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 [...]]]>

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.

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 [...]]]>

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.

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 [...]]]>

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?

It took Ken Ferguson four and a half years to follow up on a high school whim. One week after writing his final exam at McMaster University, and three days after Christmas, Ferguson flew to Japan to find a job teaching English.

“I loved the geological processes—earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes—that went [...]]]>