Served with the tit: and I'm back...briefly

So, I lied when I said I'd be back in June.

July didn't feel right either.

It's the end of August, the schizoid Boston summer is drawing its last gasps, and I'm finally, FINALLY getting around to updating this public log of lettered masturbation.

If there was anyone out there actually reading, my apologies.

I have a few posts pending before I launch into a reformulated version of Epicurean Piggy. (Still working on what that will be, since I'm chained to a desk job in Cambridge for at least the next year.) We should pick off where I left off. Post-vaccinations and post-France, but before my reentry to grown up working life. The 3-week interval that (mercifully) padded my departure from Saint-Etienne and the return to the 9-5 grind.

My journey to the Andes, to the land of Inka Kola, salt flats, and coca leaves. An indirect journey, since to get to just about anywhere in South America, travelers typically fly through one of three "portals": LAX, Houston, or MIA.

Mi-yami International Aeroport. The first airport I ever flew from. Probably, the airport I know the best in the world. I've flown out of MIA as a baby shit-machine, a pajama-clad toddler, an awkward unibrowed pre-teen, and an awkward-er teenager (apparently, there's only so much separating your eyebrows can do to up your cool quotient). In my twenties, I've probably flown in/out/and through MIA close to thirty times.

So I know it well.

And yet, there's a particular phenomenon that still catches me off guard each time I step off a plane and walk past the pink flamingos, mounted tropical fish, and palm trees that class up the joint. I head to the nearest Starbucks for a caffeine fix, I stand in line, and I observe this exchange.

Starbucks employee: What would you like?
Customer: Deme un café y un blueberry muffin, please.
Starbucks employee: Señora, there's no más blueberry muffins. Le puedo offer uno de apple cinnamon.
Customer: No, entonces un bagel con cream cheese, por favor.
Starbucks: Son cuatro dollars and siete cents.

Spanglish, not English or Spanish, is the ruling language in this town. Miamians occupy a unique linguistic space where even white people sound Latin and Hispanics forget that "parquear" is not, in fact, the Spanish equivalent of "park."

If I told you my house was ubicated by the river, would you know what I was talking about?

This is one of the big drawbacks to being fully billingual: you become too comfortable slipping in and out of multiple languages, and sooner or later they begin to fuse together in your brain.

Here is another example: as a child, I often made the mistake of telling my cousins I was embarazada. What I hoped to communicate to them was that I was embarrassed. What they heard was that I was pregnant. The two are what the French call faux amis - false friends (or cognates) in English.

The latter is my favorite type of billingual misfire. False, and often inappropriate, friends. And as a Miamian through and through, I thought I'd heard the best of the best.

Wrong.


The frowning gentleman you see above is my friend Sergey, a Russian, raised part in the Old Country and part in Amerika. You know how there are people who are bitten by the travel bug? Sergey was bitten by the travel python. He quit his job two years ago to travel across Asia and the Middle East. He returned to the U.S., deferred his entrance to business school, and kept on traveling; this time around South America. I met up with Sergey in Lima, the first leg of my Andean adventure. Fresh from Colombia and Ecuador, Sergey came to me a newly minted Spanglophile, wearing stories of linguistic missteps like badges of honor.

Sergey is (un)luckier than most: he speaks English and Russian like a native, French like a respectable Russian, and now, Spanish. This means that his misfires run the risk of being more powerful than most folks (picture tiny armies of English, Russian, French, and Spanish neurons chasing each other all around the left side of his brain). Our first day together, he told me the following story.

Sergey is in the Medellin sky tram, in Colombia. He's packed tightly in the car with a handful of other internationals; the rest of the tram riders are locals. Sergey is deep in a discussion about Colombian fare: specifically, seafood. It appears there is a local fish that is considered a delicacy. Sergey wants to know more. He wants to ask how the fish is served. If it is served whole. With the head.

Sergey thinks he remembers the word for "head" in Spanish. He "makes memory" (hacer memoria, sorry, I couldn't resist). He scans his mind. There's the word! It travels from his brain to his mouth, and he asks:

"Se sirve con la teta?"

The tram explodes with laughter. Sergey is confused. For a moment. And then, that pale creamy skin of his turns dark crimson.

The thing is, Sergey happened on the French word for head. La tête. In Spanish, it is la cabeza. But to say teta in Spanish, is to give the question an entirely different meaning.

"Is it served with the tit?"

Brief hilarity

You all remember, right? Tom and Jerry. The cartoon we (or at least I) grew up with, before Pokeman et. al. Tom chasing Jerry. Jerry outsmarting Tom. Formulaic but entertaining.

Well, the French kids remember Tom and Jerry. Quite well, in fact.

I'll explain.

Cindy, one of the English teachers at Terrenoire, showed me some test results this morning. The troisièmes took a cumulative exam before the break, testing what they've learned so far this year. On the exam was a section on past continuous. The section was quite simple: a series of images in which two cats wait outside a mousehole, presumably for a mouse, then set a trap, but ultimately the mouse gets away. Students were meant to describe the photos using the past continuous, i.e. While the cats were setting a trap, the mouse waited.

Fine.

The performance of most students was pitiable. It's unclear to me how so many of them could have obtained a 1 out of 9 possible points on this section.

But that's not the funny bit. The funny bit is this: a good half of the students could not find the word for mouse in English.

Instead, they opted for "The Jerry."

The Jerry was eating cheese while the cats waited.
While the cats were waiting for the Jerry, the Jerry escaped.

And so on and so forth.

Oh, and a couple of students chose "The Mickey" as their English word for mouse.

"Teacher, I lost my shit."

Some of you might recall the magic baguette episode.

Since then, I've had some pretty solid French-to-English mistakes. Like earlier this week, during a lesson on Thanksgiving.

Me: What do we eat on Thanksgiving?
Yasmin (student): Dinde!
Me: In English?
Yasmin: Ze dinde!

But what do you say to your 14-year old French student when he very seriously proclaims:
"Teacher, I lost my shit."

Some might veer away from confronting his obvious error and simply offer, "You mean your sheet?"

Not I. I've decided I've got nothing to lose. Since I've already made a few pretty explicit and, some might argue, inappropriate choices in class.

Like when I played "Celebrity" with my quatrième class at Terrenoire and thought, mistakenly, that it would be a good idea to place all the names of American celebrities in my cupped hands, so that the students had to resort to inserting their fingers into the small opening produced between my thumbs in order to pinch a slip of paper. This strategy worked just fine until we reached the end of the game, and, left with only 3 slips of papers in my cupped hands, the last student was forced to plunge his fingers forcefully into the gap between my palms, resulting in a pretty explicit gesture for the enjoyment of the entire class.

Or when a student tried to describe Pamela Anderson's larger-than-average breasts in English, and I found myself mocking "large breasts" with hands gesticulating all too wildly in front of my own chest.

So when Ferdy, a student in my troisième class at Terrenoire, announced to me that he had lost his "shit," I met his challenge head on. I wrote both words on the board, and told the students to repeat each with their distinct pronunciation. If you're gonna say a word, even if it's a bad word, you may as well say it right and use it in context.

Shit or sheet? Like bitch or beach, this is an important question for French speakers of English. One that I've addressed twice already in the past week. I'm looking forward to more, since adolescents already know as many or more bad words than I do. Besides, who am I to spare them English curse words? Most of you know I curse like a drunken sailor. Even when I'm not drunk or sailing.

The magic baguette

If there is such a thing as a magic baguette, I think I've found it.

Let me explain.

Last Wednesday, I had my first demi-groupe at Portail Rouge, a half group of students entrusted to my care for a 30-minute language section.

I wasn't prepared. At all, really. At Collège Terrenoire, I've been enjoying my "observation period," shadowing teachers and learning students' names and language levels. Not so at Portail Rouge, it would seem, since I showed up to my 9 am class and was informed that 15 students would follow me into a classroom of my own to receive their "lesson."

So I improvised. What with? Well, I wracked my brain for something simple and relevant that might engage the students. The election? Maybe for high school English, but the middle schoolers I've met so far have lacked the vocabulary and grammar necessary to debate "Obama v. McCain." Let alone learn about the American electoral system.

I flashed back to a chat I'd had earlier in the week with Kristin. Kristin has been good enough to ship me a few extra things I left behind in Boston (I apparently overlooked many, many important items during my manic packing spree).

Kristin: You may have other American candy soon. You just may.
Me: Are you my American candy?
Kristin: Just that Halloween is coming, and you might get some American candy for Halloween.

Halloween! Of course! Brilliant!

I improvised a Halloween language activity: first, review Halloween vocab (words like Pumpkin, Ghost, Vampire, Trick or Treat, etc.), and then reinforce with a Halloween scary story game.

And so it went. Lucky for the students (and for me), French Halloween vocab is remarkably similar to English Halloween vocab. All except one term in particular. One which a hefty cinquième student in my 9-10 section (perhaps named Thibault?) presented with great enthusiasm.

Thibault: Madame! Une baguette magique!
Me: What? I'm not sure I know what that is. Can you try in English?
Thibault: Bahhhh... Yes! It is a magic baguette!
Me: hysterical peals of laughter

The other students, encouraged by my uncontrollable giggles, chimed in, laughing generously for a good thirty seconds. I think they were just enjoying my violent reaction, not actually mocking their poor Thibault, since it seems unlikely that they could fully comprehend the levity provoked by his comment.

It took only a few more seconds before I was able to understand: Thibault had very correctly tried to translate the French term for magic wand (prompted by our previous conversation about Harry Potter, obviously).

The magic baguette.

It got me thinking. Or rather, probing my memory. With the tip of my tongue. The baguette may have esoteric connotations in French, but to me, it has always conjured a certain texture, a thick crust cracking beneath my hands, giving way to soft, dense insides that taste of real butter and flour and yeast all together, and it just smells like my fantasy kitchen in the country on a Saturday morning! To me, the baguette's magical properties have always revolved around its versatility: whether it's butter and jam, emmenthal and ham, tomato, basil and mozzarella, or paté and pickles, the baguette complements, nay, it elevates your food selection. You can even harness the baguette's power for dessert by simply slathering it with Nutella. Granted, Nutella can make anything taste good. But thanks to the baguette's unique texture and hearty taste, it can both play second fiddle to a culinary prima donna (like Nutella), or headline its own show (I mean, who hasn't emerged from a bakery, baguette in hand, only to discover ten minutes later that they have already consumed half of it?)

Magical indeed.

Well I've found the magic baguette in Saint-Etienne. And I'm somewhat embarassed to admit that it is baked by a CHAIN! That's right, Paul's pains rustiques et de fantaisie (rustic and fantastical breads) have won me over.

Paul officially dates back to 1889; it currently serves around 5 million customers each month. The owner, Francis Holder, is involved as much in the baking of Paul's breads as in the growing of the raw materials: all the wheat he uses is grown sustainably by French farmers, who follow his strict specifications to harvest the perfect grain. The breads are also all baked with traditional methods. Even the aesthetics of Paul's stores, built of brick and wood, serve to mimic a "country style," emphasizing tradition and the baker's place within it.

Paul offers a dizzying selection of breads: the Camp Rémy, country bread, wholemeal bread, rye brea, six grain bread, white bread, bio (organic) bread, faugasse, and of course, the baguette. Seasonal delicacies (which I will soon sample) include bread with figs and bread with chestnuts.

Did I mention Paul's is also a patisserie? Craving a pain au chocolat? Want a macaron au praliné? Need a gourmand fix with a gourmandise?* Have no idea what I'm talking about, but still bewitched by the seductive French words for just about anything edible in a bakery? Just walk into your local Paul franchise, take a deep whiff, and follow your nose. When in doubt, you can always summon your magic baguette.

*A macaron is an elevated version of the American whoopie pie. Only French. So, yeah. And the gourmandise is my new favorite: imagine a flattened croissant filled with cream and bits of chocolate.

Tonight, I will dream in bread.