Strange Asian Films and Teaching the Blues

Despite the fact that the buses ran even less than before on Wednesday and Thursday (most bus lines didn't run at all) because of the continuing strike, I did have classes to teach! My favorite was definitely Thursday afternoon with the English teacher Patrick's class. I brought in my ukulele and played Robert Johnson's "Kind-hearted Woman." Before doing so I gave them all lyrics sheets of the song with some words missing that they were required to fill in while I was playing. We also talked about Robert Johnson, some of the legends surrounding him, and about the Blues. I played the song through once, then we discussed what words the students were able to get. No one got the word "evil" the first time around. I went through line by line and explained to the best of my ability what Robert Johnson was speaking of and why it was written this way. The second time around the students were able to fill in the rest of the lyrics, and after explaining their meaning we moved on to talk more about the Blues. I explained how sometimes blues lyrics were a coded method of talking about problems that couldn't be expressed overtly, just as oppression by white society. We talked about how the Blues help alleviate pain, and how there is an element of hope within the sad exterior of Blues songs. I don't know if the students enjoyed talking about this as much as I did, but I felt very good about the fact that I could share a great interest of mine. Most people know of the Blues but don't really understand what it is all about, so if I can help in any way with that understanding I think I am doing a great thing.

Thursday marked my last day of class until after the vacation period. I am off all of this week! It seems a bit strange to be off after just having started, but I am not complaining. I have decided to stay in Rennes during this period so I can get to know the city better, and also spend time with Lizzie, who has come to Rennes to work as an Au Pair and is needed close to her family as a baby is about to be born! In keeping with my desire to see more of Rennes, Thursday night I went to see a series as part of a short film festival showing at the Theatre National de Bretagne in Rennes center. It was sold out. After walking around Rennes for about an hour, I decided to buy tickets for a different series in the festival that was playing after the one I had originally intended to see. In the meantime I found a bar with a Jazz Manouche band (so very French) and picked up some reading material about upcoming events. For more on this style of music you can take a look at ever-so-helpful wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gypsy_jazz.

The heating isn't on in my building, but luckily with the help of Corinne (an English teacher here) I was able to get an electric heater for my room. I had a slightly unpleasant surprise Saturday morning when I found that the hot water had been turned off in my building for the holidays (someone had forgot that I was staying there) but happily I was able to get it sorted by late afternoon. It seems the turning on/off of hot water is all done by computer here, and someone here at the school had to call up a guy in Paris who gave him instructions over the phone explaining how to do it. What a world.

Oh! The short film festival. I saw a series entitled "Orient Extrême," mostly made in South Korea. A lot of the films were a bit gruesome for my taste, but some were absolutely hilarious. My favorites were a group of businessmen with "samurai spirits" who decided to avenge their master's death with inflatable hammers that looked like they were bought in a state fair, and a man who was auditioning for a role where he had to turn himself into various objects. He was asked for something sensational, and shape shifted into a bomb which began a 5 minute countdown. The judges began to get very nervous as the countdown reached its end, and puffs of smoke from the bomb made it appear that the man was trying to change back but was unable to do so. As the clock reached zero the man changed back, only to find the room empty. The judges had run, but left a note that said "accepted" on the desk. The scene was hilarious!

More to come soon.

Three Weeks in Rennes - Already!

It has been one week now that much of France has been on strike, including many teachers and students, protesting the French government's plan to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 by 2018. Because of this I have been teaching less classes than I normally would, and today is no exception. Normally, I have 5 classes scheduled for Tuesday. It looks like I will be teaching one day, that is, if the students show up! Several classes last week had zero students. It was just me and the teacher, waiting. I didn't mind too much though as this happened to my last class twice, and meant that I ended my work day a bit early.

I arrived in Rennes three weeks ago today, and have been quite busy in that time! I started working in my lycée two weeks ago today. I work 12 hours a week, and I very rarely see a group of students two weeks in a row. Many classes I see every other week (usually about half the class each time), and otherwise I work with small groups within the class, in which case it will be quite a while before I see the same students again. The level of English that the students posses varies surprisingly from within the same group. Especially when working in small groups of four, it becomes apparent when some of the students don't understand a single word I say, whereas others easily get it and tend to translate for their less fluent companions.

At this point I have navigated most the of French bureaucracy necessary at the beginning of my stay. I have completed all the procedures to validate my visa, signed papers, opened a bank account so that I can get paid, and, most unexpectedly, I was able to receive a six-month pass for free public transport in and around Rennes! I have also purchased a cheap bike from an older French fellow who's advert I found online. I have purchased a banjo from a really nice French man with a healthy appreciation for Old Time and Country Blues. I am staying at my school for the moment, and though it is a bit out of the city (40 min walk), I can catch a bus into town in 20 minutes, or in 6-10 minutes to the nearest metro station, which quickly zips customers anywhere they like along the line in a much more pleasant atmosphere than bigger city metros.

I hope that this blog will prove useful and/or interesting. At any rate, it can serve as a record of my professional life and cultural experiences in Rennes. Perhaps it will be of use to other English Teaching Assistants in the future. For now, I leave you with this thought:

The grapes in France have the seeds in them. This seems quite natural, except for the fact that as an American I am quite unused to eating grapes with seeds in them. Must one extract the seeds from each grape and place them in a little pile at the edge of the plate? This makes eating grapes very time consuming. Is it acceptable to merely chew and swallow the grapes as if the seeds were not there? The loud crunching coming from the grapes is rather disconcerting. Hmm... ponder at will.

Update:

I had no classes today! There weren't any students to teach. Blogger.com is blocked on my school's network (where I also live), so unless I find a way around it my blog posts will not likely correspond with when they are written.

Also, today at lunch I sat next to one of the English teachers I work with in the school cafeteria. She had grapes! I observed her removing the seeds from each grape from her mouth and placing them on her plate. Yet, she still seemed able to consume them at a reasonable rate. Perhaps it just takes practice.