La Petite Pamplemousse: I've Got To Dream Big

Why can't you dream big in France? I've begun to notice this pattern in French thinking. It's nowhere near like the American dream. Here, you do what you have to do make a living, pick hobbies to stay happy, and you accept what you have wealth wise. There's no push that you have to be better, bigger, richer, stronger as back home in the states. If you are happy selling fruit at an outdoor market every day, you do just that. This comparison was brought up in one of the books I got for Christmas: Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Band. When I first read it, I thought I understood what she was talking about, but I never really experienced it until lately. On Wednesday, I had the instructor from the city's education department come to school to check up on us. Since I'm working in a school that's never had an assistant before, she comes to us more often than other schools. We were brainstorming ideas on how to have the teachers integrate English when I'm not in their classes. The main issues at hand are: consistency, the kids' attention span, and time management. I had explained what I had already started in the school and what I wanted to do. At one point she told me, "You can't do all of it on your own this year. I'm talking about over the course of the next few years." My heart dropped and my dreams disappeared. I wanted to talk back, I wanted to tell her how disorganized the school system here is, how much I want to do all of this on my own because if I don't no one will start them; but I didn't. Our education system has its own flaws as well, no doubt. But the main difference is that we always have this little fire in our bodies to be better, to consistently try to improve what we have, to get better. It's sort of understood that we have to improve and do better; it's implanted in our brains from day one. While we do evolve from this mindset, we also become extremely exhausted, stressed out, and obsessed over things that might not even occur in the future anyways. We can't just sit still for a second and think about how far we've come; we have to always stress about what we have to do next to get higher in the world. And as much as her words hurt my "dream big" attitude, it also brought me back to Earth. I need to think more about the present and realize that just being here and saying hi to the kids might make their day. The board games, after school club, and possible Spring concert are more so things to make me happy here. The teachers are content with what they do and they don't feel like I'm not doing enough like I do. They think I do more than enough already and I need to accept the fact that France is not America. If they don't like something, they faire la grève, but if they don't do anything, they are content.

In other news, this past weekend my two awesome Delaware girlfriends, Katelyn and Kristen, came to visit me. They arrived Thursday morning while I was teaching so I went to find them at the last metro stop (since they don't speak French and had no idea where to go) and then took them back to school to show them my kids. Mind you, this is the class that got way out of control when I started teaching the weather and are always loud, so just imagine what happened when I brought two friends in with me.
Is that your sister?, She looks just like you; you all have the same face, They're pretty, Are they going to stay with us all year too?

I took Kate and Kris around the city and pretty much covered all of the main spots in the two and a half days they were here (see below). We even attempted to French night club which I find even more conservative than before after hearing stories about the way the girls dress and dance in England.

What blew my mind the whole time was that A) they were here, in real life, not on Skype B) that we were in a foreign country. I could not get that amazement feeling out of my head as I lead them on mini tours and cooked and laughed and danced. We aren't riding bikes on the paths at the beach, we're in France, riding through a park that's bigger than Central Park in NYC.