It's been a while since I've written for this blog, but not for lack of material, adventures or time spent thinking of home. For three solid weeks a tremendous wave of rain and indignant wind has blown through all of France, forcing old metal pieces that held back shutters on castle walls for 200-years and tree branches that held up leaves for almost as many seasons to succumb to it's brash and petulant persuasion. With the exception of a few humid half-days of blue skies and sun, a welcomed, if brief, reprise of the wonderful early spring we had in Brittany in March, this relentless blowing brings us (as I write this, tomorrow) the second and final round of the 2012 French Presidential elections, and the last month of my 8 months spent in Europe. It's a troublesome wind, but it brings with it exciting things.
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Since last I wrote I have spent four of the previous six weeks on the road. The two weeks in there not spent traveling were witness to my last two weeks of work at Lycée-College Brocéliande, split by a two-week spring break: during the second and third week of April, I passed my time divided between Stockholm, Sweden and Paris. Concidentally, one Everett "You're out of your element" Cislo's spring break within the German colegiate system fell exactly in line with my own and I was able to spend the first half of break with him and our dashingly Scandinavian host, Will "is a very straightforward guy" Jonsson in his swanky downtown Stockholm apartment. Unfortunately, just before I arrived, Will was taken ahold by what the French call la grippe and what I like to call that exotic, variable kick-in-the-teeth of an unconstant and mercurial mistress called, Influenza. Disdonc, thusly, therefore I was greeted at the Arlanda Airport not by my two strapping young friends but by Everett and a large, bearded Swedish man with Will's same Swedish head and was promptly swept away to the world's first IKEA to help Will's father acquire lots and lots of new furniture for his new apartment.
Welcome to Sweden, here's an IKEA.
After that first afternoon of good ol' fashioned heavy lifting to invigorate the ol' bones after a 3am awakening earlier that day, the rest of my week-long stay in Sweden's capitol was one of the most relaxed vacations I've ever had. During Will's brief stay in SickLand Everett and I explored Stockholm and started off a week of many museum visits, lots of cooking and many naps. Soon enough, our big blond Swede got good and healed and we were able to take on Stockholm as a trio. Waking up on my last day, we were to find all of Stockholm covered in a very wet and thick layer of snow, street sweepers equipped with tiny plows clearing intermittent sidewalks of 5 inches of slush so that the city was somewhat walkable.
I returned to Paris with no real plans for my second week of spring break except to meet up and hang out with Robbie and Alexis and the other American students who were residing in Paris for Evergreen's biennial France study abroad program. I stayed at a friend-of-a-friend's smoky and small apartment near Pigalle and spent most of that week doing a whole lot of nothing. I did, however, participate in some of the program's museum visits and outings, and hung out with the few students in that group that I knew already and met a few more. Among the visits I tagged along on was a concert of polyphonic choir and medieval music at Notre Dame de Paris, an intimate but breathtaking performance marked by reverberation and grandeur, and which left me somewhere between the quiet verge of tears, sublime ecstasy and a hearty, welcomed pain. It was something that took me by surprise in a way that I almost intellectually anticipated but for which I was not ready emotionally.
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The French Ministry of Education divides the country into three or four zones so that all-of-France-with-kids doesn't go off on vacation at once. This year the académie de Rennes fell within Zone A, meaning, regardless of the fact that my contracted ended with the month of April, I was left with only one last week of work after the return to classes. My last week of work as an English language teaching assistant fell in line with the first week my father and Kathleen were to visit France, and so I caught a ride with them from Paris back to Guer. My last week in the classroom went by wonderfully. Half of my lessons were spent eating snacks the students had brought and saying goodbyes, with a little English game or two on the side, and the other half was spent with a strong lesson that ended in a sing-a-long with me on acoustic guitar, singing Katy Perry's "The One That Got Away" with a bunch of French 16 year-olds. That happened.
Near the end of the week, during one of the rare moments when the clouds broke and the sun peeked out its little head between spouts of pouty rain, a group of students gathered around a few acoustic guitars in one of the school's courtyards and I was invited to play. Since I was between classes, I obliged and played to a group of my 2nde students. After I had run through the few songs I knew by heart, I encouraged the students to play and a mini concert unfolded as more and more students gathered around. It was a great little spontaneous moment and would become one of my finest memories of the end of the school year.
Meanwhile, for my dad and Kathleen's stay in Guer I managed to set them up in a small château outside of town, owned by a family who is friends with a colleague of mine. While I worked during the week they went out on day trips to Mount Saint Michel and Josselin, and days that I had off we went to visit Quimper and the megaliths at nearby Monteneuf.
Back in Paris now, I leave at the end of this week for a month-long trip through Belgium and the Netherlands before I head back to the States at the end of May. Although all of my things are packed away in suitcases and I'm currently living out of a backpack, it has not quite hit me how fast this has all happened. It's a strange feeling, this one, and I don't yet know how to categorize it--it is analogous to the unease and unwanted anticipation that occurs the last few weeks of every summer at camp.
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As I wrote to a friend at the end of March, seven months spent in France is a long time, especially if we frame it within the academic calendar; the same that has seen my previous four years split between nine months spent in Olympia and the subsequent three spent in Northern Michigan. In reality, though, I will have not even seen three full seasons in France, let alone all four in Washington, Michigan or anywhere else in the last five years. Yet seven months in Guer has been a formidable, grounding experience that has brought me both growth and fortitude, kindness and humility, offering time for reflection and much letter-writing--genuine is a word I want to use to describe this experience, avoiding at all costs the word authentic. During my time, I met real, genuine people, real teens, real teachers who were willing to let me be a part of their lives, some more than others, who drove me places, listened to my lessons, shook my hand, taught me how to follow a low kick jambe arrière with a single-leg takedown. There were real conversations with interested people and real families who let me sleep on their couches and talk to their kids and eat their food. As I get more and more deeply embedded in this language and culture, seven months feels like nothing. Seven months is a vessel, a yellow bird. Seven months is just long enough to present an accurate enough caricature of what a more permanent life here would be like. I wonder what will bring me back, and for how long.
P.S.
Thanks to all the friends and relatives who kept in touch via mail. It was a real highlight of my stay.
