Talbert Pipes Life in France Adventures English Class To our surprise, it snowed on the day we were to visit the English class English Class We've met a few English-speaking people in the area now, and are slowly getting a better feel for the community. There's a sizable population of folks from the UK living around here, and it seems a large number of them make at least part of their income teaching English. One friend, Lesley, is a Scottish lady who has lived in France for many years and teaches a part-time English class here in Herbignac. She invited us to their class to meet her students, most of whom had never met any Americans before. They had a week in advance to think up questions to ask us. The class meets in the old mairie downtown - a wonderfully old and creaky building which has, for some incomprehensible reason, been strung with some sort of neon disco tube lighting on the exterior, making the place look like Saturday Night Fever at Frankenstein's castle. The English class was almost entirely composed of teachers - French women who were learning English themselves to teach it in middle or grade schools. I wasn't sure what to expect, and half-wondered if we'd be hit with a barrage of political questions considering the current relations between the US and France, but everyone was much more interested in whether we liked French food and what we liked and where the good restaurants were than in arguing over international politics. The class was a very pleasant surprise - they had trays of food and snacks and specially-cooked bread and plenty of wine! We sat around the table discussing life in the US while sharing a variety of potent local drinks and stuffing ourselves, making the experience markedly superior to any evening class I've attended before! It was a rather surreal evening for Emily and myself, as suddenly our experience was reversed - WE were the ones with command of the language and everyone else was squinting at us in concentration as they tried to follow our words, and struggling to string together sentences. After spending nearly a year doing this myself, I could well understand their difficulties, though I must say that they all spoke English a hell of a lot better than I speak French. We explained where we lived in the US, and told them about the different parts of the country (Southerners are all polite and friendly, Northerners are abrasive and rude, Mid-westerners are good folks, and Californians are complete aliens to the rest of the country). We talked about the differences in English (how, for instance, we were speaking normal English but Lesley had a funny Scottish accent....;) ). Accent troubles are a fact of life for us, as most of the French learn English FROM the English and communicate primarily with vacationing people from the UK, so North Carolina drawl can really throw them. However, I am proud to say that, during the evening, we successfully taught the class to say "Y'all", and expand that to, "Howdy, how y'all doin?"... and now they know what it means, so if any American ever travels in this area and gets a complete surprise during introductions to the locals, we are to blame! Words cannot convey the surrealness of a class of professional French teachers studiously repeating Southern-isms. They seemed to be a really nice and friendly bunch, and they had all sorts of questions for us... one of which was, "What are the differences between life here and life in the US?" I never know what to say when people ask us that (which happens often) - it requires a 4 hour answer or none at all. In this case, I just referred them to this website! Emily brought along our picture book of North Carolina and we gave a quick state tour, from the Wright brothers to swamps to pirates in the Outer Banks. They enjoyed the alligator pictures but seemed happy enough to live in an alligator-free land (though I did tell Emily's family story of feeding hot dogs to the gators at the state park, and also explained that gators were a handy disposal means for annoying campground children). To our great surprise, we were gifted with a bottle of local cider and a bottle of wine after the class, and everyone seemed to enjoy it. Now if I can just convince the mairie to consider that BBQ festival.....