Jennie en France

I need help! I finally upgraded to the latest version of wordpress.org, and now the URL to my blog doesn’t work properly. Just using www.ielanguages.com/blog/ gives a “Page cannot be found” error message. I have to include index.php for it to work. But my domain is set up to redirect to index.php as the default page anyway. All of the other permalinks still work because they actually include the index.php. I can access everything except the main page! I vaguely remember this happening the last time I upgraded, but I don’t remember how I fixed it. I remember completely breaking my blog and having to change things in PhpMyAdmin, so I know what not to do…

So to summarize, why does this work: http://ielanguages.com/blog/index.php

But not this: http://ielanguages.com/blog/

Any ideas?

P.S. No .htaccess - I’m on a Windows server.

Loan words are definitely not helping my students learn English vocabulary. They were supposed to write partitive expressions to make uncount nouns countable on the test last week. All of the images they had to identify were used in their daily lessons, so they should have known which words to use.

The correct answer is a loaf of bread. What did some of my students write? Cake. Which is understandable since most bread in France does not look like this and in French, un cake is this (whether it’s sugary, salty or fruity):

I would call this a fruitcake in English, but all the others I would tend to call bread, i.e. banana bread, zucchini bread, etc. because they look like small loaves of bread even if they’re not really “bread.” A cake to me is much larger (round or square), usually in flavors of chocolate, vanilla, cherry chip, marble, carrot, etc. and covered in frosting.

This is a bowl (or box) of cereal. If the students didn’t write cereals (because it’s plural in French), they would write cornflakes and I don’t think it was because of the barely distinguishable green rooster on the box (which was black & white on the test anyway). David tells me that you can use cornflakes to refer to cereal in general in French, even though it only refers to a specific type of cereal in English.

Other answers weren’t so wrong, such as a pack of chewing-gum instead of just a pack of gum. The chewing part isn’t said very often in everyday American English, and there’s no hyphen (which annoyingly seems to make its way into a lot of English loan words in French.)

Yes, my students should have learned the vocabulary we went over in class, but I understand how it’s confusing for them to think they’re using English words properly when they’re really not. If the word was borrowed from English, why would the meaning be changed in French? I hope they’re just as annoyed about it as I am.

I wanted to read Les français aussi ont un accent by Jean-Benoît Nadeau, the same author of 60 Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong, because I thought I would enjoy a Quebecker’s take on expat life in France. This book is in French, which is half of the reason why I wanted to read it, but I found myself more and more homesick with each chapter. Nadeau’s frustrations with France are the same as mine - being corrected for using the “wrong” word or accent in French (European snobs want you to believe that Quebecois French is not proper French just as American English is not proper English), all the ridiculous paperwork needed just to do the simplest things, and even the showerheads that are not attached to the wall (douches-téléphones-sans-fixation-au-mur), for example. Quebec and the US are very different in many ways, but they are both in North America and that culture is what I miss.

En plus, the fact that a native speaker of French has the same problems with France that I do makes me realize that I was partly wrong about culture shock. Before I moved here, I always thought not being able to speak French well would be my biggest obstacle. It was hard in the beginning, but now that I can understand 99% of what people say and can carry on conversations easily, I’m realizing that it has little to do with the language. It’s simply the little things that are different that you never anticipated would be different. Why would stores, banks and the post office close for lunch? Why is absolutely nothing open on Sundays? Why does the whole country shut down for 6 weeks during the summer? Why can’t I choose my own PIN number?  Why can’t I find cheddar cheese? An why oh why is the showerhead not attached to the wall???

I had heard about culture shock being worse for those who move to countries where the same language is spoken (i.e. Americans who move to the UK) because you just expect everything to be the same as well. But I guess I never thought about someone from Quebec adjusting to life in France. Quebec may speak French, but it is not France. It is North America. So even though we’re separated by a native language, I feel much closer to les québécois than I ever will to les français.

It’s that time of year again!

English Assistant in France

Teach English conversation 12 hours a week in Primary or Secondary schools for a monthly stipend of 780 €. Medical insurance & paid holidays. Contracts of 6, 7, or 9 months, all beginning October 1. Students of any major can apply, though applicants should have an interest in education. Must be between 20 and 30 years old for American program. Read my Assistants Guide if you want to know what the program is like.

Deadlines & application links:

• December 1, December 22, and January 15 for the United States
  
• November 23 for Australia
• December 1 for England & Wales
• December 17 for India
• January 31 for New Zealand
• January 31 for Scotland & Northern Ireland
• March 7 for Canada
• March 31 for Ireland

Native speakers from South Africa, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Trinidad & Tobago and Barbados can also apply, but I don’t have specific links or deadlines for the assistantship program. If you are from one of these countries, you can download the application through the CIEP site.

English Assistant in Spain

Americans or Canadians

Almost the same as the French program, but monthly stipend of 700 € and contract of 8 months (October - May). About 1,200 positions available. [2009-10 application not yet uploaded!]

English Assistant in Austria

Americans

Monthly stipend of 977 € and contract of 8 months (October - May). Must already have Bachelor’s degree. This assistantship is administered by the Fulbright Commission, so only 120 positions are available. Application for 2009-10 will be available November 15, 2008, and deadline is February 15, 2009.

English Assistant in Germany

Americans

Monthly stipend of 700 € and contract of 9 months (September - June). Must already have Bachelor’s degree. Also administered by Fulbright, so only 70 positions available and highly competitive.

English Assistant in Finland

Americans (no knowledge of Finnish required)

No application or deadline; just send resume and cover letter. Applicants with teaching experience receive priority. Contracts from late August until May; salary will be sufficient to cover living expenses.

Hug a veteran today.

November 5th was David’s and my 2 year anniversary, so we decided to go out to eat last night. I had been wanting to go to a Mexican restaurant forever (since I’d left the US…), but we never got around to it somehow over the past 24 months. Either we’re extremely busy or there aren’t many Mexican restaurants around here - I’ll let you guess the answer.

But last night we finally went to Adelita’s in Sevrier (just down the lake from Annecy) and had a nice dinner of Frenchified Mexican food. As an entrada, we ordered Nacho Jalapeño which looked like this:

I was expecting nachos that you could eat with your hands, but then I remembered that no one in France uses their hands to eat. Needless to say, it was very strange using a fork and knife to eat this.

For the main dish, we both ordered tostadas. (I had already started eating before I remembered to take a picture, so the plate looked better than this when it first arrived.)

Overall, it was good, but I was really missing cheddar cheese. That bland emmental just doesn’t cut it.

The decor of the restaurant was cute though. I’ve missed bright colors in the land of gray and black.

Sombrero & toucan in the corner:

Happy anniversary, mon amour !

I’M PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!

The Nicolas Sarkozy Voodoo Doll.

He tried to have it banned in France, but he didn’t succeed. Not yet, anyway.

Maybe it will be worth money someday.

Or maybe we’ll just let the cat eat it.

We all laugh at these songs that make fun of beginning language classes and the somewhat useless words and phrases we learn. How many times in French have I ever said “Où est la bibliothèque ?” Um, probably never. But these videos also show the poor attempt at language teaching and/or the poor attempt at language learning that is so prevalent in English-speaking schools. Even though I’m laughing on the outside, I’m crying on the inside because I know there are so many students who finish years of study and retain nothing but these stock phrases.

Foo doo fa fa by the Flight of the Conchords

First Semester of Spanish Love Song by RunawayBox

Second Semester of Spanish Love Song (with Erik Estrada!)

Anybody know of songs like these for other languages?

Back in July, two of David’s friends took off on a tour du monde (trip around the world). This seems to be pretty common as I’ve heard of many French people/couples who do it. I have no idea how they afford it though!

Sylvie & Emeric started their trip in New York, with visits to Boston, Baltimore, Montreal and D.C. Then they flew down to Chili, Bolivia and Argentina. Currently, they’re in French Polynesia. Then after a month in Australia & New Zealand, they’ll spend 4 months traveling throughout several Asian countries. Finally, they’ll finish with a few days in Finland and Sardinia before returning to France nearly an entire year after they left. They are keeping a blog throughout their trip (if you read French or just want to see pretty photos): SEAM…

I love to travel, but not for more than a few weeks at a time. I miss home too much. I miss my cat, my books, my own bed - just the familiarity of things, really. I’d love to visit all those countries too (and many others), but not in one trip around the world. Plus I would have a really hard time deciding which countries to go to and which ones I couldn’t possibly fit in because of lack of time or money. Basically, I want to go everywhere and see everything.

I’m pretty fortunate that I have already visited several countries: Canada, Ireland, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France (just Paris, Provence and my own région though), Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Italy and Egypt. And thanks to my siblings’ weddings and friends who live overseas, I will be visiting these places in 2009:

• Dominican Republic
• Turkey
• Scotland & Northern Ireland
• Washington D.C. (and maybe Boston)

The European destinations are really cheap thanks to low-cost airlines and free accommodation. The ones across the ocean - not so much. But those are for the weddings, so seeing family is more important than saving money.