Still Breathing

Those are my lungs.  Full of French air.  Do they look okay, Jen?  Yesterday we (the foreign assistants) endured the last of the many small humiliations necessary on our way towards the coveted long-term stay permit: the medical assessment.  Thankfully the doctor decided that I can see well enough, push blood through my veins quickly enough, and am free enough of terminal or transmittable Canadian illnesses to be allowed to stay in France.  On the way home I nearly left my lungs (above) at a metro station.  What kind of foreboding symbol would that have been??

My good friend Elise, who has a lot of experience with solo travel and overseas adventures, told me once that it takes about ten days to get used to a new gang/job/country cocktail like this one, to get past the initial panic and disorientation and fretful sleeps and move into the domain of self-assurance and familiarity.  And oh my goodness, was she ever right.  It is now day eleven and I am 300% more capable of handling everything than I was when I arrived.  That first weekend in Lille, back in the middle ages of ten days ago, that no-man's-land at night between turning out the light and falling asleep (not always a relief, depending on the mischievous leanings of your subconscious) was crippling, because I was constantly calculating the time difference between France and Canada, picturing everyone I knew at home making dinner plans and being merry, while I coiled up alone in the dark without even a phone or internet to give me the illusion of contact.  Worse, I knew that each "tomorrow" would bring with it its own complications, demands on that badly kept machine in my head that is meant to produce French words, confusions that would compound themselves into embarrassment.  Who would ever want to go to bed with that kind of perspective?  Who would ever want to hurry towards the next day by falling asleep?  

But, now!  Now I have friends here!  And both familiar and exciting things to do every day!  People to make dinner plans and be merry with!  To be honest, I still fold in half with homesickness and self-doubt sometimes during the night, but here's the thing: a 3 am crisis in Lille is only a 9 pm crisis in Waterloo, which isn't nearly as bad as far as crises go!

That's me being a SuperTourist last weekend when a friend at the Lycée drove me out to the old mining ground outside of Lille, where giant mountains of whatever it is they hauled out of the mine but didn't want to keep are now hike-able, rain be damned.  It's a miracle I didn't get washed away into the man-made lake at the bottom.  

For some reason nobody felt like using the paddle boats that day......

Speaking of getting used to things, I participated in a formative cultural experience today: a teacher's strike.  Deb warned me that strikes are not all that uncommon in Lille, but I had no idea that ten days after arriving I would be walking the picket line.  Observe us in our fluorescent finery:

L-R: Fabienne, Céline, Canadian ex-pat chick, Dominique 1, Alix, Dominique 2 (first person I met in Lille!  Owns an incredibly fantastic dog! Possibly the best dog this side of the ocean!)

The striking teachers were protesting all kinds of new Sarkozy propositions, like the classic fewer-teachers-more-students scenario.  There were many chants that rhymed "Sark" with unfortunate adjectives as we paraded all the way through the Old City.  And because we made such a formidable group (I can only assume), there were also whole fleets of policemen lining our route:

In my limited experience of teacher strikes, though, this was relatively small potatoes.  Everyone is going back to work tomorrow and there didn't even seem to be many media crews around.  But I feel like I've been initiated into something!  A small supporter with an even smaller vocabulary!  And the more time I spend with those women, the more I like them.  Three of them are leaving this month to take a pack of students on a trip to Pennsylvania, and I'm going to miss them!!