Omelette, the Crowned Prince of Denmark, and Other Tales

Yesterday in class, while trying to work with a group of unruly 15-year-old boys, I gave my students a crossword puzzle that I had created to give them something fun to do. It was an easy puzzle where all the answers were names of countries in the EU. For the clue, "it is shaped like a boot," the obvious answer is Italy. For the clue, "the concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, is located in this country," the answer was NOT Austria, as many of my students guessed. And for "Dracula's castle is located in this country," I had to tell my students that we do not spell it "Roumanie."

The best for me, though, was the student who suddenly yelled out, "Sarah, where was Omelette from?" Omelette? "Yeah, it says, 'According to Shakespeare, Omelette is the prince of this country'." Oh, Hamlet! I couldn't help myself, and I started to giggle a little bit, realizing a moment too late that this boy hadn't intentionally mispronounced Hamlet's name. I caught myself and said, "Ahem. I'll give you a hint: it's in northern Europe." Someone yelled out Denmark in French, and we translated it together.

The Omelette story has reminded me of all the funny things that Europeans (not just the French) have said to me during my time here. Although Americans are typically pegged as the blubbering idiots of the human race, I'll admit that some of the funniest (and most ridiculous) questions I've ever been asked has been while I was overseas. Here are just a few...read them while anticipating the sigh that comes as my response:


- What's the most popular type of car in the States? Citroen?

- Well, that [heart attacks] is normal, what with everyone eating hamburgers all the time...

- (when a package didn't arrive) Could the post office in the States be on strike?

- You know what Africa is, don't you?

Me: How many states are there in the U.S.?
Student A: 12!
Student B: 72!!

- So, you all drive big cars?

- Why don't you have a gun? I thought all Americans had one!

Me: What is the capital of the U.S.?
Student A: Hollywood!
Student B: New York!!

But my favorite of all time is this:

- You use the Euro in the States, don't you?


Sigh. Sigh. And sigh.

You know you've been abroad too long when...

- You start referring to the French as "us" and Americans as "they"

- You have to translate dollars into Euros

- You allow extra time at the grocery store or bank because you know there will be a wait

- The bus is five minutes late, and you think, "oh, they must be on strike"

- You realize that you can indeed live without a car

- You hear complaints that it might be 15 degrees on Inauguration Day, and you think, "that's practically summer!"...until you realize it's NOT 15 degrees Celcius

- People stop asking where you are from in England

- You have more frequent member cards in Europe than in the States

- You check Le Monde before you check the New York Times

- You realize that you cannot go without eating 3- or 4-course meals

- You cry at the thought of the sad cheese aisle in American grocery markets

- You refuse to call yourself "American," but rather Etats-unisien(ne) (from the US)

- You forget that you're abroad, and are just having fun living your life!

Christmas in Paris!

Honestly, I never thought I would be able to say that I spent Christmas in Paris, but now I can. If I couldn't go home to be with my family (because of high airplane prices and the closure of the PDX airport), then at least this was the next best thing.

The weekend before Christmas, I was in Perpignan, and stayed back to go on a hike in the Pyrenees with Graham, an English teacher from my school (who now I know is reading my blog, so "Hi, Graham!"), and DouDou, a philosophy teacher from another school in town. The weather was nice the day we went, but windy. We had to stop our first hike because the wind was too violent to continue, and we had really only begun.

We drove quite a ways to the hilltop village of Montferrar, near the Spanish border. We had a view of the Mediterranean from the village and ate lunch there. It was splendid. Then we started hiking further up the mountain, which was difficult for me because of my brand new, unbroken-in shoes that I was wearing. Ouch and ouch! But alas, I made it back down alive, with only some damage to my ankles, but that view...was fantastic!

On the 23rd, I went up to Paris to spend Christmas with my friend Vicky and her boyfriend, Mike. On Christmas Eve, we all went to the Jules Verne restaurant on the Eiffel Tower for lunch/dinner. I had booked reservations over a month in advance, and it was a good thing, as we were the last table to be seated. Amazingly, we had a table for three right by the window, with a superb view of the Arc de Triomphe and the 16e arrondissement, which included the Ecole Militaire (you'd probably recognize it if you saw it). And yes, I took lots of pictures and videos!!

Our meal was incredible, to say the least. We were all enamored by every new plate and couldn't stop saying, "wow...oh yum, wow..." I was careful to take pictures of everything we ate, too! The waiters even helped Vicky and me push in our chairs. What service!

The bill is another story. Let's just say I took a picture of that, too. Hopefully, I'll never pay so much for another meal for the rest of my life!! But, when comparing it to the price of a plane ticket back to Oregon (that I probably wouldn't have been able to make because of the snow there), it was much, much less.

For Christmas, we had a good, relaxing day. We slept in, opened presents, watched movies, and Vicky's Chilean roommate Victoria made us an excellent Christmas dinner. We had two of Victoria's friends come over, both Chilean, and it was a wonderful, multilingual Christmas dinner. Victoria and her friend Patti only spoke French and Spanish, whereas Patti's cousin Andés only spoke English and Spanish. So we went back and forth between languages, and it was so much fun.

After Paris, I went down to Poitiers to visit my host family. It was so good to see them, and felt so strange to be back in the town where I lived after four years. Some things had changed (a new theater was built, a building in the center of town had burned down), but most had not. The saddest for me was that my beloved Greek restaurant, where my friends and I dined each Thursday at noon, was gone. I was looking forward to a good chicken pita, but no.

I stayed in Poitiers for two days, and then came back to Perpignan. It had snowed in Perpignan while I was gone, and had already melted. By the time I got back home, it had started snowing in Paris. So no snow for me this year. And I'm pretty glad about that.

On the other hand, however, Perpignan is supposedly having its coldest winter weather spell this week since WWII. At least, that's what one of the teachers told me. It's perfectly beautiful outside -- the sun is shining, there isn't a cloud in sight, but the air is frigid. Realistically, it's probably freezing (can't be much colder), but everyone is panicking by this "winter weather." What a perfect time, then, for the heating to go out in my new apartment. Let's just say that last night was extreeeeeemely cold and unpleasant. Should be fixed today.

Now, I am back to school, back to the grind, with a new year ahead of me. I have a lot to look forward to: my mother's visit in less than a month!, my tentative trip to Ireland for St. Patrick's Day, and my planned trip to the Greek Isles in April. I am certainly looking forward to all this year will bring.

Forget FERPA

For the past five years, for different reasons, I have had FERPA (the Family and Education Rights and Privacy Act) drilled into my head. “And what do you say,” I can still hear the Dean of Students from Pacific University saying, “when a parent calls saying that she desperately needs to get in contact with her son?” And I can hear myself as part of a chorus, repeating: “I can neither confirm nor deny that your son is even a student at this institution.” In other words, you need to get in contact with your son? Call him. Don’t call the school. We are not the middle man.

This is what I practiced for years – from being a House Tutor/Academic Resident Assistant at Pacific to being a writing instructor at Oregon State. I learned these rules well. You don’t share information about your students with other faculty members. You don’t tell outsiders about your students’ progress. And you certainly don’t let other people’s parents know how well other parents’ children are doing in class. That’s just wrong.

Not so in France. At the beginning of December, I attended what is called a “conseil de classe,” or “class council meeting.” You see, French high school classrooms are constructed much like American elementary classes, where each year students have the same classmates for every class. They do not change individually from class to class like American high schools, but rather the class as a whole moves from subject to subject. As a result, the “conseil de classe” can evaluate the entire class on its behavior and academic progress.

Yesterday’s meeting discussed a class of Terminale STG – in other words, these are high school seniors who have not chosen to specialize in the sciences, humanities, or business, but rather more hands-on subjects (sometimes the STG are stereotyped as the kids who take shop class instead of AP European History). I work with these students once every week, so I was allowed to sit in on the meeting. Here are some of my notes:

In attendance: 2 student delegates, 1 parent delegate, about 10 teachers (all the teachers who work with this particular class), the Vice Principal, and me.

Without the delegates: The vice principal has projected a screen with an Excel document of every student’s individual file, as well as statistics for the class as a whole. From a FERPA perspective, this is dangerous information. There is everything on every student, from personal information to their class rank to their individual grades and comments. Wow.

I was shocked by the opening remarks: “Let’s start with so-and-so. His father is handicapped and lives in Paris.” Inserts “ohs” and “now, I get its” here. (?!) Another girl’s record of absences was discussed. It was suspect, was the general opinion. “She’s, ummm…particular, that one,” one teacher said. Particular.

Enter the delegates, 2 students from the class and a mother of another student.

One teacher gives a long interlude on his opinions on the class as a whole. Their work is too mediocre, he announces. Not sufficient to sustain them through the BAC exam. “Oh, and have we mentioned that they had a total of 251 absences in one trimester?” Insert more disturbed “ohs” and “now, I get its” here.

The vice principal continues the speech, turning to the student delegates and warning them about the dangers of failing the BAC. “You must work hard this year,” he tells them. “This is serious. If you don’t pass the BAC, there isn’t any guarantee that you will have a place in the class next year.”

The vice principal allows the parent to speak. She first begins with benign comments: “oh yes, I agree with what you have said. I have heard similar comments from other parents…” etc. Then she got a little defensive: “My son was really lost at times this trimester. He didn’t know what to do to prepare for the BAC.” Was she pointing fingers at the teachers present? Or simply reiterating what she had perceived?

The vice principal allowed the students to speak. One said that he agreed with the comments, but had no idea that there were so many absences. Were the numbers correct? Really, he said. I had no idea there were that many.

The rest of the session focused on individual critiques. What the teachers did was evaluate each student, looking at his or her grades and teachers’ comments, and write global comments and suggestions on their report cards. For one student, all the teachers agreed that she was fragile. She needed encouragement. So, on her global commentary, the vice principal wrote, “Keep going! Keep pressing on.” And to the teachers, he instructed that they encourage her more, both in her studies and in regards to her behavior in class.

Other commentaries were not so nice. “Student A has an attitude,” one teacher explained. “I mean, wow…look at her grades. Insufficient.”

And another: “Student B was held back (“She’s getting better!” someone yells out). If she’s a 5th year senior, she needs to work a little harder. And seriously, she’s getting a 9 [out of 20; approximately a C] in gym class? What is she doing there?”

But even the best student in the class could not escape criticism. His grades were unspeakably good – all high As, except for in philosophy (might I add that the highest grade the philosophy teacher gave was a 10/20 – in other words, a C?). The vice principal and teachers were ready to write, “Way to go! Congratulations!” when the philosophy teacher raised his hand and said, “I don’t think his work is good enough for a “Congratulations!”. Can’t you tone it down to a simple “good work”? The vice principal looked disappointed, but relented to the request. “Good work,” he wrote.

It’s a pretty bleak world when the best student in the class is reduced to a simple “good work” instead of a “congratulations!” But that is the strict nature of the French education system. Everything is noticed. No one gets out unscathed.

And everyone knows about it.