Autres Pensees, On a Cimetery, Teflon, and Super Marys


*We, the assistants, have discovered that our nearest neighbors are those in the cemetery just beyond the auto-route that lies about 50 feet from the apartment. Somehow, it wouldn’t be that creepy if this were a really old cemetery, with cool historical tombstones and all—but this is the newer cemetery, where the local folks are interred on a fairly regular basis. I’m not really sure why, but this creeps us out quite a bit.

We stumbled across the cemetery on the way back from climbing La Motte (more pictures available on facebook). We did not find the main track or path up to La Motte on the way up. It was strange, but all the signs that said “La Motte” and indicated the direction were only visible on the way back down from the Motte. I feel this would make a great Eddie Izzard sketch, [insert British voice] “Yes, thank you, we’ve just been to the Motte, and now we’d like to go elsewhere…” So we wound up struggling up a dog track through a densely forested part of the hillside, hopping over tree trunks and such. Fortunately, I had worn my hiking boots, but the other girls had only skate shoes and converses, plus the bags of produce and bread we had just purchased from the farmer’s market, so we took turns hauling each other up the steep embankments and laughing a lot as our produce went flying.

La Motte consists of this open-air monument to “Notre Dame de la Motte” (Our Lady of the Motte), basically the local version of the Virgin Mary, and it’s essentially a steepled pavilion housing a large statue of Mary, painted white, but with large flakes fallen off around the face, giving a very mottled sort of look, like when vanilla ice cream has chunks of chocolate in it. Mary was put in place by the residents of Vesoul in 1856, and she faces South. The coolest part of La Motte, to me, is the sort of grotto or cave underneath the main monument, with a smaller, brightly painted statue of Notre Dame de la Motte, lots of flowers and lit candles, some smaller Mary statues (mini-Marys?) and tons of plaques, like the ones I mentioned seeing in L’Eglise Saint Georges for Sainte Therese.

I love these plaques because each one seems to represent some momentous occurrence in the life of the donor, and I like to imagine the stories behind the plaque. One plaque from 1920 reads “Thank you for two healings.” Another says “For healing Mamma- M and Y” and lots of them read “Reconnaissance à Marie” which I think in this context means a sort of sighting or direct experience of Mary. And many of these plaques date from around the first and second world wars.

I know that many Christian monuments in France were originally sacred pagan spots, and the book I am reading at the moment, The Discovery of France (brilliant, check it out at the Boulder Book Store) suggests that each village’s Mary was a little bit different from the next, that it was really “their” patron Mary, and that special affection was given to the statues themselves, so that when priests tried to substitute weathered or, er, “ghetto” Mary statues for new ones, the villagers often became rather violent. Having very little knowledge of the Catholic Church’s rituals, I am totally fascinated by this apparent combination of Christian and pagan belief. In particular, I wonder why there are so many Marys in the little grotto (do more Marys equal more results? Like how the Captain Planet kids combine their powers to create Captain Planet—do all the Marys combined make a Super Mary?). And I wonder why the grotto has been given so much recent attention, when the larger statue on top of the Motte seems almost abandoned to the elements…

*It might not have been clear from earlier posts, but there are a large number of students who live at the high school from Monday through Friday, demi-pensionaires, who live in dorm-style buildings called internats. On weekends, the kids leave for their respective homes, which generally aren’t too far away anyway. Since French establishments are very conservative with lighting and electricity, and since there is a fence all around the school property, there are no outdoor lights on the weekends. Fortunately the moon has been bright lately, as I am still looking for a little pocket flashlight for the weekends. But thanks to these kids we can theoretically have dinner and breakfast at the canteen (the school cafeteria). I’ve eaten several times in the canteen for lunch, where I can visit a little with the other teachers, but the food at dinner is, well, not as good, so I prefer to make little sandwiches and pasta at the apartment. Hopefully, I will be able to branch out and cook other things, but since we are missing so many basics (an oven, a cheese grater, a large skillet or wok-type pan, basic spices, etc) and since most of the existing items have been extremely badly used (try eating eggs with bits of Teflon for breakfast. Yummy.) I think I will have to ease into cooking in France. So much for learning to make French meals while I’m here!

A side note: Hopefully it does not sound like I am complaining! I really feel quite lucky to have an inexpensive and, I think, safe place to live. I really like the town and how welcoming most people have been so far. And we’ve had exceptionally good weather while I’ve been here. These experiences and differences are just my mini culture shocks, I guess, and these things are easy enough to get used to—like the fact that I wake up most mornings to the sound of chairs scraping the floor in the classroom on the other side of my bedroom wall. It doesn’t bother me too much now! I just find telling you all about these things to be therapeutic!!

In other news, I observed three more classes today, and “presented” myself with a short power point presentation, consisting of a map of the US, and a few pictures of Boulder, Atlanta, etc. I also included a few pictures of Tuscaloosa, because I wanted them to have an idea of how different landscapes look in different parts of the US. I included a picture of a tornado, thinking that would be kind of novel for them to hear about, and also a photo of Moundville Archaeological Park’s Indian mounds, thinking that they might be interested in hearing about Native Americans. I tried to speak slowly, simply, and clearly while explaining the photos, but there was a lot of whispering and speculation when the teacher asked them to summarize what I had said. Some of the students thought that the grassy mounds were for BMX or mountain biking, others remembered hearing me mention burial mounds and thought the mounds were a mass cemetery—this evolved into the idea that Americans “fait du velo dans le cimetiere!!” (go biking in the cemetery!). Yeah. I can really see how gross cultural misconceptions have their beginnings.

Later in the class, the teacher wrote a date I had mentioned on the board, “1000 A.D.” and prompted the class to define the abbreviation “A.D”. One girl said “Oh, avant Dieu!” (Before God!). Hmmm. Close. Partial credit for effort. The teacher said something like, “Uh, that’s open to debate, I guess, but most people know it as Anno Domini.” Later still, I was trying to very simply explain how Stone Mountain in Georgia was formed, since the students couldn’t quite tell what it was from my picture. I mimed lava flowing out of the earth and solidifying into granite. [This is tough to mime.] The professor tried to explain that the lava solidified into stone. “Yes, but what is inside the mountain?” one girl asked. “Well, let’s think about this” said the teacher, kind of encouraging her to think of the answer herself, “you have rock on the outside…so on the inside…there’s probably more rock.”

In one of the later classes I had much harder questions to answer, like from the young man who asked me what Americans thought of French people. What sprang immediately to mind was “Frogs. Freedom Fries.” But I tried to proceed with the utmost diplomacy. Others asked questions about US foreign policy, the war in Iraq, etc. In one class where hardly anyone spoke, everyone made “boo” sounds when George W. Bush was mentioned and noises of approval when Barack Obama was mentioned. Interestingly, people here LOVE Barack Obama. He even made the cover of this year’s dictionary. The French dictionary. With French words. This seems incredible to me, since, as you may know, Barack Obama is not French. I asked one of the teachers about this and he explained that when French people really love or admire someone, they treat them as though they deserved to be French.