Well, this has been an interesting week

Today's post will be coming to you in three parts.

Part 1:  Um.. pardon?

This week officially marked my most bizarre student interaction to date. A 3è class at collège S had been given the assignment to work in small groups and to create a short presentation on a music celebrity of their choice. The day that I was to work with the class, they had already started giving presentations, so I would work with the students about to present in another classroom, giving them a chance to do a practice run-through before doing it in front of the class. I would offer some quick feedback/corrections, and then they would go back to their classroom to present. It is because of this assignment that I have now discussed porn with two of my students.

Ahem, I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised since this assignment was given to 15 year old boys, but the first group to come in and work with me had chosen a porn star-turned-musician to do their presentation on. I kid you not.

The two boys came in, unrolled their poster, and got out their notes. The poster was covered in somewhat scantily clad pictures of some lady I didn't recognize, which was unsurprising since I'm not familiar with many French celebrities. The scantily clad part was also unsurprising; this is France. They start their presentation and get about two sentences in when I hear, "She made start in pornographie work..." At which point I'm like "Wait, what did you say? Can I see that?" I take a closer look at their poster and see that most of it outlines her career as *drumroll please* a porn star, with a final paragraph describing how she made a shift into music. I think "Hmmm...." and roll with it. They're going to be presenting in 5 minutes, so I'd better hear what they have to say.

They went on to describe the rise of her pornography career, hitting highlights like her feature in "Pent'ouse" ("Penthouse," I corrected) magazine. They then explained how her producer was also an "ancient porn star." In French, ancien also means former, so the boys had thought that the English word "ancient" also worked the same way. I tried to explain that saying "ancient porn star" is like saying that he's a really, really old porn star (apologies for that visual), and that what they probably want to say is "former porn star." However, by this time, every time I said "porn star" I'd just start giggling a little bit. It just seemed so absurd that I was trying to seriously explain the difference between ancien and "ancient" using the example of a porn star.

To the credit of the rest of the class, the other groups I worked with that day had chosen people like Lil' Wayne and Rihanna.

Part 2:  Christmas time is here

Seriously, the 6è Club are my favorites!! I think it taps into my experience as an (almost) camp counselor and babysitter/nanny. I can get a bit more goofy with them and they eat it up. This week we sang "We wish you a Merry Christmas" and "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Of course, I taught them all the lightbulb/Pinocchio/Monopoly/etc. bits for "Rudolph" and threw in some hand gestures for good measure.

Part 3:  Making friends!!

Probably my most exciting bit of news for this week is that I have possibly/maybe/hopefully made some real life French friends! Last week I went to the cinema to buy an unlimited movie card. (For just under 20 euro/mo, you can watch as many movie screenings as you want whenever you want, at any affiliated cinema. It's pretty much awesome, considering most screenings are nearly 10 euro.) SO. I was talking to the girl who was issuing me my card about how I was an English assistant, living at a high school, teaching at collèges, etc. At the end, she says, "I'm sure you must not know many people here," gives me both her and her boyfriend's cellphone numbers, and tells me to get in touch with her some time. I'm kind of confused about getting the boyfriend's number too, since why would I text someone I've never met? But I take it to indicate that she wasn't giving me her number *wink wink.*

A couple days later I text her and she tells me that she's meeting up with some friends for drinks this week. So I meet up with her and her boyfriend Friday evening in Lille and then we go and meet some friends of his at a bar. From there, we all go out to dinner together.

Her boyfriend later tells me that she had come home that night last week all excited about having met an American girl at work that day. She also tells him that she'd given me both of their cellphone numbers so I wouldn't think it was a pick-up. (Which is how I'd understood it.) She then realizes that she'd also followed that up by saying that "We could all go to a party together sometime" and then starts worrying that I'd think they were some pervy French couple "looking for someone to join them sometime..." That had never even occurred to me! Too innocent, I guess? In any case, the story was told multiple times that evening and everyone had a good laugh.

They were a very sweet couple and she encouraged me to get in touch with her about going to see a movie or going shopping sometime.

I couldn't have asked for better timing for all this, since I was just starting to feel pretty frustrated about that aspect of my experience here. I came to France to learn French, experience French culture, and to meet French people. Sure, the teachers I work with are French, and there are a few of them that I get along with quite well, but it's not quite the same thing as having them as friends who I hang out with. And sure, I'd consider all the assistants I live with to be my friends, and they're all awesome people, but they're all strangers to this country too. So while I'm truly grateful for the relationships I have with the other assistants and other teachers, I was still looking for something else too. I realize it was an incredible stroke of luck that I happened upon someone who had no grounds for knowing me, but reached out to me anyway, and I'm hoping that I've made a new friend!

Bonne nuit!