the babysitter's here.

This was a week of small adventures and, what ultimately felt like, little victories. It began in the classroom, with groups of 25 students staring at me, asking me questions about my opinions on Barack Obama and Les Simpson. With the teacher still in the classroom, I dodged questions about what my thoughts were of France's president and America's religious right. I focused on topics that everyone can connect with at that age: television, movies, music, Lady Gaga. My students range in age from 14-25 so yes, some of them are older than me and yes, some of them looked a little surprised about it, but all of these introductory classes were merely preparing me for what was to come on Friday: my first day of teaching alone.

Before I got to teaching alone, though, I had other small adventures. There was the trip to Rectorat of Paris, where I had various immigration paperwork to turn in and where I was certain someone was going to throw me out of the country. The problem with French bureaucracy is that it is often confusing, unclear (it being in French and all...) and slow. These three things make such a nice pairing with my personal anxieties about being tossed out of the country at any moment merely for having signed a form in the wrong place. The slow system allows me to have weeks to mull over questions such as, "What if they wanted me to write my birth city in that spot instead of my birth state?" and "What if I was supposed to write the address of my high school and not my personal address? I mean, what is personal anyways when I am simply a jeune fille au pair trying to make a small place for herself in the big cruel Parisian world?" The trip to the Rectorat was fine. My paperwork was perfect. A small victory, a small step towards having French social security, and a big step towards my peace of mind.

And after the teaching, there was the Fete des Vendages, an adventure that cannot be fully explained in any way except that it was just. so. French. Last night, the streets of Montmartre were packed with people. The Fete des Vendanges celebrates the harvesting of the wine grapes that are grown in the city (in Montmartre). Although this tiny vineyard along the back of the hill that holds up the Sacre Coeur is probably one of the smallest vineyards in France, the celebration is anything but little. Packed to the brim with vendors selling bottles of wine, crepes, cheese, ham, ciders, and more, the cobblestone streets felt more like the Metro during a strike: one barely had to lift one's feet to be pushed along, carried by the crowd with wine in hand, to watch the fireworks shooting out over the city, illuminating the sky in celebration of this city's tiny accomplishment.

That was a celebration well earned by the city but also by the teacher - Madame Fussner or to some just Kate - who stood up in front of the class on Friday all by herself to begin teaching a very important and fairly casual lesson on stereotyping. Having no idea what I was getting myself into, I prepared a lesson with about 8 activities so that no matter what I would not run out of things to do in my 55 minutes of class. My classes work in this way: I am responsible for 10 different classes each week and each class has 20-25 students. Because I am an assistant teacher and cannot be held responsible for that many students at once (according to the rules of the assistantship), the teacher takes half of the class and I take the other half. In separate rooms, we practice conversational skills on a variety of topics with the hopes that they will improve their comfort level in French. My first classes alone were fabulous. In English, we discussed stereotyping. We talked about French stereotypes about Americans and American stereotypes about the French. We watched a clip from an American tv series and discussed when stereotypes are painful and when some are merely absurd. And when the bell sounded at the end of each lesson, I was so grateful for having made it through without having any of my fears realized. (What if they hated me? What if they rioted? What if they went on strike? [talk about a French stereotype, and yet the students agreed with that one] What if they were bored? What if they refused to talk? What if, what if, what if?)

Once again, my mind was able to come up with many situations that were much scarier than the reality. The reality is that I think these first few classes actually enjoyed themselves.

But my favorite small victory for this week that I will share is this: when I came home from school on Thursday, I picked up Andy and brought him home and he asked me to tell him a story. Video games and movies had been banned for the afternoon because of Andy's behavior at dinner the night before but I told him not to worry about it. We sat down on the couch and pulled blankets over our head and surrounded ourselves with pillows. We were in some sort of cave together and Andy held up the flashlight to my face and told me to tell him a scary story. "Not too scary," he said, "Just a little bit scary. I like stories a little bit scary." And so I invented a story on the spot about a little boy named Andy who lived in Paris and the girl named Kate who babysat for him. They were home one day and they heard a "scratch scratch scratch" upstairs. They had been playing chess downstairs and Andy had been winning many games in a row but they kept hearing a "scratch scratch scratch." They crept up the stairs to investigate, Andy with a light saber in hand, and they heard it again coming from the kitchen. "Scratch scratch scratch" they heard, and Andy thought it was a thief coming into the house. He crept into the kitchen, ready to strike since Kate the babysitter was too scared and ....It was just the hamster, Capone, scratching at his cage because he was hungry. The end.

Andy loved the story so much that he made me tell it twice more. And then again at dinner, to his parents, who were amused and also impressed that Andy was as into a made-up story as he was his Batman video games. A small success for the babysitter and living proof that victories existed before the days of technology, a fact that surprised and impressed Andy, and crushed another worry of mine, that I would never connect with an 8 year old boy and would end up resorting to living in a box on the street rather than be the jeune fille au pair. My mind, inventive as it is, was calmed this week by the slow and patient acceptance of the new life I am living.