N'importe quoi

"But what for?" "So we don't have class today?" A few of the remarks I hear after informing my class that Madame Champigny, their english teacher, would not be in class today because she is on strike. In reality, Madame had phoned me about 30 minutes earlier to notify  me that she would be late to class and needed me to take the reigns for a bit until she arrived. So i figured, what better time than to mess with a group of fiery secretaries on an early Thursday morning? "No actually, Madame had a big party last night at her house, she was dancing on the tables and everything, had a bit too much to drink, and thus decided to strike for better working conditions and less hours going forward." To say the least, they were amused by the idea, forgot to argue that they shouldn't be in class, and permitted me to carry on with our discussion on fair trade. 

Over on the other side of the hill, at the chateau, America club is in full swing. At such biweekly reunions, I do my best to appease the interest of middle schoolers who are so interested in America that they have chosen to attend a club in addition to class and instead of playing pétanque outside in the grand courtyard. Thus, I do my best to execute a well thought-out, carefully designed regimen to teach about America while speaking just enough french to where they have an idea as to what I'm saying. 16 seemed the magic number of students as my English teacher informed that it would fill up in 2 seconds. Surely enough, the first America club rolls around, I have an exercise prepared for a group of 16 and 2 students show up. Uhhhhhh, what to do with a couple 11 year olds for an hour who barely speak a word of English? Improvise and hope that others arrive, eventually a few more came, allowing me to carry out a small-scale version of what I originally planned. Week two was not much different, at least this time I was more prepared and had planned to drag a discussion before commencing the fun game I had in mind. Surely enough, 2 students show up, I pull another audible to cater towards the unexpected, a few others arrive but when things progress to the topic of American country music, I show them a video of Luke Bryan's "rain is a good thing", they ask me to sing, I say ok here's Peach State of Mind and we enjoyed the sights of the city of Atlanta for the remainder of the period. 

As you might imagine, teaching has turned into a bit more of a "whatever happens" game than i originally anticipated. Luckily, its not the least of my responsibility to stick to a script so I'm about as free as I'd like to be as long as I'm speaking the english language and they're learning to do the same. With one week to go until Christmas vacation, it's about that time of year when  everyone has started counting down the days. Anyways, thechocolate, foie gras, and champagne are on sale in the super market and I think it's about time to take advantage of these ~12 hour work weeks

Anecdote of How Some French Actually do Work to Live

When my French friend, Guillaume Baguette VIII, asked me if I knew how the unemployment worked in France, my initial thought was “ya, you ask the government for money and they give you barely enough to survive off of”. But in a socialist country, you can never just assume: there’s always more to the story i.e. more ways to cheat the system. Essentially, Guillaume had just finished his summer job, working for 2 months at a beachside restaurant. The obvious upside is that he spent the summer at the beach, the preferred dwelling of most any sane college kid. The downside is that he was obliged to work 7 days, 60 hours a week during this period. You might wonder how this is possible in a country like France, where most companies are restricted to the 35-hour law and must otherwise fetch out a fortune in overtime pay. You are correct to assume that these long hours don’t go unrewarded. Special circumstances arise when your employer, who has only been reporting the legal hourly limit, terminates* (key word) your indefinite* (other key word) contract and qualifies you for unemployment insurance over the next six months to assist you while you “look for” a new job. Luckily for Monsieur Bagette VIII, he met the standard 250 hours of annual work during his 2 months of waiting, which qualifies him for extra special treatment. The government subsequently writes him checks for 70% of his previous salary or, in my friend’s case, 1400 euro, which so happens to also be the minimum wage in France. 

My friend is a student at a music school, where he attends 5 hours of class a week (another special program) at basically zero cost, leaving him with however much time he pleases to rehearse with his band, go out on the town, really a few options. Considering the circumstances from an American perspective, it might not seem logical that an unemployed part-time student would be able to afford a first floor apartment to himself in the city center of a major metropolitan area. But the government helps with this as well. Being a student in France qualifies you for subsided housing that brings his monthly housing cost down 70% to just under 200 euro a month. I asked my friend what he plans to do all this extra money that the government has is throwing at him. A three-week trip to Thailand over the Christmas holidays assures me that his heads in the right place. Perhaps the best thing of all, when next summer rolls around, he’ll have the opportunity to retake up his waiter gig, reenroll in another bogus part-time school and the cycle repeats. And at the moment, that’s exactly what he plans to do. 

Not surprisingly, he’s not the only one to take advantage of the French socialist system, which allows you to make the minimum wage and then some for two months of work a year. Apparently, there are a slew of clever folk out there who spend there winters working as ski instructors in the Alps and spend the rest of the year lounging, traveling, eating their pain au chocolate, all the while being paid a significant portion of their previous salary because, as the way the government sees it, they paid their dues, their indefinite* contract was terminated* and they need the money. So when we stereotype French people as fainéant, it’s not completely because we think that real men should be required to put in 40 hours a week or because wine and cheese are inherently idle foods. The way I see it, there’s some truth to any stereotype, some more than others. Whether Americans stereotyping the French as lazy, lifeaholics has any merit to it, I’ll let you be the judge.

*Note that for this special treatment, you must find an employer who’s willing to offer you an indefinite contract, which he will then terminate, all the while stating that you only worked the legal, 35 hours a week. For this reason, not every frenchman can full take advantage of the system.