Personally Political – Karneval

Guten Tag! I’m traveling with some of my housemates throughout Germany this week and our first stop was Karneval in Köln (Cologne). On Sunday (Valentine’s Day - Valentinstag), we saw lots of people dressed up in exotic costumes and spent a lot of time eating schnitzels and pretzels and drinking spiked coffee creations in order to keep warm. More of the same am Montag, but with a big parade. While some of the floats were reminiscent of Homecoming Parade projects, several were quite elaborate and expressed some sort of explicit political viewpoint. For example, I saw one with a “Gone with the Wind” poster depicting Chancellor Angela Merkel as a swooning Scarlett O’Hara waiting to be rescued by a predatory politician. The parade section reserved for the zoo’s 150th birthday however was meant to be more light-hearted. Most of the participants were dressed as big cats or flashy fowl, but some of the band members wore large papier-mâché black heads with bones tied into the hair and pictures of savannah landscapes painted on the back. As someone who has studied African and African-American Studies, I felt disappointed that the group organizers had resorted to essentialist images of roaming “savages” to convey their point of peaceful human-animal coexistence. Thankfully, the rest of the parade featured other more creative floats, lots of candy, and cold toes. Einschuldigung (excuse me), but I have a train to catch!

Les Communautés Religieuses

Last weekend, le lendemain after the crêpe party, L and J came up to the mountain to continue training for the Paris marathon. They, E, and I all went on a 16 km jaunt in the forest to see a WWII monument commemorating the resistance fighters killed by the Nazis. Lorraine was conquered by The Third Reich and the people suffered under its control. A pillar rises between two crosses of Lorraine and its inscription reads “Remember passer-by all of the men who gave their lives for your liberty.” A sign close by asked visitors to remember that this was the last site the men had seen before passing on to the next life.
Upon our return to the lycée, J and I talked a bit about the different roles of religion in US and France. For many Americans, going to church is a social as well as spiritual event. Places of worship give people a sense of community and support their devotees through hard times (i.e. preparing meals for family members of the sick, funeral luncheons) and joyous (i.e. well-wishes for weddings and baptisms). By contrast, French churches emphasize quiet reflection on the past, the afterlife, and how one lives one’s life. Parishioners may socialize outside of services but I have yet to see a flyer for a pancake feed, carnival, or silent auction. Furthermore, since the state undertakes charitable works with tax money, private giving to organizations such as Secours Catholique (Catholic Charities) isn’t as widespread here.
My choir is the result of one prêtre’s attempts to develop a stronger faith community in his parish. Not everyone in the choir goes to church or believes in God, but by singing at Masses, we are helping those who do to contemplate their lives. We still get some strange looks from people who would probably prefer Gregorian chants, but we’ve also gotten more interest from youth and other people about what role we can play in the evolving parish identity.

Februar

Sorry about the lack of posting - I´ve been on vacation in Germany with some of my housemates. We´ve been to Karneval in Köln (Cologne), walked along the harbor in Hamburg, and just got done touring a lot of monuments in Berlin. I´m headed back to Nancy on Sunday and will post some of my exciting travel tales and observations. In general, the Germans are very kind and friendly people who are more than willing to help travelers. I´d highly recommend a visit, but the weather has been unusally cold (read as -2 to -5 degrees Celsius). Until then, I´d also like to let everyone know that I´ve been accepted as a Peace Corps Volunteer to serve in Burkina Faso starting this June. May you have some warm people (and weather) in your lives!

Language Shift

My senior thesis was about language shift in French Guyana and I’m still fascinated by the phenomenon on a population scale. Working in this program has given me the chance to observe some language shifts in my own multilingual, multicultural community. For instance, I normally speak English with my Anglophone housemates since it’s a) very convenient and b) efficient for dealing with the tasks of daily life. I still speak French with my German roommate and occasionally try out small greetings phrases en allemand that I’ve picked up from my textbook. My enterprising Nicaraguan roommate A has taken advantage of the fact that most of the English-speakers know some Spanish to use that as her primary language of communication. This represents a shift away from a lingua franca (French), which is a foreign/second language for all interlocutors, to a situation involving a native speaker and several multilinguals. A doesn’t speak English and has a French boyfriend, so she gets plenty of language practice in France. As a result of my conversations with her, I can feel my comprehension improving enormously. There’s usually a few hours of lag time between a conversation and my realization that I can indeed produce a new structure in the language (better at distinguishing between ser/estar, imperfect vs. preterite for gustar, prepositions, etc.). She’s quite willing to work with me and I feel more confident in the language everyday. On a professional level, I speak primarily English with my teacher S (who loves American TV series and mystery novels), primarily French with V (whose English is a bit rusty after working with high-schoolers for awhile), and a 50/50 mix with M (who just speaks in whatever language happens to be passing through her mind at the time). We’ve tried to do some shifting – there was a period of time when I spoke mostly French with S and English with V – but we fell back into familiar patterns after the break. Being multilingual doesn’t necessarily mean one uses all of one’s languages every day and the choice of what language to use in which situations is an important, if often unconscious, decision for much of the world. More specifically, I’ve been reading articles about multilingual education in the US, Canada, Africa, and Asia to see how different communities strike a balance between several languages (home/majority, native/foreign, etc.). Serving in the Peace Corps will give me a better idea about how these ideas vont ensemble (go together).

La Vie Continue

After those fantastic travel narratives, a small post about ma vie quotidienne seems rather quaint, but there honestly hasn’t been too much happening lately. One reason is that I and the other assistants are now settled into our jobs and know what to expect: which classes require extra preparation, which ones you need to guide with a firm hand, which ones the teacher will probably mess up on scheduling and you’ll have to start something from scratch. Another reason is that les vacances d’hiver (February vacation) are fast approaching so people are trying to save their money for that. I’ll be going to Germany with some of my housemates and then to the South of France for some relaxation and sight-seeing. Other assistants are going to Morocco, Sweden, and other far-flung places as our time in France starts drawing to a close.

Last weekend, I met up with some other assistants at a party on Friday. A good time was had by all, but comme d’habitude (as usual) we had to head out before midnight to catch the last bus up the mountain. Saturday was quite pleasant, and on Sunday I had the chance to sing at la Cathédrale de Metz. The diocese had dedicated the mass to raising relief funds for victims of the earthquake in Haiti and to help Haitians in the area (students, families) who had lost loved ones. Our chef de choeur became ill on Saturday and we had some logistical problems, but overall it was an amazing experience. I certainly never expected to be singing a gospel version of Kumbaya in a 13th century cathedral! We’ll be putting on a few more concerts before I leave at the end of April and then it’ll be wedding season – the choir is already booked for three. In general, parishioners seem very happy to welcome us to their churches but still aren’t sure what to do about gospel music. Thankfully, the leaders of the choir have gotten used to explaining the meaning behind the songs in French and how they relate to the readings of the day. At first glance, I thought that French reluctance to embrace the genre was due to demographics: the vast majority of French parishioners are over the age of 50. While the Vatican II reforms helped to keep Catholicism alive in America, most French are proudly secular and so the remaining devout Catholics are quite conservative. Some churches are trying to stimulate more interest from the youth and have requested our presence as a way to show la jeunesse francaise that the Catholic Church needn’t die with their grandparents. A few weeks later I realized that another factor was contributing to the unease: we usually sang one song in English and another in Zulu while the others were in French. I will admit that the legendary French preference for their own language is true, but think about it: how would most US church-goers react if a quarter of the songs were in other languages? Some would be intrigued, but others would probably be less than thrilled.

Moving on, I’ve kept hanging out with some of my new international friends. L, a young woman from Spain and J, a German, are in my conversation class on Tuesday nights. My German colocataire S usually meets friends afterwards and always offers to take us with her. While she and another German assistant discussed their vacation plans, I chatted with L and J about the education systems in their respective countries and how they found life in France. L missed the color and sunshine of her native land, while J wished that service was more reliable here. I wholeheartedly agree on both counts. Furthermore, I’m improving my Spanish by talking with P, a friend of my roommate A from Nicaragua. P is from northern Spain and sometimes her accent is difficult for me to understand, but we usually understand each other. P also speaks English along with French and many other languages so I can substitute a word into a sentence and she translates later.

I received some information requests from the Peace Corps, which means they’re considering my file, and have been trying to keep up with friends swamped with schoolwork. I’ll miss France, but I’m excited to see my friends and family again and to return to warmer weather!