Tuesdays are going to be this semester’s day from hell. Every semester has one, except last spring, of which every day was hell, and last semester, which didn’t have any, probably to make up for the terrible semester before.
But this semester, it will be Tuesday. Today started with me tutoring Fabrice, an 11-year-old in the French equivalent of sixth grade. He’s been studying English for a couple years, but his parents wanted someone to be able to help him get better faster– he’s already quite good, but voila BLAIR. Middle school (called college in French) doesn’t start until 10am, so I showed up at Fabrice’s at 830am to work with him for a little over an hour, until he had to leave for school (literally around the corner from his apartment. He walks there). He has an English quiz this week, so we spent the first half of the hour going over quantificateurs– have you ever tried explaining, in YOUR second language, the difference between "some" and "any"? Try it in English. Now imagine that difficulty multiplied by MY second language, multiplied by explaining it to an 11-year-old.

Blair, in French: "Ok, let’s practice. I’ll ask you a question and then you answer, ok?"
Fabrice: "Oui, d’accord."
Blair, in English: "Fabrice, do you have any pencils here?"
Fabrice looks at me blankly, then asks, in French: "I don’t know– do I?"
Blair, in French: "Ok, yes, you do."
Fabrice, in English: "Of course! You have any pencils!"
Blair: "No, wait, not quite... I mean... no, presque, mais il faut que tu... que tu... change le sujet de la phrase, tu comprends?"
Fabrice: "Oh. Of course! I have any pencils!"
By the end of the lesson, he pretty much had it down, but try as I might I could not convince him that "of course" is not a necessary precursor to the answer to any question. The poor kid was so good, all the way through it, though I know he must have been bored out of his mind. Finally we quit and he read Dr. Seuss’s Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now? to me. This should have been a cinch, because he reads quite well, and there are two books I have memorized– Marvin K. Mooney and Goodnight Moon, each from different babysitting jobs, but both because I had to read them over and over for an hour straight to lull a desperate toddler to sleep. BUT whoever told poor Fabrice’s parents that Dr. Seuss books are a good way to learn English was sorely mistaken. I mean, at first glance it would appear that way, right? But think about it– every Dr. Seuss book (including The 500 Hats Of Bartholomew Cubbins, my personal favorite though no one else has ever even heard of it) is full of made up words and made up things. So we’re reading it, and he gets to a sentence that is something like "You can go in a Crunk Car if you like," and he just keeps going, and at that point I realized he was just reading and not comprehending. So I stop him and ask if he understands, and he (of course) says yes, and so I ask him what just happened, and he says "Blair, what’s a Crunk Car?" And I wanted desperately to tell him it’s the thing Snoop Dogg drives in his videos, but looking into his big blue eyes, I couldn’t do it. But imagine how hard this is for me: I grew up playing Balderdash, the game of made-up definitions, with my family every time we got together. I come from a family of practically professional teasers, AND in order to answer questions like that, I have to know the corresponding word in French. So for that one I just told him that it’s an imaginary thing, but later on I found myself having to explain the concept of "crisps," a word I firmly believe should be wiped off the face of the earth.
In an effort to keep it from being TOO dry, I finished with a useful word for him– Ow. In French, if you hurt yourself, you say "Aie," pronounced "Eye," so I taught him to say ow, which was more difficult than it would seem, since it is not at all a French sound.
Next week’s word: ILL. As in "Those are some ill kicks you got there," or "Did you see those ill moves?"
I mean, you need things like that much more than you need words like pants and butter and pen, right?
That was the highlight of the day. But back to the day from hell– I went to bed at 230 last night, was at Fabrice’s at 830, which is a half hour Metro commute from my place, and then from there straight to my photography class. That lasted an hour and a half, then I had an Architecture of the Renaissance class (my first meeting of that class), and the prof talked so fast and mumbled so much I could barely understand any of it. Then 20 minutes to make the 30 minute trip to the other piece of the University for my Archaeology of the Middle Ages class, an hour break, and then my second meeting of that class for the day. Meaning no time for lunch until 4pm, when I have an hour break. I finally finish at 6, then Metro it home in the dark. Not so cool. But my teachers are nice, so there’s that.
And this new Architecture of the Renaissance class is in the building with all the old statues– the one with the winding hardwood halls and the 15-feet-tall windows. The building itself, by the way, is crenellated. That’s right, I go to school in a converted medieval fortress. And this new class is in the old part of the building– so there are glass fronted cabinets exactly like the kind that hold the hymnals in the Cathedral at the place I worked last summer, and exactly as dusty. The cabinets line the whole back wall and the whole front wall, except for where a giant mural of some Classical scene is centered on the front wall. The professor writes on a chalkboard, one of those old-school kind that flips, and instead of pointing at things on the SLIDE PROJECTOR with a laser pointer, he uses a wooden stick. I haven’t had a teacher use a slide projector... ever, and a wooden stick? Haven’t seen one of those since first grade when my teacher threatened to beat us with it. She probably would have too– she was mean, and old enough to be above the law.
Am exhausted. I sat through SIX FULL HOURS of class today, which is more than I’ve done since graduating high school. Intense.
In the great green room there was a telephone... and a red balloon... and a picture of the cow jumping over the moon...
~B

P.S. So today Fabrice started trying to explain something to me about soccer, in French, and I had no idea what he was talking about– something about Paris St. Germain and some British team... I don’t know. But I have had this mad desire since I arrived in Paris to go to a French soccer game. Which you would understand if you had ever met me, and knew what a HUGE soccer fan I am. I mean, huge. Like, I play it all the time. I had to make room in my suitcase when I came to France for my cleats and shinguards. I’m pretty much known as the next David Beckham, only the female version. Which is why I want to go to a French soccer game.
Actually, all of that was a lie, in case you did not pick up on it. The only thing I have in common with Beckham is that I dressed up like Posh Spice for Halloween one year. But I still want to go to a soccer game here, because they are CRAZY and generally involve painted faces and a lot of french drinking songs. And if that’s not a good time, then I don’t know what is. Plus I live like three metro stops from Parc des Princes, the biggest soccer stadium in Paris, so it would really be quite handy. And then maybe I could have something to talk to Fabrice about... And I won’t just be fronting. I do kind of like soccer as a sport– at Emory I used to go to games all the time... so I mean... I’m practically a pro, right? Plus I have that whole Posh thing in my favor, so...
I feel like I still need some kind of crash course first.