Thoughts from the End of my Contract

It was a little brown envelope stamped from l’Académie de Bordeaux that beckoned me abroad to France, where I have been teaching for the past eight months. It arrived in Spring. I had just written my last final at Concordia University and was unsure of how to get started in the world as a graduate of Creative Writing, so I looked into teaching abroad. I was bilingual, France was looking for teachers, the choice seemed easy. 

But it wasn’t. And if you are anything like me, you may be reading about TAPIF (or other teaching programs) and scrolling through online reviews or people’s blog posts. I clearly remember one morning sitting at my kitchen table having just read a handful of disheartening reviews and thinking I should just trash the brown envelope. You don’t even like kids that much, my inner voice laughed. You’ve romanticized the idea of elsewhere! You’ll regret it.

But I am adventurous by nature. I like a good challenge. I believe in stepping outside of comfort zones deliberately and I was in need of a change of scenery. So after my inner voice ran out of things on its list of everything that could possibly be disappointing, I reminded myself of one thing: 

Make it your own experience.

Meet every moment. Rejoice in the unexpected and when the disappointments arise (which they will) it helps to remind yourself that you knew it wouldn’t be perfect. Be prepared for days when you say, “What did I get myself into?” — because yes, the role of a teaching assistant can often make you feel dispensable, and at times, invisible. But if you approach everything with the mindset of “this is just an experience,” you’ll start to play with the disappointments; you might even be entertained by them. As a writer, I always find myself thinking: if my life were a novel, it is these harder moments that would make the best chapters. So come home with a story to tell. Come home an expanded person. That’s the advice I can give you, as my contract here ends. 

Would I recommend TAPIF?

To be honest, I would not recommend this position for professional reasons, but rather life reasons.
I probably should have known that any job that asks you to work only 12 hours a week, spread out on three days, is not a job that asks very much of you. I more than often left work feeling like I had done absolutely nothing. There were projects I had hoped to introduce but soon realized the English curriculum was already built and extremely restricted. There were moments when I took this to heart, and schools that made me want to call in sick when I wasn’t, and occasions when I considered quitting entirely. To give you an idea, I sometimes failed to see the difference between me at the front of the class or a Youtube video playing on the overhead.

Yet, that’s not the whole truth. I will also remember the mornings, difficult mornings, on which the children and I burst out into uncontrollable laughter. I have had a handful of colleagues I was lucky to connect with, and got to share conversation with them over coffee in the break room. I got to know their private thoughts about what it’s like to teach full-time, about France as a country, about the dreams they had but never got around to building and the choices they made in life at my age.

I got to learn that children are exceptional storytellers and liars. They say things with such passion that you just go along with it. Beatrice told me in all sincerity that the tooth fairy had once left her 100 euros, and one day at recess Lina had whispered that she was an undercover gilet-jaune. I’ve learned that children ask very little of you, perhaps only that you stop thinking for a minute, and just listen. They don’t need you to be entertaining, or to sing the songs on key. They won’t ask you for your qualifications and will never make you feel like you’re not good at what you do. Whether I feel I had an impact, or actually taught them any English they will remember, may not actually be what matters. Maybe what matters is that I showed up in their life as someone from far away who had things to say, pictures to show them, tricks to give.

Then, in all the other hours of my week, my own life continued to unfold in moments of immense gratitude. On my part-time salary I met my parents in Prague in October where we watched red-trams in the streets and fed clouds of gulls from old bridges and discovered a rose garden concealed on Petrín Hill. In Decemeber I flew to Holland in time to celebrate Sinterklaas celebrations with an old friend, and bike along canals lined with yellow holiday lights. I got to take morning trains with the sunrise, and watch the French countryside go by in fields of cattle and abandoned castles.

I have also gotten the opportunity to experience Pau as a real place, which months ago had been just another name on GoogleMaps. I’ve tried to live the little things, like learning the city’s bus routes nearly by heart, and timing morning coffee at La Mie Caline perfectly before the T3 pulls up at the station. Ask about this city and I could tell you which grocery store has the endless supply of ripe avocados. The films that play here won’t be heard of by the cinemas back home. I’ve encountered people I will never forget and who will never remember me, like the guy who wore cable knit sweaters working the popcorn stand on Wednesday nights, or my favourite clerk at the grocery store with straight bangs and green eyes.

And in the middle of all these small things, places and people, is the one memory: a sunny day in late fall, la rue des Cordeliers, when the person I now love was someone I didn’t know. Just a smiling face, round shades, and an accent I will never want him lose.

The point of me writing all of this is really just to say that none of it could have been clear to me that morning I considered trashing my brown envelope. So if you are searching for reassurance, advice, or clarity as I had been, I would tell you (from my extremely biased position) to just go for it. Say yes. And as my brother wrote to me before I left, “Leave no stone unturned.”

Update from Pau, France

On a warm day concluding September, I arrived at a white-washed train station. I was one of the only passengers to disembark that afternoon — the train continued eastward toward Toulouse, the tracks hemmed by a clear river. I had arrived at my final destination: the small city of Pau. A place I had never heard of before seeing it typed in my placement letter from the Académy de Bordeaux, informing me I’d been placed as an English language assistant in three different schools surrounding Pau. 

Pô? I thought to myself. Pow? What was this place? I googled the city and encountered an article listing Pau as one of the calmest, or “most dead”, cities of France.

I had applied to the teaching program hoping for a French city full of life. I had listed Bordeaux, Toulouse, and Strasbourg as my top choices, wanting the fairy-tale charm, the café-lined streets, patios that spill out onto central squares shadowed by steeples and the passing flutter of pigeons. I wanted a cliché. The only reason I hadn’t applied to Paris was because the embassy had warned us we would barely be paid enough to cover living costs.

Standing outside Pau’s train station on that day in September, I had no idea I’d discover a small gem, teaching me a lesson in a kind of joy that can only accompany the unexpected.

View of the Castle from le Parc Royal

My supervisor — a warm, energetic woman — picked me up from the station and drove me to the university dorms where a room had been reserved for me. The door opened to reveal a space where I could touch both walls when spanning my arms. My bathroom was the size of an airplane washroom, with a shower head that sprays the sink and toilet and mirror all at once. A sliding window gave to the university tennis courts where magpies gathered and the parking lots where in the weeks to come I’d watch the trees slowly turn to gold. I left my blinds open at night so every morning I could see the sunrise over the peaks. I learned to cook for one all over again, making small talk with other floor mates in the communal kitchen, comprised of one microwave and four hot plates. 

“It’s an adventure,” I reminded myself. An enthusiastic statement at first, slowly turning into a quiet kind of mantra. I immediately rented a bike for the year, and got to exploring:

Chipped shutters frame every window. Fountains gargle in tucked-away squares. The buses are rare that run later than 9:00 pm and on Sundays everything closes. The centre of town is criss-crossed by pedestrian shopping streets. I quickly learn that ordering a coffee in France means ordering a short espresso for North Americans. “Un café très très allongé,” I begin to ask — even then receiving a small cup. Being vegetarian, the fare is hard to come by in the South, where duck is the boasted specialty and meat finds its way into everything.

Le Parlement de Navarre, October

I soon discovered the Boulevard des Pyrénées, a primarily pedestrian boulevard that borders the southern face of the city. Its elevation offers an impressive panorama of the mountains and the unique feeling of being a top a grand villa’s walls. Palm trees and old pines both grow along the edge. Restaurants and cafés set their tables under trees. La Maison Constanti — an award-winning pastry shop — became one of my go-to spots where I could sit in the October sun and read, write, order home-made ice cream or try the daily smoothy.

From the boulevard, the city drops away. A funicular quietly carries people up and down the wall for free. Below, the station where trains come and go: West for the Atlantic, East for the Mediterranean. 

I eventually got settled in my weekly teaching routine. To my private dismay I was asked to fill in at a kindergarten on Tuesdays, due to an assistant having dropped out of the program. I was faced with toddlers as young as three, little minds that had barely begun comprehending the ins and outs of their mother tongue. One boy cried every time I walked into the room, but most of them soon took to me fondly, and I to them. Julia comes to me every week and points to her coat, exclaiming, “Ça, c’est pink!” We are four months into the program, and still I find myself repeating to Sem and Marius that this is green, not grey.

On Thursday afternoons I upgrade a little to an elementary school where I teach bright-eyed kids the difference between ‘thirty’ and ‘thirteen’, between ‘sheep’ and ‘cheap.’ We play bingo with all of the numbers between 0 and 99 in a classroom that looks out onto snow-capped mountains. When one student jumps up and waves his card, I give him a Canadian flag pin and he holds it like a small piece of gold. Before I slowly articulate ‘see you next week’, one of my most eager students slips me a folded piece of paper. I open it out in the hall: a drawing of me in my black turtleneck holding flashcards. Meilleur prof, je t’adore, he’d scrawled below. On the last day before Christmas break, we reunite three classes and make pancakes, teaching the children how to order food: ‘I’d like Nutella, jam, peanut butter.”

For the holidays, modest gold garlands were strung across Pau’s streets and music spilled with static from a few odd speakers. A Christmas market popped up in the central place George Clémenceau, where one night I wandered with V and his sister before seeing a film. They got plastic cups of mulled wine and I considered huge slabs of nougat before V gently steered me away; as much as 25 euros for a small bag. There were a few stands selling nothing but roasted chestnuts and a blinking ferris wheel was assembled on the Boulevard. During the day, one could go round and round with a view of nothing but country hills leading up to the Pyrenees. 

As late as December 22nd, I had a coffee under the trees on Maison Constanti’s patio, receiving texts from home with pictures of snow and the freezing Lake of Two Mountains. I had my journal out and was wearing only a light sweater; this really is alright, I found myself thinking. 

Winter in Pau has been grey and rainy — temperatures rarely dropping below 2 degrees unless in the early hours of morning. But we are lucky enough to get cloudless days of warm sunshine. On these, I am able to train for the Paris marathon in shorts and a tank top in the middle of winter.

V and his red hat, December

Of course there are days on the bus from work, when I listen to music and watch the mountains and wonder what I’m doing with my life. Living abroad often feels like a strange state of limbo — you know that the visa expires eventually and when you get home, everything will be as it had been, waiting to be shaped into that elusive thing that is stability: a career, a salary, adulthood. I’ve got a pending law school application, funds that continue to evaporate, aspirations waiting to have life blown into them.

Le Boulevard des Pyrénées, sunset

And on those days I remind myself that this stage of life is a fleeting one. If there is a time to be broke and adventurous, it is now. I often return to a journal entry I'd written in early September as a recent graduate, before leaving my family, a job and colleagues I loved, the comforts of home:

Remind yourself that you are leaving for something more important than comfort. You are leaving for progress. You are leaving for growth.

La Vallée D'Ossau - Pyrénées Atlantiques

…We passed a ski station with shopfronts written in Spanish and only then realized we’d crossed over into Spain. There was snow in the air but the breeze was mild. V stopped in a parking lot to reorient ourselves, so I stepped out of the car and took pictures of the border patrol’s Jeep against a white-capped backdrop. They immediately came over and asked that I delete that photo, and why was I travelling without a passport? But they were blue-eyed and good-humoured and let us head off back into France in search of the Lacs d’Ayous.

October: Prague

October 29th
Café Slavia, again
12:26

Today I walk the streets and say goodbye to this city for a second time. Who knows when I’ll be back here?
A cab is arranged to pick me up at 1:00 tomorrow, at the flat on Urxova street. Before then I plan to stay mostly in Karlín, a coffeeshop probably.

This morning I woke and did my five sun salutations, despite my mind trying to wander. Rice milk porridge with sour cherries and an americano at the local coffee place, reading Patti Smith’s “M Train,” slowly getting out of our head and back into the world.

Phare du Cap de la Tête au Chien

January, Isle of Skye

… and the Isle unfolds outside our car windows. The land is green and the sky is grey, dotted by the white of sheep, of old country homes, of sea-gulls sailing, of boats anchored to a choppy harbour. We walk fields to crystal pools and drive through double rainbows. We hike to abandoned castles and slanted mountains. We watch as snow-drifts approach us from across the valley, like winds of sorcery.

The coastal farmland, a wandering herd of Highland red deer, a bowl of oranges in a morning hotel room, the rain-streaked windows of everything: this place seems to acknowledge the tranquil longing inside us, the pain that is not destructive, but honest, the dreams we are trying to nurture in the secret corners of our being.

In all these places and all these moments, every little “here & now” twinkles, and our fingers learn to grasp the thread, to recognize the dots of our own, personal story...

December: How to be small

Yesterday, Sam and I climbed the mountain, to the cross overlooking Lac des Deux Montagnes, and the town of Rigaud, our town, dusted in snow.

The forest was quiet & still; nothing stirred. Only silence breathed, blinking in the tufts of the pines as we passed below. We let the goldens run free, nose-to-ground and tails-wagging – at this time of year, the trails are ours alone. 

This winter is growing white, but remains mild in weather. I smiled and silently gave thanks, while I turned to Sam and said "This is the perfect December." These past few days, we've been wondering about how to be small in the face of the big, unchangeable forces in the world. We've been talking about our roles as consumers within a chain that seems to have no end; a circle that binds the environment & all of its species, to human beings, to abuse & profit, to waste, and all over again.

In our discussions over breakfast at our new favourite café, decorated in country holiday charm, we cover topics from animal rights, to vegetarianism, to trade inequality and the changing power politics of the globe. And though it can appear dark at times, huge and unchangeable, the most beautiful reminder is that we have a choice. We may not be able to change these times, but we can choose who we are within them. We are small forces, but at least we are our own.

On the mountaintop, the skies were grey, streaked with faded blues. Another year is ending. Sam reminded me of a Samurai, in his black coat and his hair pulled in a bun. Maybe it’s because the night before I’d watched the enchanting stop-animated film Kubo, and we’d gone out for sweet potato sushi afterwards.

How many times we’ve climbed this mountain. Our old high school’s towers, simultaneously church & prison-like, peek from the trees near the bottom. The lake recedes into the Ottawa River to the West, while a distant Montréal stretches into a hazy East. This place is our beginning. 

 

Up here, I feel that I am standing at a distance from so many memories. Grateful for everything, observing life fondly, in the way that distance allows. Yet I know there is still so much to come. A calling from the cusp of that horizon.

✵
 

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

- J.R.R Tolkien