Patois and jet lag

It has been an interesting week in all ways. First of all, I now get confused when my keyboard (clavier) changes to English settings, which bodes ill for my eventual return to the States. I've begun thinking in a strange mixture of English and French, so please excuse this email if it is liberally sprinkled with French words - they're really just what comes to mind. We the assistants in Cambrai speak in an even stranger argot or patois that's Franglais mixed with generous helpings of German and Spanish and anything else we feel like throwing in. For instance, I've been teaching my ex-housemates (whom I still consider my housemates unofficially, as I spend most of my time with them) to watch and love the American program House M.D., and somehow it's come about that the words "Doctor House" must always be said with a German accent, and "Chalo" (Hindi) is an acceptable substitute for "allons-y!" when we want to go someplace. Now that I officially live at Fenelon in the petite maison blanche, my housemates are a Costa Rican girl and an English girl with a heavy Liverpudlian accent, so the mix is only going to get more complicated. It's nice, though. Steffen's been teaching me some German and I keep getting startled by the bits and pieces of it I already know.

Getting the hang of Cambrai now. I can find the library (hooray internet), the town hall, the post office, the yarn shop, the cell phone place - all the important things. There's a market on Wednesday and Saturday mornings and we went today. I bought rosemary, candied kumquats, and some little filled waffles that we'll have for tea, and we got veggies for a salad to go with the leek quiche we'd already made. It's easier and easier to get around. The other day I even gave directions to a couple of women who asked. It's a pretty little place when the sun is out, and nice enough when it's rainy, which has been pretty often lately. Northern France when it rains is all gloom and unfortunate chill, but the little white house at Fenelon has the heating turned on already, and it's almost too warm as I write this. I have the windows open and everything. The drunk people are shouting in the street below. Tomorrow they'll be woken by church bells. Welcome to France.

We had to go to Lille twice this week for assistant orientation and training, and the first time we got very, very lost. Apparently there are two Rues Jean Bart in Lille and one is in the middle of nowhere, and that was the one that Mapquest found for us. But then we found a number of other people who were lost as well, and eventually we got back to the middle of town and found the place, only an hour and a half or so late. It was fine, because getting lost in a foreign place is like an adventure as long as you always feel safe. It helps that we actually speak French, some of us very fluently (me, less fluently, but I'm improving pretty fast) and could therefore ask for directions. That was Monday, and then it rained when we were leaving, as we had to look for the translators to get our birth certificates done and the internet café and any place that sold maps of Lille. Thursday it rained as well, but that was all right because we had a lot of little shops to duck into while we were looking for a landline phone after all the hours of "your students may not be interested, but here are some activities". There's a Lush here, and they sell the most marvelous bath products. The assistants from across the Académie de Lille are very nice - two other Grinnellians and a good number of Brits and Canadians in the Anglophones, plus the Australian who came without a visa and who may be deported eventually. Lots of paperwork, lots of things to learn about French bureaucracy and schooling.

We're tired all the time because we walk everywhere and it's tough to think in another language. It'll get better with time. It feels like Lille was ages ago, but it was really only a couple of days. How strange. We seem to eat enormous amounts as well, probably again because of all the walking. Katie and I are still losing weight. It's a little tough to be vegetarian in France, but we found tofu today, and we're getting along with bread and cheese and eggs and the promise of beans and rice.