Parade of Humankind

Here I am in France. And I am keeping myself busy. I've been on the go almost constantly since I arrived because 1. I have to distract myself from the fact that all the people I love the most are pretty much a million miles away, and 2. It's probably the only way I'll get a good night's sleep.

Today I went to the Saturday Market. I wish I had brought my camera. It's kind of a beautiful thing, and it was really nice out today.

From my direction, the market starts out as this huge parking lot, which has been taken entirely over by people selling fruits and vegetables. I bought much more fruit than I probably should have, but I think I was practical enough. An apple a day. A clementine a day. Some broccoli. Some grapes. A red bell pepper. This should get me through at least the week.

Today, I went further along. The market extends from the parking lot alongside the main stretch of road, Boulevard Foch. After the fruits and veggies comes cheese and other dairy products, then various meats... including horse! This is something people say is very good. I don't think I could eat it. Maybe, not sure. There's pork and a million kind of sausages, beef, chicken, duck. You name it. You keep going, and there's fish, crab, mussels, shrimp, squid...

Everything.

And, like I said, it's beautiful. People are all over the place, stopping and buying food, talking to friends. Waiting for some one to weigh out their squid. Children, babies in strollers, dogs!

Zeus, tu me manques! (jake too) And everyone is there to get fresh food, and I'm sure they'll cook something fabulous with it. (I am trying to figure out how to get a French person to invite me to dinner. I want home cooked French food.)

All in all, it's just this fabulous parade of humankind.

The people in Angers are so friendly too. If they realize you don't understand, they try to explain. Some people speak English, and, for now, I let them. The girls at my foyer are included in that. The speak to me in French even though many of them speak English. They know I'm here to learn, and it makes it a really good learning place.

The fluency has not arrived! But, I find myself thinking through conversations in French. Simple phrases are becoming easier.

Although, I did have an incident at the post office. French people love love love paper work. This is something I had heard, but not taken too seriously.

Let me repeat. They love paperwork. They love to have a copy of everything. They love to have papers to sign, to send you papers to be signed, to have you come back in to sign more papers. It's just different. I have opened a bank account... I think. I'm waiting for them to let me have my debit card. I say "let me have" because they will NOT send you this in the mail. No, first the have to send you some papers. Then, they send you a paper with the postman that he must see you sign. If you are not there, then you must go to the post office and sign it.

I did this.

I went back to the bank.

My account was not ready.

Let's just say the guy at the desk at the bank laughs when he sees me, albeit a friendly laugh.

Still no bank card.

I will let you know.

I don't mean to complain, because really it's all very funny. But, our coordinator at the US embassy said it best, "Many of you will essentially be entering the “real world” this year, and this world will be French. You will be faced with new experiences and challenges that you may not have had to deal with yet on your own and you will have to do this all in French!"

For now, there's just many hurddles to jump. In a month, it will be nothing. I hope.

I'm going to end with the best thing that happened recently. I went to one of my schools to observe. I've met all of my teachers, and I had one last class to watch.

In France, there is not k-5, rather it is CP, CE1, CE2, CM1, and CM2. They are approximately 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10-year-olds, respectively.

So this last class was CPs. They are babies. And they are sooooo excited to learn English, or maybe they're just excited that somebody young that talked funny was in the room.

One girl drew me a picture, then a second picture. Before I knew it, I had about 7 pictures from various children.

One little girl, who I met the first time I went to the school, is smitten. She is already hanging onto me and asking me questions about everything.

When it was time to leave, she was like "Bisous!" Then she kissed me on the cheek.

Then 25 small children surrounded me to kiss me on the cheek.

France is something else.