Big Sigh

Thanks to the help of my colleagues I have settled into the Foyzez Mozart, a comfortable all girls dormitory. Under no circumstances are boys allowed to visit the rooms! The girls are between 16 – 25 years old, and we are all affectionately referred to as “young girls”. The women who live at Foyez Mozart are students, workers, mothers, or all three. Additionally, everyone who lives there is qualified to receive housing assistance from the government. It is evident that the staff at Foyez Mozart really strive to provide a safe and understanding place for young women who are trying to establish themselves.

My room is bright yellow with a small kitchenette and bathroom. I am also on a meal plan of 16 meals a month in the cafeteria. Foyez Mozart is right in the heart of Metz and the lease is month to month. Best of all I’ve made friends with a Spanish language assistant from Chile who lives two floors down.

I’m better at French than when I arrived, but I have a long way to go. At the moment I’m truly embarrassed to say I studied French in college. French frustrates me in ways that I don’t remember being frustrated in German. I’m trying to look at it as an opportunity to practice patience and build compassion. Several common words are maddeningly similar to each other in French. This led to me telling my friend that his cat is a good slipper, when I meant to say hunter. If two words are similar I can usually hear the difference but it’s much harder to articulate the difference. Moreover, French is spoken like a language lubricated with ky jelly. Thus French words slide together into a rapid word mess creating notoriously beautiful yet incomprehensible sounds.

Despite my frequent requests for phrases to be repeated slowly, French people have been very patient with me. They regularly say things like you speak more French than I speak English. My favorite thing is occasionally someone will tell me I speak French like a German.

Now that I have the basic living necessities organized I think my French will improve exponentially. I am reading more, and I am auditing classes at my middle school. I was also fortunate enough to get an all day baby sitting gig every Wednesday. Baby sitting should be a rewarding way to keep busy and learn French. My goal is to be able to read Simone de Beauvoir by March.

I finished my first week of teaching and I’m starting another. I’m still adjusting to teaching, and I’ll report back later.