HMS Vicky » Sélestat

New France Ahoy!

vicky — Sun, 30 May 2010 23:17:00 +0000

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 pastel 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. I know I am a city girl at heart, but I honestly think I would face the same dilemma if I ever have to choose again.

I enjoyed teaching more than I thought I would, but I can’t see myself doing it as a career. Would I do it again? Maybe. If it was the right place 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. However, since they were French, they still made for great anthropological subjects. I love when you can use teaching as a licence to make students do ridiculous things. When I think of the times I made each student say “happy new year” in Cantonese or read tongue twisters filled with “th” sounds, I laugh. But when I think of the time a teacher asked me to teach a class on the history of Canadian immigration to her terminal class, 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. The 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. 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), it was a long and frustrating process.

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. I met both groups around the mid-way point and they turned my experience in France around for me.

Presently I face the challenge of improving my French while 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 that locals switch to English when they hear your accent–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. I am still not sure whether feeling like yourself in another language is just a matter of time and effort or even possible. I guess it’s time to find out. Bon courage à moi.

And it’s no movie, there’s no Michelle Pfeiffer

vicky — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:14:17 +0000

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 (x amount of 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 don’t have many answers. 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.

The eternal big fish, little pond debate

vicky — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 16:40:53 +0000

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 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 Maclean’s 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?