ma vie quotidienne

I’ve been trying not to use a lot of French when I write because frankly, I know it’s annoying to read if you don’t speak it. Like, ‘oh, look at me, I can speak another language and I’m going to display it all over you.’ But sometimes, things just sound a lot better and come out before the English equivalent comes out. I mean, the title of this sounds a lot more interesting than ‘my daily life’, right?

So my typical day in Aix begins at 6 or 6:30am when I wake up, leave the house by 7, walk 25 minutes to catch the bus, arrive in Marseille at 8:30, walk to the metro, take the metro to the neighborhood of my school, and arrive exactly at 9am. On most school mornings there are markets on the big street leading to my school and I just love walking through them. Usually they extend for 10-15 blocks and sell just about everything for pretty cheap: fresh fruits and vegetables, organic herbs and oils, shampoo and other toiletries, clothes, accessories like scarves and purses and jewelry, electronics, perfume, shoes, CD’s, and tons more. I can’t wait to photograph them.

Class runs for 3 hours and it’s intense. I can’t italicize that enough! Like, pretend the letters are leaning so far that they’re almost turned 90 degrees. That’s how intense this is. My teacher is sweet and tries hard to be cheerful and interesting. On most days we work in our workbook, read articles and answer questions, do listening exercises, have discussions, read books like Le Petit Prince and plays by Moliere, do presentations on our home countries, and my least favorite: pairing off with another partner to do some sort of mock conversation that we eventually do in front of the whole class (we do this every single class). I absolutely hate it but it’s probably the thing that helps the most. My beef with it are the subjects - they’re always things like ‘going to the travel agency to plan a vacation’ or ‘complaining to the town hall’ or any number of things I will not do here unless I stick around for 5-10 years. Alas, I can already tell my language is improving leaps and bounds. I’m not afraid to answer the telephone anymore; yesterday I had a conversation on the phone for a good 5 minutes with a maintenance guy and he didn’t say ‘comment?’ one time! And remembering new vocab is no problem either. I'd say 80% of the time I remember it on the first try, a far cry from Japanese where I had to create a mental picture/story/gimmick in my head for every word. I really do seem to have a naturally efficient way to learn language for some reason, and I'm very happy for the opportunity to improve on it here.

So after school, I do all the lengthy transport again back home and arrive around 1:45 (it’s faster coming back because there’s no traffic). I usually try to nap for a few minutes before I have to get up to do housework and pick up the kids from school. Then I hang with them, teaching some English, playing games, doing homework, taking baths, cooking/eating dinner, etc. They’re usually not all asleep until 9:30 or 10, even thought the attempt begins at 8. Then I study for a few hours and sometimes stay up talking with Wietse over a drink or two. He is usually pretty distracted during the day with kids and work, but later in the evening we like to talk about politics, differences in people/cultures within Europe (he’s lived in several countries here), TV and movies (he’s been trying to get me hooked on this BBC show called Fawlty Towers - it’s pretty awesome), soccer (I’m trying sooo hard!), and random other stuff.

On my days off I usually study or watch movies or walk around town. I can’t afford to do much else.

So on to the fun part: my visa (or lack thereof, more specifically). I’ll definitely be coming back to US in December, a little before Christmas. Don’t know exactly what I’ll do or where; I know other people/family have plans for x-mas (I think both parents are planning on traveling?) so I might see friends or something, maybe Chicago if Amy’s around…who knows. Whoever will take me, basically ☺

I have to return then because I don’t have a proper visa and I'll get in trouble with teh government here if I stay longer than 90 days. My boss wants me to go back, get the correct one at the Embassy, and then come back to France in January. I’m not sure how I feel about all this. The biggest ‘con’ is that I can’t afford to come back, so if I did, it would be on my boss’ dime and that pretty much locks me into staying here. I can’t just decide I don’t like it and leave, and if I were miraculously able to get this other job in Rhode Island, I couldn’t really take it (I could but it would be a really asshole thing to do to them). I like it here for many reasons, much more than the weather. More on that in another blog. But I don’t like the idea of feeling bound to this situation, no matter what (like I don't make enough money through teaching or I just end up hating it or something). I’m going to go around to different English schools over the next few weeks and basically say ‘if I had a visa, would you hire me?’ and hope that I can get some good responses. The other problem is that being an au pair and going to school takes up most of my time (I HAVE to go to school though with an au pair/student visa). So the school has to like me enough to hire me to work on only Saturdays and possibly Wednesdays, and deal with me being in different cities every month. The solution to all this would be having a working visa in which I wouldn’t be forced to go to school, but that’s only possible to get after I have the first student visa! And I don’t even have that yet! The plan was to have that by now and hope to get a working visa by December or January. I can also teach some private lessons, which I started already (one student) but I'd have to get enough steady students to make it worth my while. I hope this makes sense; it’s quite confusing and a big catch 22 in a lot of senses.

I’m hoping to do this: come back to US, hopefully have interviewed for that job in RI somehow, buy some time with the families out here because the RI position won’t be filled until January or February, and see what happens. If I don’t get that job, or any other, I can maybe come back and give this a go again.

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