Silence and Silliness in French Class

       In high school, I took four years of French and had the same teacher throughout. Referred to affectionately as "Madame," she put up with so much when it came to our class. We were loud, obnoxious, late, distracted, we never sat in our assigned seats, and usually at least one of us was eating at our desk or was asleep. If I ever have students like us I know it will be karma biting me right in the butt.

She had a lot of reasonable rules and requests that she constantly reminded us of, and that we constantly chose to ignore. I am sure her voice is ingrained in all of our heads with the phrases "pas de telephone"(put your phones away) or "assieds-toi"(sit down!).

Madame pretending to ignore my goofiness. 

We almost always did our homework as teams during our lunch periods, or as she was coming around to check it last minute, but it always got done. We often talked during tests and quizzes but we never cheated on them. We ratted on each other constantly and may have given her more than her fair share of trouble, but it was only because of how much we loved her and believed she was an equal member of our much loved and crazy group.
   
We were an unavoidable nuisance at the end of the day but we knew that deep down she looked forward to having us in class (whether she would admit it or not). We loved to joke and we would laugh until we cried. The shenanigans were endless and our crazy group of ten gave our French teacher one hell of a ride.

She was a wonderful and knowledgeable teacher and everyone else in our class seemed to understand the material. I remember one day I was absent and everyone joked that they had learned the secret to French that day and everything suddenly made sense (I still wonder if that is true).


French was not my forte as I would often remind myself and my classmates. It was fine though because as long as I got my homework got done, raised my hand at least four times in class, and participated in the vocabulary games, I could almost always pull off a B on my report card. And since I stuck with the class all four years I got college credit for it and believed I would never have to take another French class the rest of my life. I was wrong.

For some silly reason when you study abroad in France, your home university expects you to also take a French language class. So, even though I have spent over 700 days of my life in class with the beloved Madame, despite all of her valiant efforts, I can not speak more than one full grammatically correct sentence in French. I could study French for the next 700 years and I would still not be able to say anything other than "J'aime au foot" (I love soccer). This incidentally, I wrote on every quiz and test from chapter one French one, until the final exam of French four in June of my senior year of high school.

Today was day one of classes here in Paris, and my first class was French at  eight in the morning . My first French class since high school as well as my first time being-up-before-the-sun-for-class since high school.

I would like to place this two hour class above the grocery store incident on my list of traumatic incidents so far while studying in Paris.  During the lesson, taught entirely in French, I only understood every 9th or 10th word. I could not follow what the professor or the other students were saying, I could not understand any of the questions the teacher asked me, and I could not answer them. There was no English translation afterward like there used to be, and there was no group of close friends to look to for help as English was not the first language for many of the other students in the classroom. The girl to my left was from Brazil and the girl to my right was from Taiwan.

Laying on the heater instead of my
assigned seat while taking notes  in class . 

The first day of my high school French class we were told that everyone was going to mess up and that we should not be embarrassed or upset, we should be encouraged to try again. We quickly learned that we still got points even if we were wrong and that when others messed up it was good because it gave us a chance to correct them and get the participation points for ourselves.

 Above all what I got out of my high school class was a supportive group of friends. By senior year the eleven people who were in that room at the end of the day were a nice escape from the intimidation that high school struggles can bring. Had we never had class together I most likely would never have gotten to know those people. Looking back on high school a lot of my best memories came from that room in the northern most hall of our building. They were the reason I stayed with French until I graduated, not because I understood any of it.

While sitting in my classroom today watching the outside turn from night to day, I went from stressing and struggling to daydreaming about my old friends. When the professor randomly called on me it was nowhere near as safe and fun of an environment as before. Suddenly eyes from around the globe were staring at me, the dumb blonde American, who didn't even know how to properly say what nationality she was.  I started sweating, did I say "Je suis americaine"? I wasn't sure. I freaked out because I would never say that in English as generally I tell people I am from the United States. I didn't want to offend the Brazilian girl or the Canadian girl who were also American. Then I realized that if I decided to say United States I would have to say "Etats-Unis", but that didn't make sense either I couldn't say "I am United States"! I'm not that dumb!

I sat through the next hour and forty-three minutes watching the clock and trying to avert my eyes so as not to be "randomly" called on again. I imagined myself running home and climbing back into my bed for the next five hours in hopes that my next class wouldn't be so bad. So at 10:01 when she let us leave I raced home to dramatically proclaim to Becca that I was buying a plane ticket and flying home.

 I then rationalized. I made myself breakfast, took a long hot shower, and sent my supervising professor an email to find a solution. Her response was hopeful and so am I. She has helped me so much already on this trip that her patience for my problems (whether they be French or not) remind me greatly of my dear Madame from high school. I am hopeful that I can spend the next four months in France the way I spent  my four years of high school French. I plan on making good friends, laughing until my sides hurt, taking lots of photos, and knowing just enough French to get by.

"I am salt"