (usually from 10 to 15 pupils) to my classroom. The following week, I teach the other half of the class the same lesson. This means I see the kids twice a month and really have no idea about their names. I’m not sure what’s worse: being given boring course material (oral exams) or having to come up with my own for these classes. The class I dread the most is the one where the teacher asked me to teach about journalism (since it’s my “area of expertise.”) Being asked to condense four years of university into lessons for French teenagers made me I feel like I was in over my head and slightly insulted at the same time.

Coming up with my own lesson plans is probably one of the worst homework assignments I’ve ever had. Finding things with educational value, a cultural exchange aspect and engaging for myself and the students is difficult but possible. Even if I am lucky enough to have a 17-year-old who does want to speak, usually, inevitably you will hit a language wall. Every day I will meet this expression–the one where the initial excitement to having something to say turns frustration and then to embarrassment while they struggle to find the words. I can only look on and try to coax it out of them by wearing my most encouraging and patient face and offering a selection of my words as to what I think they’re saying. Sitting on this side of the teacher’s desk, being looked at in this way, makes me feel like a fraud. Every time I come see this look, I think to myself in English, I know exactly how you feel.

posted by vicky at 10:14 pm under Europe, France, Learning French, Sélestat, Teaching English
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It’s been a while, I know. I come bearing no quirky cultural encounters but with a life update, so please indulge me.

It’s been hard to update because sometime within the past month and a half, I’ve carved out a little life here in Taipei. It’s not quite exchange but maybe only because Utrecht and Taipei are so different. The main difference is I feel like I will be leaving a life behind when I leave here next month. While most of my friends are still foreigners (some who will stay, some will go and some already gone), unlike in Utrecht, I have local ones. Life in Taipei will continue here without me but in Utrecht, within a week of leaving for backpacking, the city as I knew it was gone.

Taipei has turned me into a creature of habit. Tuesdays you will find me at Underworld, a dive bar that is a one minute walk from my house. The DJ plays Morrissey while I order two-for-one beer from either Susan or Xiao Bo. Somehow I’m a little surprised if I don’t know at least half the people in this tiny bar. I’ve never been a regular anywhere–not Markham, Toronto or Utrecht. It’s not quite Cheers but it might be the closest I’ll ever get.

Being in this position makes leaving all the more difficult. I haven’t mentioned it on here yet but I have accepted a job offer to go be an English language assistant in France this fall. In April the French Ministry of Education that runs a program that hires native English speakers told me I was accepted and I would be teaching in high school in the Alsace region. A few days ago a letter arrived at my parents’ house telling me I would teaching at Lycée Koeberlé in a town called Sélestat. Wikipedia places the town’s population at 20,000 and 50 km away from Strasbourg.

I have always been jointly intrigued and terrified by small-town life–both because I’ve never experienced it before. The closest I have come is probably here in the Shida neighbourhood of Taipei. Sometimes in Toronto I feel like I need to ignore a lot in order to get by in the city, especially when I’m commuting. I don’t really make an effort to talk to people or get to know them. When I’m somewhere like London, I feel like I’d have to get used to ignoring even more things and people if I wanted to live there. I know it’s both inevitable and a method of protection to be exercise less trust in the urban environment. Been to the sociology of the city course, gotten the credit on my transcript. But I guess I still can’t speak from first hand experience about the other side.

Today an old lady was talking to my friend while we took the train to Fulong beach. She told her the reason she had been staring at me the entire trip was because I look like her granddaughter who is presently backpacking across America. I barely said two sentences to her but she bought lunch for myself and my two friends. She had been telling us about this really famous pork rice takeout box exclusive to Fulong and when she saw a vendor on the train platform, she insisted. It’s things like these that remind me about how nice people ca be and make me wish I was a better person. I don’t know whether to chalk this moment up to Taiwanese people, Taipei the super-friendly big city (exception?), Fulong the small town, old people or just one really nice woman.

I could easily commute from Strasbourg to Sélestat or live in the town itself. I have my reservations about both. At this point in my travels, I have realized that, in the end, big cities all over the world are the same. Small town life is probably the most exotic experience I could have. Just by working there I know it will become part of my life but I’m wondering if I should take the plunge. As crazy as it sounds, I’m staring one of my biggest fears in the face and I don’t know if I have it in me to make it my life for seven months.

Finally, I’d like you to know that I have a new camera. I’m excited to learn how to take photos on it (Yes, there’s a learning curve to it!) and to document whatever new places I end up. Also if I’ve been remiss about updating this blog, it’s because I just started up blogging at Macleans OnCampus about my travels and neither-here-nor-there life. As for what goes here and what goes there in terms of the blog, I don’t have it exactly figured yet. But when do I ever?

posted by vicky at 5:40 pm under Asia, France, Sélestat, Taiwan
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This trip to Europe has been like one long open house. In the back of my mind in every city I visit there’s the lingering question of “Could I live here?” Yesterday I returned from four days in Paris and the answer is a resounding yes. French cities have an unquantifiable quality and back in Netherlands I find myself missing that je ne sais quoi.

The first time I was in Paris I was seventeen and humming the then-new Feist album ad nauseum in my head. I’m sure the power of suggestion had something to do with the music choice, Paris being where she hit it big and all, but it made the perfect soundtrack while I drifted wide-eyed through Champs Elysées.

Who knew that my next trip to the French capital would be on another school trip? Once again, I found myself wandering around the city iPod-less. Both were whirlwind trips and the exact opposites. This time I went to Musée d’Orsay and passed over the Louvre; I loitered around a lit-up Tour Eiffel instead of going up it during the day; I watched the sun set on the incomparable view from Montmartre instead of gazing over a city of lights.

This picture was taken during my first trip by my friend Bi Ying, who I will reunite with this summer when she moves to London. I’m wearing a new jacket and smoking my first cigarette in Les Deux Moulins, the café from Amélie. We were nervous as we wandered along a long road down to the café, praying we had enough time for a crème brûlée before we had to meet back with our tour group. I had decided prior to the trip that I would buy a pack of cigarettes from Georgette’s counter for a souvenir. I was gutted when I discovered there was no cigarette counter but settled for a pack of Lucky Strikes anyways.

As we sat there waiting on the fabled confection, Bi Ying remarked that I could smoke a cigarette. Her suggestion set off the poseur-rebel in me that delighted in the idea of a first smoke. I peeled off the cellophane wrapping and lit it with the tea light candle on our table. Delivishly, we took turns taking puffs and snapping pictures. On the long walk back uphill, I hacked my lungs out and swore I would never smoke again for comic effect. Back in my room in Markham, there’s still a pack of cigarettes with one missing.

Three years later, I went back still unable to smoke a cigarette without coughing and sporting the same coat, now dirty and well-worn. I lost one of its buttons during my visit but I’m not too sad, I was too drunk on warmth and beauty. It’s telling when you leave a city unsatisfied and wanting more–something that has yet to happen to me in any of my travels this time around. I left my heart and my button in Paris but it’s okay. One day I’ll go back to get them.

posted by vicky at 10:49 pm under Europe, France
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