Le Stage part Deux

Before I arrived in France, I had read all these accounts of the horrors of the French bureaucracy - with the inefficiency, incompetance, apathy, etc. I've always chuckled at these stories, feeling sorry for the people going through them but also thinking "It can't possibly be that bad."

Well, my friends, it is. It fo SHO is.

Yesterday was my second day of "le stage." Turns out my second day was almost as useless as my first day? Why? Well, this time I had all my paperwork, which is good, and we had to meet at l'Inspection Academique at 9:00 to do some other stuff (of course we weren't told what - we were just given a time and place for arrival). When we got to l'IA, we did a repeat of yesterday. Yes. A repeat. They asked us for all our papers, we went around the room and introduced ourselves (there were... fourteen of us... and a lot of us were confused/frustrated... great great emotions flying around), and sat there while the people in charge tried to look like they were in charge and like they knew what they were doing. They struck out on both accounts. Seriously.

We get there and we hand in our dossiers. This time I was alllll ready and I felt really great about it. Only thing was that I didn't have a photocopy of my quittance a loyer and my contract de l'hebergement (documents that prove I have housing). So I handed them to the woman, "M-A," and I'd written a post-it (called Post-It here! Yay) that said "SVP faire une photocopie" and I then SAID "SVP faire une photocopie" and she just ignored me and took my documents. Ummmm hellooooo I need those original, very important, documents back! I really think she was tuning me out because I KNOW I was saying it correctly and then she looked at me and said "what do you want?" and I repeated myself again. Awesome. My self-confidence and my confidence in the French System were through the roof. So she made copies. Phew. Got my originals back. And then we sat. And sat. While they pretended to know what was going on/pretended to be in charge. It was so silly.

OH. My favorite part of the day was when I got "sir-ed" on my way in. Yes, I was mistaken for a boy. This happened a few times in New York this summer but it was my first time in France (although I've been given some strange looks like people are trying to "figure me out" so I'm kinda surprised it's taken this long). Basically we walked into l'IA yesterday and the secretary was speaking to us in French saying "hello, good morning, how are you, nice to meet you" and all these pleasantries. Then she went on to say how nice it was to have foreign assistants in the education department. This is when it happened. As y'all know, French has masculine/feminine words and the word changes depending on who you address. For example: "Bonjour, Madame la Directrice" and "Bonjour, Monsieur le Directeur." Well, in this case, for foreigner it's "etranger" et "etrangere" (forgive the lack of accents. I don't know how to do them on my computer). So the secretary woman starts saying how nice it is to have assistants etrangeres (feminine!) in the IA and then she looks at me and says "etrangers" and then she looks back at the group and changes again. Hahaha. Ok, so I know my hairrrr was all up in its (very stylish) kinda gay way but I was wearing a (semi-tight and simultaneously appropriate) button-down shirt that (surprisingly) shows (somewhat) that I am (unsurprisingly) a female.
What the bananas. I got "sir-ed."

So, despite any frustrations of the day, it was always good to go back and reflect upon how I was "man-ed" in my second week in France.

Back to "le stage part deux."

Then they sent us away. Some of us came from very far away (Paris, Apt, Arles, etc.) and so to have free time in a day when it'd just be easier to have everything squished together was very stupid. Oh well. We all just went and sat at a cafe and vented. We were then told to meet up at a lycee in Avignon for lunch in the school cafeteria.

Where was this lycee? Well, I don't know how far away it was but it took us forty minutes to walk there. Forty minutes! And then, upon our arrival, we were told that they had fun out of food! First we sat around for half an hour (no one new why. no one.) and then once we got in line they were like "whoops no food." Now I didn't mean to be grouchy or anything but it had been a tough morning with the incompetence of our 'leaders' and then to be told there was no food after we'd walked a mile or two to get there. There was really no reason for us to have lunch together. It's not like the women in charge really talked to us. So that was awkward/frustrating. Arrrgh.

Then we got to go have a "formation pedagogique" back at l'IA which was really cool b/c they gave us hints on how to teach (Lord knows I need help with that!). Basically the only helpful part of the day was the afternoon so it would have been way awesome to cancel our unhelpful/redundant morning session and our unappetizing/ill-prepared lunch and just have had us arrive at 2 pm at l'IA for teaching-time.

Grrr. Just a little venting!

Ok now I gotta go shower - I'm trying to get into a lycee (high school) to audit a class so that I can better my understanding of spoken French. Here's hoping 1) I can find the school 2) they don't laugh at me when I ask to leave a letter there 3) I turn it in on time and 4) they accept me.

Ok il faut que je parte!