Excusez-moi, Madame?

I’m starting to think I look kind of French. I don’t mean that I look French in the stereotypical kind of way; I’m not super skinny with pointy, chiseled features. I don’t walk around with a cigarette in my hand at all times. Though, I do wear a lot of black, and I do have pretty short hair. Okay, I guess what I mean to say is, I’m starting to think I can pass for French. And here’s why:

Lately, almost every day, someone comes up to me either on the street or in the metro station and asks me for directions. For those of you who know me well, this probably sounds hilarious to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah… But they often ask me for directions that I actually know how to give! For example: how to get to the metro station in a certain direction. I’ve been getting that one a lot lately. And not only do I know what to say, but when I’m done, it appears that they have no idea that I’m not actually French. And that makes me feel awesome.

Something that I do find strange, though, is that I more often than not get addressed as “Madame,” rather than “Mademoiselle.” I thought “Madame” was for people who look at least 27. I hope I don’t look like I’m 27. But maybe Mademoiselle has become more of a “young lady” type moniker, one reserved for preteens and teenagers that wish they looked older than they do. Maybe I should be flattered that I’m a “Madame.”

Speaking of “Madames” I am also called this by my students. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been working as an English assistant in a vocational high school in Croix Rousse (only a two minute walk from my apartment, which is amazing) for the past three weeks. I was so happy to get this job, and it’s been going really well. Not only is it a really good experience in general (mainly because I kind of think, deep down, that I want to be a teacher), but it’s also so incredibly interesting for me. Because it’s a vocational school, the students are there to learn a specific trade/profession, which means their general education level is lower than students their age in other schools (so their English is at a pretty low level). The students are very unmotivated, and pretty disrespectful (this isn’t quite the right word, but for lack of a better one) during class; they’ll talk to each other, even answer their cell phones sometimes, and they often flat out refuse to do something if they don’t want to do it, which is usually speak in English. Also, I think out of the six to eight classes that I teach, I have about 4 or 5 white kids, and some of the students I have are my age, a couple are even older than me. I found this all out during my first week.

During the first week, I was with all the students and the teacher (I work with two different teachers, three of their classes each), and they just had the students ask me questions, discussion style. In each class, there were only about 4 kids who actually asked me questions. Many of them who wouldn’t directly talk to me would ask one of these kids a question in French and have the representative translate and ask me in English. Some of them would translate everything I said kind of to themselves, kind of to everyone into French immediately after I said it. In any case, being from California scored me some serious popularity points, as did my Nike Dunks. In every class, someone asked me about: celebrities, and which ones I knew; whether or not I liked Bush; if I had a boyfriend; if everyone in America eats McDonalds; and which is better, France or America? Some of them asked me if I smoked weed, some of them asked me how much money I was making for doing this (I didn’t respond to these ones, don’t worry Dad). There were way more guys than girls; a couple of the classes were only guys. Basically, this was/is the complete opposite of my high school.

But I love it. Some of the kids are hilarious. We have a lot of discussions about rap music (they all love it), and once after class, during which we discussed Soulja Boy, one of the students played the song on his cell phone and we did the dance together.

Since that first week, I’ve done some other things with the students besides talk about California and rap music. We’ve done some worksheets, had some grammar lessons. Usually, now, the teacher gives me half the class and we go into a separate room, so it’s just me and the kids. We’ll see how it progresses, but so far I’m really enjoying it.