Life 2.0 as an involuntary introvert, eight months in

Remember January 1, 2020? Were you one of the many people like me who was really excited for 2020 because things were just falling into place for you and you knew that it was going to be an awesome year? 

Joke's on us, huh.

A couple of times, I've wondered what my life would be like today if it hadn't been for the pandemic. I think I know ... I have a pretty good idea where I was headed -- Then I just shut that line of thinking down. It doesn't matter. It's a moot point. It ain't happenin'. 

So here's where I am. A LOT has changed since exactly eight months ago tonight when schools across the state started closing like dominoes falling in a row.

Starting with the big change right up front: I un-retired and went back to teaching. The abrupt loss of subbing in mid-March + some big car repair bills = a need to go back to work. Not sporadic subbing. Steady work. Plus, there was no point in being retired if I couldn't do the two things I wanted to do, which was go to Québec (the border has been closed since March 21) and pursue music-making opportunities (just about non-existent).  

But I'm not at "Falcon High School." They had two openings in my department. I applied and didn't even get a courtesy interview. They were right up front with me that they wanted someone younger. And of course they're entitled to pick whomever they want, so that closed that door for me. I was upset for a while, then started looking to see what other opportunities were out there. 

It didn't take long to find something. A small high school with an excellent reputation posted an opening for a full-time French teacher. The ad said they were seeking someone "with a true love of the French language." Hey, that's me!! And I was really impressed that enthusiasm about the subject matter was important to them. Finding out that the principal was someone I had participated in a leadership workshop with and was really impressed by sealed the deal. I applied. A few weeks later, I had an interview on a Monday morning. A second interview followed on Thursday morning. By Friday afternoon, I had a job offer at what I will call "Raider High School." Whereas "Falcon High School" thought my age was a liability, "Raider High School" thought my experience was an asset.

So this is a week in my Life 2.0 in pandemic-land. My new normal. It's very possible that absolutely no one will read this to the end. That's o.k., I wrote it mostly for myself. I want a record of what this life 2.0 is like.

Starting on Sunday, I play guitar and sing a song for a Zoom church service for a small church in western Maine whose minister is a college classmate of mine. Then at 9:30 I participate in an online Zumba (like what used to be called aerobic dance) class from one of the area YMCA's. In both cases the faces have become familiar, even through Zoom. On many Sundays, those are the only people I talk to all day, and I can't remember the last time I saw family or friends on a Sunday, or any weekend day for that matter, in person. I do laundry, and on my drying rack along with a row of underwear and a row of socks is a row of masks. I write lesson plans for the week and try to get it all done on Sunday. It takes a lot longer because of the new circumstances, especially having some students in each of my classes who are 100% remote (an option available for families who wanted it). I've made myself very available to help those students by e-mail or Google Meet (like Zoom for schools), but they generally don't respond. Indeed in a few cases, I have no idea what they even look like. Every activity and every assignment has to be something students can do independently at home, or at least online since we've been asked not to use paper in school if we can help it. Furthermore, even the students I see in person are only in school two days a week. Half the students attend Monday and Tuesday, and half on Thursday and Friday, to enable social distancing. So school prep takes me several hours. I try to wrap up by 8 p.m. to watch a TV show online from Québec that is like 60 Minutes but live, and very timely. If something big is in the news on Wednesday, they will have the parties in the studio on Sunday night to be interviewed. It helps me keep up with Québec news and with my French.

On Monday my alarm goes off at 5 a.m. and I meditate or just get my thoughts organized before heading out the door at 6 a.m. My outfit for the day, laid out the night before, includes a color-coordinated fabric mask. My lunch for the day includes an extra bottle of water since people at school are discouraged from using the fountains (and can't take a drink straight out of the fountain at all, can only fill a bottle). And my getting-ready-for-the-day preparations include taking and recording my temperature, required by the school. My commute is 45 minutes, nearly all of that on the Maine Turnpike. I thought that would be a hardship. It isn't at all. It's a nice drive and a great way to warm up for the day by listening to the music or the news, and a great way to unwind on the way home in the afternoon.

There is no point in arriving before 7 a.m. because everyone has to have their temperature taken (yes, again) as they enter the building, and 7 a.m. is when it starts, so that is when I put my mask on and get out of my car and head in. The principal himself, a very gregarious guy, is out there himself with the forehead scanner which looks like he is aiming a water pistol at my forehead and that of every student and adult who enters the building. Then in I go and have about a half-hour of quiet for getting ready for the day. My classroom is at the end of a wing and I'm the first one there, so it's quiet, all right. As the students arrive, they are not allowed to go anywhere they want in the building as they were in normal times. Their choices are the auditorium, cafeteria, or gym, with socially distanced seating. Then at 7:30 a.m. they are released to classrooms one group at a time, single file in the halls, six feet apart, masked. They come into the room and take seats which are in fixed positions six feet apart. Because with the cohort system we only have half a class at a time, my smallest class has three students and my biggest one has 12. Class is all either me talking or them on their laptops; no group work allowed, no sharing of materials allowed. At the end of each class, they are each given a sanitary wipe to wipe their desk and chair, and the principal summons them to leave and proceed to their next class, one wing at a time, single file in the halls, six feet apart, masked. At lunch time the students go to the cafeteria and sit not at cafeteria tables but at regular student desks, six feet apart. Teachers eat in our own rooms alone; that's all we're allowed. 

At 1 p.m. the students are done for the day and they HAVE to leave; no detention, no after-school help.  They are dismissed one wing at a time, single file in the halls, six feet apart, masked. Sports teams (the ones allowed to play) and the drama club have to come back later on their own. From 1-2, teachers are expected to be reaching out to remote students. Let's just say I'm trying. Then our day ends at 2 p.m. If we want to stay longer, we have to be out by 3:30.

Monday nights I Zoom into a University of Maine course, my first since 1978: poetry of Québec. Not only is it a topic I'm really enthusiastic about, but the professor is Québécois and did his dissertation on this very topic. This is about my only opportunity to carry on a conversation in French any more, 5-7 p.m. on Monday nights.

Tuesday from 5 a.m. to arriving home looks a lot like Monday. The evening is spent in another Zumba class and getting ready for Wednesday teaching ...

Wednesday is all remote for students and teachers alike. Only custodians are in the school. Each class is allotted 45 minutes. Our assigned game plan is to teach for 30 minutes, then stay on 15 more for questions or giving help. Students may leave at the 30-minute mark if they don't have questions or need/want help. Then there is a 90-minute lunch break, during which time school buses are delivering student lunches around the district. Then a half hour of online advisory. Those of us with freshman advisories are trying to come up with ways to get acquainted with our advisees. Then an hour of office hours from 1-2 p.m. like on the other days, then our day ends. I will see a different group of students on Thursday and Friday, but their lesson plan is all done since it is the same one I used on Monday and Tuesday. So Wednesday and Thursday evenings are pretty relaxed. Just me at home, though, or taking a walk, or practicing guitar. No family or friends contact unless you count social media. Over the past few weeks I've gotten back into the small fitness studio where I used to go work out a few times a week. He can only have one client at a time now. Over the summer I took a 7 a.m. slot, but once I started school I couldn't do that any more, and other people had already taken the afternoon slots. Eventually a 2:45 p.m. slot opened up on Wednesday, so that's mine now. Once a week is better than nothing. He stays in his office so his clients can work out without a mask, and I have to be out 15 minutes before his next client so he can wipe everything down.

Thursday and Friday school days look like Monday and Tuesday but with different kids.

Friday afternoons are my other rare opportunity (in addition to Wednesday workouts) for face-to-face human contact outside of school. I alternate back and forth with a bodywork session with the same practitioner I've been going to for 18 years now I think (polarity therapy, it's like acupuncture without the needles) which has been consistent because he never closed, and on the other Fridays, a guitar lesson. I insist on keeping music in my life in some way, and right now solo guitar performance is it. I sing a Sunday morning song as mentioned above, I have a guitar lesson every other Friday, I play at home for my own enjoyment, and every now and then I video myself doing a song and post it on Facebook. I did a couple of Zoom open mic nights but have let those go as I got busy with school.

Friday nights have become my time to do grading. Since the students are on a couple of different schedules, my across-the-board schedule is that I post the assignment on Sunday and it's due Friday at 1. I was doing it Sunday, but since prep is taking more and more time, I moved grading to Friday night. - followed by going to bed early the second it's done.

Saturdays I insist on one day not working. So I drive up to my little piece of lakefront property (undeveloped) in eastern Maine. I have to be a lot more selective now about where I'll stop for road food or the bathroom; most of my old regular destinations are too casual about masks for me to be comfortable buying food there, so I just bring food with me now. Then Saturday night I start my work for my college classes and finish it if at all possible. That's another thing I was doing on Sunday that I moved elsewhere in my schedule because school prep takes so much time.

And then back to Sunday and starting the weekly routine again.

I can live with this. I'm teaching again in a really good school, so I have a purpose. I feel as safe as possible given what's going on in the world. 

But ... no performing music in ensembles. No concerts or plays or sports events, except the final home girls' soccer game at Falcon H.S. because the coach, in an incredibly compassionate gesture, invited me.  No eating in restaurants, not for me, anyway. No traveling up to eastern Maine and getting a hotel room; I make the round trip in a day on Saturday. No trips to Québec; the border has been closed since March 21 as noted, and Canada doesn't intend to reopen it anytime soon. I haven't even been out of Maine since last December. And almost never any in-person time with family or friends. Falcontown friendships have fallen away even though I left out of necessity, not rejection; people are busy with their own lives and just self-isolating at home -- not that staying home during a pandemic is a bad thing. And social media is a shallow substitute.

And out in the world beyond, the times are very dark. Pandemic. Racism. Climate change. Wildfires. The 1% and the 99%. Government by a fascist dictatorship led by a corrupt madman whom everyone feared would cheat his way into a second term; he tried, but he didn't succeed, thank God. I gave up on TV news long before the pandemic. I rarely read COVID-19 news anymore as nothing seems to change or improve. I did vote, though, but any positive change the outcome may create will be slow, and solving the list of problems above will take years. And closer to home, there seems to be more bad news than good. As I write this, three people in my immediate circle are seriously suffering: one from COVID-19, one from a life-threatening condition with a life-changing procedure pending, and one new baby whose mother is on day 3 of labor in the hospital as I write this, labor which isn't progressing. Maybe the baby is seeing and hearing what's going on in the world and is thinking "Nuts to that, I'm not going out there, I'm staying in here." (Update: the person close to me who had COVID is better, the baby is here and both mom and baby are fine, and no word on the other friend yet.)

So I've become an involuntary introvert at home, doing two kinds of schoolwork, teacher work and college student work, and playing guitar and singing so as not to let music completely disappear from my life. My poetry writing has been silenced; no inspiration. The one pandemic poem I wrote is so depressing that I don't want anyone to see it.

But I'm not depressed. Nor am I anxious like I was in the spring. I sought treatment for anxiety in April and it was successful. So my mental health is fine. I've grieved the parts of my life that are gone, and I've learned the art of acceptance as I wait to see whether any of them will return. I miss doing things with people out in the world, and I don't like spending so much evening and weekend time alone. Social media is not a substitute. Zoom is a substitute, to a point. I don't count days until the vaccine is available, because who knows. I actually try not to think about the future at all. Staying in the present is plenty for right now. One thing that provoked my anxiety last spring is feeling like I was living in a dystopian novel. Again, I've forced myself to just shut those thoughts off. It may be true, but it's unhelpful.

UPDATE: My school is now closed as of Monday 11/9/2020 and we are teaching from home five days a week until November 30 -- although with cases rising all over the state, who knows if we will go back on that date. I won't be a bit surprised if we're out for December as well.

Teaching from home: an hour's more sleep in the morning. No need to prepare an outfit or a lunch or a mask or extra water bottles the night before. Neat hair and dressy clothes from the waist up, sweat pants and slippers from the waist down. Talking into the green camera light on my laptop all morning as most of my students turn their laptop cameras off. Long lunch. Early end to the day. I've gotten all kinds of cooking and cleaning done with the extra time. This really isn't affecting my actual teaching all that much; I've been conducting business all year knowing that this was likely to happen at some point. Indeed with the numbers of cases rising so far so fast, I believe that history will tell that we attempted to go back to normal too soon.

But I'm grateful that at least I got a full September and October with my classes to get to know them. As with Falcon H.S., I have great interactions with the kids. I will never be "D-Whit" at Raider H.S. like I was at Falcon H.S. It's a different school culture. But it's a great fit for me. I'm the only French teacher and love teaching all the levels of French, which I never got to do at Falcon H.S. I'm in a department with the music teachers. And the school leadership is top-shelf.

If I can't have Québec or live performance in my life, at least I'm glad I landed in a great school with a great job. Yes, even under these circumstances, it's a great job at a great school. French teaching at Raider H.S. is not a bad way at all to spend Life 2.0.

*****

p.s. to anyone who made it this far and wants to comment: I heard after my last few blog posts that people tried to comment and couldn't. I've since learned that you have to have a Google account to comment. If you don't, then please feel free to comment on the Facebook post where you saw this posted, or contact me privately. Thanks for reading the whole thing!!

100 days in

Today is the 100th day of the pandemic. Hmmm. Maybe that's why I felt like something shifted today.

Here's the recap of the early days. I wrote about it in an earlier post to this blog and lots of people responded to it. I was struggling pretty badly emotionally about a month into the pandemic as plans and initiatives for the future got suspended, then postponed, then cancelled not to be rescheduled. And social isolation really, really got to me. I kept walking around, or sitting around, feeling like I was in the midst of some surreal bad dream or dystopian novel. Finally after a long weekend of sobbing uncontrollably, having nightmares, and watching my blood pressure spike up to scary high numbers (provoked by the cancellation of the last thing I was looking forward to, my summer program in Québec), I called my doctor expecting to be put on blood pressure meds. Instead she put me on anti-anxiety meds. And what helped as much as the medication did was having her and her nurse say these words to me from the other end of the phone call: "You are not alone."

As noted, I shared that story in a blog post, just in case it helped someone else. And oh, did it ever. SO many people sent me texts or private messages saying that it had happened to them too, that they were dealing with anxiety or depression or both. One person told me that reading my story helped them come to terms with "not being o.k." and convinced them to call their doctor like I had. So I'm glad I shared my story. We all need each other right now.

So fast forward to today, day 100.

I don't have sobbing meltdowns and nightmares any more. I can't even remember when I had the last one, in either case.

Here's what I learned to do to cope. As before, I share this in case anyone else would benefit from hearing this.

1. Before, I was trying to heed the recommendation only to go to the supermarket every two weeks. That didn't last long for me. I needed to see other humans and hear other voices, even masked strangers. So I went back to going every couple of days which is normal for me.

2. I learned that I needed to reach out to people more. Just about all of my friends were working plus dealing with kids at home doing schoolwork, so I felt like I couldn't bother them. Now I know just to shoot a message when I'm feeling the urge and I know that they will get back to me when they can.

3. I learned to Zoom. I have enjoyed connecting with my brothers; they bring their spouses and kids in when possible and the record was eleven participants. I've also had regular chats with two friends who were actually undergrad professors of mine.

4. I've gotten together with people for walks or dooryard chats. Ground rules for home visits that everyone has been comfortable with: everyone brings their own chair and water bottle, everyone sits six feet apart, and no one goes in the house except the people who live there.

(This is still so, so, so surreal and weird to feel like we all need to be scared of each other.)

5. I've found ways to keep music in my life. I'm taking Zoom voice lessons with a local teacher and Zoom guitar lessons with the teacher I had up in Québec last fall. I've done some Zoom open mic nights and am providing vocal + guitar solos every Sunday morning for a college friend who is a minister doing Zoom services on Sunday mornings. I'm back with a choral group I used to sing with; they are Zooming on Thursday nights and individually recording short unison pieces which a sound engineer merges into a song. I'm back with my "senior citizen beginner band" that I gave up because of a schedule conflict (nothing on the schedule any more so no conflicts!); the director has been offering music theory lessons once a week, and they are planning a one-time very socially distanced practice session in someone's dooryard next week for anyone who is comfortable with it. Sadly, live ensemble playing and singing for rehearsal or performance is not considered safe now because COVID-19 can be spread easily that way. It won't be back anytime soon. So I've reinvented myself as a soloist.

6. Saving the most surprising for last: I've learned to live at a slower pace. Being home so much is weird, but with the nicer weather I've been going for a couple of walks a day. -- especially this past week when my car was in the garage for exactly a week, Thursday to Thursday. I made a game of it to see how much I could do just by walking places. I can get to three delis, one supermarket, three restaurants, one bakery, and an ice cream stand. I can mail a letter. And I can get to the fitness studio (a small operation, not a gym) where I work out. There are also city buses too; I was checking out the schedules online when I got the call that my car was ready. Back to the point of the slower pace, I've adjusted to having entire days with nothing on the agenda. I have never been bored. I've learned to get the heck off the computer when I get sick of it and go for a walk or play one of my instruments, or even, when absolutely necessary, do household chores. 😄 A slow-paced life was a tough adjustment because I was used to being on the go all the time. That probably contributed a lot to my melting down in April because I honestly felt like I had lost everything.

One thing that I will probably let go of is my online degree program in translation from the Université du Québec. I'm following pandemic news from Québec just as closely as I'm following it from here. But I'm not enjoying online classes as much as in-person classes. I do the minimum needed to get the assignments done. Great example for my former students, huh. 😄 I'll just work on my French the way I have been doing; reading, listening to the news online, taking Zoom guitar lessons in French with my teacher in Québec, and going back there ... someday ... when the border reopens, which Canada doesn't want to have happen anytime soon because so many states are seeing COVID-19 cases continue to rise in number.

Which brings me to the one thing that's unresolved ...

I don't know what I'm going to do professionally going forward. People have said to me, "you're retired. Why work at all?" My retirement pension does what pensions are supposed to do; it covers my basic living expenses. For anything extra, I have to earn the money. I don't use identifying details in this blog, but when I say "my school," you all know where I mean. When schools everywhere closed the second weekend in March, we all thought we were in for two weeks of snow days, then we'd be back. Then it became six weeks. Then schools closed for the rest of the year. So my substitute teaching ended in mid-March, and I haven't found a way to replace that income. My school had two openings for next year in my department. I applied and did not get hired or even considered. They only want me back as a sub. They said as much. Long way from August 1, 2018 when they called and invited me back because no one applied to fill my position. In any case, no one knows what school will look like next year, only that the virus isn't going away. So there is a strong possibility of no subbing opportunities. So I'm coming to terms with the fact that my 19-year career there will probably end at 19. There probably won't be a 20th year. I need and want to go back to work. So now I will have to see what I can find. It's a real loss; the school has been the center of my life for 19 years. I picked up my yearbook today, and for the first time since the 2002 yearbook, my name and photo weren't in it. Subs are never in the yearbook, so it was nothing personal. 😉  In any case, I believe in signs, so I take my disappearance from the yearbook as a sign and will decide which direction to head in now.

So even though I know some people hate the expression I'm about to use, with the exception of the job-professional bit I've found my "new normal." I'm living at a slower pace, everything about my life looks different and plays out differently now than it did before, and I'm grateful that wearing a mask is working and I'm staying healthy. When I leave my apartment to go somewhere now, instead of just grabbing my wallet I grab my wallet and hand sanitizer, and I slip a mask onto my wrist and wear it like a prom corsage until I get to where I'm going. The new normal.

Well, except for avoiding close physical contact with people I'm emotionally close to. That will never be normal to me.

my mental health challenge under social isolation

When social isolation first started in mid-March, I thought it would be kind of like two weeks of snow days. I've almost always lived alone and thought I would be o.k. There are solitary things I like to do: read, practice music, write poetry. I figured school would reopen soon and I'd get back to subbing, and my music endeavors would pick up where we left off.

But by the fifth week, social isolation was starting to really get to me. School had closed for the year and I was essentially cut off from the place that has been the center of my life for 19 years. I reached out and offered support in different ways; most of those reach-outs went unacknowledged. My music groups had suspended operations. I went some whole days without hearing another person's voice. (I now believe that a lack of in-person contact is not healthy and not how we are meant to live.) And I'm lucky enough to be in a community where people like to hug. I was missing that. When I would see people at the local grocery or when out for a walk, we would joke about not hugging. But it was starting to become less and less funny. I wasn't sure whether it was better than not at all to see people and not be able to touch or hug them, or whether that just made it worse. I spent time on Facebook, Instagram, and e-mail until I was just sick of it. Zoom gatherings helped, but when the session was over, I felt bereft. Every night when it got dark and really quiet outside, I started feeling a little freaked out, like everything had taken on an eerie tone.

Then two things happened that knocked my foundation out from under me. First was a 48-hour period of really bad news about the devastating short and long-term effects of COVID-19 combined with the news that this isn't going to go away for a long time. That made virus avoidance a more pressing and scary prospect, and made the extended future of social isolation even more grim. It wasn't even about the loss of subbing income anymore. It was about the lack of human contact.

The final blow was the cancellation of my fourth annual summer program in Québec which had been one of the highlights of my life in recent years and a reunion with people who are really special to me. With some of them in Québec on the other side of a closed border and the others scattered all over the United States, there was no hope of any gathering time or place. That did it. Over about a two-day period, I slowly came to terms with the losses of Québec, my school community, my music community. I spent most of my time sobbing and my blood pressure skyrocketed. I got sufficiently scared by my blood pressure numbers that I called my doctor's office and asked whether there was any way I could talk to my doctor. I needed help. They made a phone appointment for me and explained how that would work. I assumed that I would be going on blood pressure medication.

Right at the appointed time, the doctor's nurse called and did the intake interview. I shared with her the results of the blood pressure readings I'd done. Then the conversation turned to lifestyle questions: was I eating and exercising and sleeping, what I was doing with my time. The sobbing started up again. I can't remember when I've cried so hard. I don't think I've cried that hard since my father died nine years ago. As that part of the intake ended, the nurse paused, then said, with the utmost of compassion, "You are not alone." It was very reassuring to hear her say that, to hear acknowledgement that other people were going through the same thing I was.

The nurse wrapped up the intake, told me she would end the call and share all this with the doctor, and that the doctor would call back. And the doctor did so right at the time I was told to expect her to.

One of the things I've always appreciated about my doctor is that she never seems to be in a hurry. She is compassionate, caring, and thorough. And even in the context of a phone visit, that didn't change. To summarize briefly what was actually a lengthy conversation, she thought it made sense first to treat the hypertension by treating me for anxiety. She prescribed me a tiny dose of an anti-anxiety drug and said we would check in after two weeks. And by the end of the day, her scheduler had called me to make the appointment. Of course I researched the drug online. It's prescribed to people who have panic attacks and post-traumatic stress disorder. Seems to fit.

Any med like this takes a couple of days to start doing its thing. I am writing this paragraph one week after my first dose. My blood pressure numbers still occasionally have a little room for improvement, but there have been no more super-high readings and many right in the normal range. And I haven't sobbed since my appointment. Hearing "you are not alone" was huge. Being heard compassionately was huge.

I have one more big take-away from all this. I didn't tell anyone how much I was struggling emotionally as the weeks progressed. I tried to put up a positive front. I good-naturedly complained with a smile on my face about social distancing. But I didn't let anyone know that I was really suffering. I'm not even sure that I was honest with myself about it. When one of my best friends who has known me since age 7 heard my story and implored me to call her if it happens again, I told her that I had been like the frog in the boiling water who doesn't know he's in boiling water until it's too late. -- except that for me it wasn't too late because I had a great doctor whom I trust 100%. She diagnosed anxiety instead of hypertension, and as always, her instincts were spot on.

So that's why I'm writing this. I want people to know that COVID-19 and social isolation take a toll on mental health. And I want people to hear that it happened to me, someone who is known around town as kind of a goofy easy-going free spirit who had a long career as a (can I say successful?) teacher and who even in retirement showed up loud and proud and having a blast at student games and performances. I want to say and have people hear me say that it REALLY pisses me off when people don't take COVID-19 seriously, from the local level all the way to Washington, DC. Every doofus who thinks this is a hoax, who refuses to wear a mask out of vanity, who goes to protests, who insists on having big gatherings, who thinks science is something you choose to believe in or not, is contributing to this lasting longer. Absolutely no one wants this to last longer!! This is unprecedented and this is serious business!! Although I continue to be grateful that none of my family members are ill from this (sadly, I can no longer state that none of my friends are ill from this), I have lost a lot because of this: time with family and friends, my connections to the school, my connections to Québec, my performing. And an unexpected $4000 car engine repair this week was the icing on the cake. That would have been recoverable when I was subbing but won't be so easily now. And a lot of people have lost much more. For myself and for others, we need EVERYONE to take it seriously.

And now I'm writing this paragraph 2.5 weeks after talking to my doctor. I'm doing much better now, 8 weeks into the pandemic. I've accepted that pretty much every endeavor that was important in my life is gone for the foreseeable future or forever, and am grateful that family members and friends are all healthy, even if time with them is limited to phone / text / e-mail / Facebook / Zoom. I've accepted that retirement is over and that I have to go back to work, hopefully teaching somewhere. And I've gotten used to being alone a lot and learned what I need to do to not be unhappy (healthy diet and exercise, more creativity, less Facebook, more activity even it's in within my four walls, less following the news which never changes nowadays anyway). That doesn't mean I'm happy about what has come to pass, it just means I've accepted it. I still have trouble, though, coming to terms with the fact that we're living in a dystopian novel with a raving lunatic for a leader. But I've learned that the most productive way to deal with that is to do what I can to see that he and his minions are voted out.

And the other reason I'm writing this: if you who are reading this are starting to struggle mentally or emotionally, please reach out to me. Don't follow my bad example and try to tough it out. I will listen and I will help you get help. We all need to be helping each other right now.

P.S. 24 hours later: Several people have tried to comment on here and not had their comments post. I don't know why that's happening but will try to find out! If you check back and your comment didn't appear, please know that I didn't delete it! I'll try to solve the mystery.

social isolation

2020 started out great. After a disappointing fall 2019 venture into being a resident full-time student at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières where I'd spent three great summers, I was back home, subbing at school, enjoying being at school for sports and performances as well, and enjoying spending time with family and friends again. I was getting a lot out of my new UQTR all-online major program in translation and pleased to be able to keep up my education online while living back home. I was back performing music. I was planning to go back to Québec for the same summer program I'd done the past three summers. (The memories of the great summers overshadowed the disappointing fall experience.) I was even in great physical shape, eating healthy and getting lots of exercise. 2020 was shaping up to be an absolutely fantastic year.

Or so I thought.

So here we are, about a month into living in a dystopian novel with an invisible life-threatening enemy as the principal character. I need to say this before I say anything else: things with me could be a LOT worse, in that none of my family members or friends are ill or working with people who are. So for that I'm very grateful.

Now to the changes. I lost my subbing job when school closed. I've offered several times to help out at school, but they don't need me. It's very sobering after 19 years of making the school the center of my life that it is not part of my life any more. As a retiree and sub, I'm not considered a staff member so am not allowed to even set foot in the building. All my pending music performances were cancelled. I am still taking voice lessons and guitar lessons by video conference, but no ensemble work and no performances. (The voice lessons were already paid for, and my guitar teacher is in Québec and charges very little, plus the exchange rate is favorable.) I have little hope that my summer program in Québec will run, as all events in Québec have been cancelled through September and they are under extremely strict social distancing laws right now -- not guidelines, laws, with $1500 fines for violation -- and it is reported in the news when they assess those fines, so I know it's happening. (Update 4/21: the Québec summer program is now officially cancelled. I had a pretty good idea that that was coming, but I'm profoundly disappointed. )

As I write the first draft of this on a Saturday night, I am struck by the fact that I have not heard a human voice all day. Through the kitchen window I saw the next-door neighbor outside for a minute, and other than that I have not seen another person all day either. I've had a couple of exchanges with friends by text, Messenger, or e-mail. And I have a couple of socially distanced friend dates for tomorrow, a Sunday. But I do not remember one day in my entire life in which I have not heard another human voice or seen a human face all day. It's very jarring; it feels vulnerable and a little scary.

I do see friends once in a while, in pre-arranged socially distanced settings or in video chat. My brothers and I have had FaceTime dates three times -- which never happened before this. I honestly don't know what the state of my mental health would be right now if I didn't have my family and friends, even distantly and remotely. But at the end of most days I definitely feel alone and a little freaked out. It is getting better, simply because I'm getting used to that as my default state and know that I will get through it, and because I know that social isolation is protecting me.

I realize that my position is a minority position that few people can relate to: isolated alone with no useful function in society beyond obeying the guidelines so as not to get sick or make anyone else sick. I know most people have had it with constantly being with their family and are desperate for some quiet or private time. I have not been successful in making most people understand that too much alone time isn't healthy either.

Up until last week, I had hopes that school would reopen and I could get back to subbing. Now it's official that that's not going to happen. So my next logical step is to find other paid work. I had hoped to find it within the school or the school district, but that's not going to happen either. And so I prepare for yet another transition I didn't want or ask for. I have been accepted to teach on outschool.com, a sort of freelance online teaching web site. We'll see how that goes. If that's not successful, then I'll see who's hiring around here.

The authorities ask us to try not to go to the grocery store more than once every two weeks. I can't pull that off. I go once a week. Even that is a reminder of widespread fear and anxiety. I keep my mask and gloves in the car. I don't carry a purse any more and we aren't allowed to bring our own shopping bags into stores. So I keep my driver's license in the car and put my debit card in my zipped pocket. No stores take cash any more. I go to a small local grocery store, not one of the big supermarket chains, because the small one has everything I need or want. In the store, everyone is taking pains to keep six feet apart. Everyone is masked. No one speaks. People just want to get in and out. The same familiar faces as always are at the checkout behind plexiglass. Yesterday, April 17, I went to one of the big supermarkets for the first time since March 15 simply because I had some store coupons to use before they expired. It was an exercise in futility. The shelves were picked clean. That was disturbing and anxiety-producing in its own right. I understand now why hoarding happens -- I don't excuse it, and don't intend to engage in it, but I understand it. I won't go back there again for the duration.

The one good thing about my extreme-isolation day yesterday was not confronting the fear and anxiety that exist in the outside world. No mask. No avoiding other people in the store. Not that I was immune from current reality, as I regularly read six daily newspapers and one news magazine online: the Portland and Bangor papers from Maine, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and three publications in French, the daily newspapers from Montréal and Trois-Rivières and the news magazine that covers the province of Québec. So I'm well informed. This latest round of protests, egged on by the president, infuriates me to the point I have to just choose not to read that coverage. The lack of respect for and understanding of science and data appall me. Do these people seriously think that the restrictions are in place to ruin their lives? They are there to SAVE lives!! Yes, I understand the economic consequences; I lost my job too! But I'm not blaming Governor Mills for that!! In the Canadian media yesterday, the U.S. story that got the most coverage was the protest. The Canadian border has been closed since March 21 and is to remain so until May 20. The majority of Canadians appear to not want it reopened. They think we are all Trump worshippers and that they would be at risk from us.

I would be remiss if I did not more specifically acknowledge the people who are worse off than me right now. Category #1, the essential workers. One of my nephews is a paramedic. One of the nurses in the COVID-19 unit at Maine Med is one of my former students. Another former student is an ER tech at Maine Med. Another one is an intake worker at the Cumberland County Jail. Several work at supermarkets. That must be a constant source of tension. Category #2, the people who lost their jobs or livelihoods: another nephew, the owner of the small gym where I work out, the owners of the small independent bookstore I frequent, my hairstylist. They'll be a long time coming back from this. Category #3, friends with seriously ill family members whom they are not allowed to go see right now in the hospital or rehab facility. Category #4, high school and college seniors who are losing out on all their ceremonies which are an important life passage marker. My niece and yet another nephew (they are cousins, not siblings) are among those whose college year ended abruptly. My niece was a nationally ranked lacrosse player who only got a couple of games in for her senior season before it ended abruptly. Category #5, schoolteachers who are stressed and exhausted from having to immediately transition to online teaching with no warning. I have a fair amount of survivor's guilt toward that last category. A year ago that would have been me. As noted, I have tried to offer help and support. But I'm told there is nothing I can do. Category #6, people who are trying to work from home and simultaneously parent younger children, especially children who are too young to understand what's going on.

So I said all this just to document my current reality. I am o.k. The hard parts: the isolation, staving off fear and anxiety from other people (I had enough of my own at first in the face of a potentially fatal virus), the feeling like I have no more place at school after it being the center of my life for 19 years, the feeling that I'm not doing anything useful, and not knowing how I'm going to replace the lost income. What's helping: reaching out to people, video conference family and friend dates, making music and writing poetry, and staying healthy.

Let us hope that important lessons will be learned from all of this so we will never again know the worst of this: the deaths, the exhausted caregivers, the families unable to be with their elderly or ill relatives, the economic collapse, the fear, the panic. Please, let us never have to live through something like this ever again. Please let us learn from this. That's why I wrote and shared this post. I realize that it may sound whiny. But in order to learn from living like this, I don't want to forget what it felt like at its worst.

Epilogue to the Québec story

I never realized until just now that I fell off posting Québec updates on my blog. I know I notified everyone by e-mail that I came home in October and why. Very ironically since I'm writing this one month into the pandemic, my biggest motivation for coming home was social isolation. The people with whom I had hoped I would connect up there were busy with their own lives. And I didn't have a peer group up there. There were no adult students, even though I had been told that there were and that the traditional college-age students were in a minority. That wasn't my experience at all. By the second week in October there was only one class I was doing well in. So I moved out of my apartment in Trois-Rivières on Wednesday morning, October 7, and was back home in Portland that night.

My one remaining course was cancelled for the week, so I had a week at home to decide what to do. And my decision was to commute up and finish the one course I was still enrolled in. I drove up Wednesdays, stayed in the very reasonably priced Trois-Rivières Comfort Inn on Wednesday nights, had class from 8:30 - 11:30 Thursday mornings, then came home. It was very well worth it. The course was "Difficulties of French Grammar." I'd wanted to take an advanced French grammar course for a long time. And the professor, in his final year of teaching before retirement, had a reputation for being outstanding. And he was. Brilliant, witty, kind, supremely well-organized and clear. I learned so much. And he was especially generous to me and another student. She and I took it seriously. We sat in the front seats, took notes, laughed at his jokes. By the end of the semester, he had given us both several of his books from his private collection as he was cleaning out his office. I worked very hard in that course -- mind you, a course about features of French grammar that French-speaking university-level students find difficult -- and am probably prouder of getting an A in that course than anything else I've ever accomplished for myself.

My routine for October, November, and December was to sub at the school Monday and Tuesday, head up to Trois-Rivières on Wednesday, have class and come home on Thursday, and sub on Friday. Once the session was over on December 12, I settled into subbing nearly every day. I had had such a good experience in the one course I did finish that I wanted to find a way to keep it going. So I switched majors to a bachelor's degree in translation. The appeal was that the entire program is done online, that I could do it part-time, and that all students in the program pay the same tuition that the Québec residents do, or about $350 US per three-credit course. So I enrolled in two courses to start off, a French stylistics course and the required course of ... "Advanced English Grammar." Needless to say, I'm carrying an A+ in that one!

I think I prefer being in a class with the professor to learning online. But I can't deny that I'm still learning and doing it very affordably. Will I make it all the way to a degree? Hard to say. But I'm enjoying it for now and that's all that matters.

And even though my experience of living up in Trois-Rivières kind of crashed and burned because of the isolation, I don't regret one second of it. I learned a lot, I'm still learning, and am grateful that learning will continue.

slight change of plans

Haven’t posted since classes started for a very good reason: I’ve been swamped academically. The Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières has a well-deserved excellent reputation with high academic standards. So what that meant for me as someone who was newly transitioning from the international school to the regular undergrad program with intelligent articulate native speakers of French … is that I was WAY over my head. WAY over my head. I haven’t studied French formally for years; my summer programs up here the past three years don’t count as they’re very informal and as much about Québec culture as the French language. So I’m down from 12 credits to six. That’s two classes. And that is what I can manage under the circumstances. Homework takes a LOT longer when you’re doing university-level work NOT in your native language.

The entire university has an interesting class schedule; all classes meet just once a week for three hours, with the same start times university-wide: 8:30 a.m., noon, 3:30 p.m., and 7:00 p.m. My Tuesday 3:30 p.m. class is “expression orale,” or public speaking, taught by a warm and gracious woman well-known around here who has been teaching here as an adjunct for 30 years and has been a regular program host on Radio-Canada for 18. She knew me from my summer program as she came to present to us every one of the three summers I’ve been here, and in fact chose me and another woman this past summer to be in a video she was making to promote the summer program. She told me before the first class yesterday that it’s just about to be released and that she would send me the link as soon as it comes out — which of course I will share and I hope you’ll watch even if you don’t understand what I’m saying!! My other class, Thursdays at 8:30 a.m., is “difficultés de la grammaire française.” I think you can figure that one out even if you don’t speak French. The professor is one of the elder statesmen around here; he joked on the first day of class that he has been teaching here since 1925. According to his resume on his web page, it’s really 1969. 50 years. Holy cow. This university actually opened in 1969 (big 50th anniversary celebrations ongoing) so that means he has been teaching here for the university’s entire history. He is known for being a great teacher but assigning a ton of homework. Yep. All true. One of the two classes I dropped was also taught by him. Absolutely no way could I manage both.

So here’s what I’m going to do now that my schedule has changed. It’s easy to get home; a six-hour drive, but an easy one. I enjoy driving, I’m used to driving between here and home, and my car is still relatively new and I take excellent care of it. So I’m coming home for long weekends, starting today. I am going to take advantage of that fact to sub at FHS on Fridays when they need me, and to go to FHS games and performances in person instead of following along on ScoreStream or social media. It won’t be exhausting; it will be refreshing. I will head for home when my Thursday class gets out and will be home by mid-evening allowing for a dinner break in there somewhere. I will be very grateful to sleep in my own bed Thursday through Sunday nights. I’ll bring my homework with me. I am pleased about the possibility of being able to continue my learning experience here in Trois-Rivières but being able to get back to my FHS community as well. This will work as long as the weather is decent. When the snow flies, I’ll have to revisit this plan. But it will work for now and I’m looking forward to implementing it.

the oldest student at new student orientation

All the new student activities have now been completed, and of course I was the oldest one in the room every time. I was expecting that, of course, and I've only gotten a few strange looks and been mistaken for a professor once. I do get a huge kick out of the fact that I'm going through new student orientation at the same time as many members of the FHS Class of 2019!

The way they do it here is to have one orientation for exchange students, which was last week; one orientation for international students, which I attended last Friday; and orientations today by academic department.

Snapshots:

• I've been the only American in either of my orientations. When people find out I'm American, they assume that I'm not going to be able to understand them if they speak French to me. Yet so far, I've understood just about everything and have been able to answer questions clearly when asked.

• I was also the only one taking notes at the French department orientation and one of very few doing so at the international student orientation. That fascinated me. Generation gap?

• There were about 150 students at the international students' orientation, slightly more women than men, nearly all of them from Africa, and nearly all of them very nicely dressed. About a third were undergrads, a third master's degree students, and a third doctoral students. Nearly all were in their 20's and 30's, of course, so I was secretly very pleased to see two women come in who were definitely close to my age! I hope to cross their paths at some point. I thought it was interesting when they offered a cultural explanation that in this culture, if something starts at 1:30 p.m., you need to be there by 1:25 to be ready to start at 1:30. They talked about the transition to life in Canada (with more than a passing reference to winter), getting settled into living accommodations, and lots of info about student services: health services including mental health, financial aid, help finding work, academic support, and student activities.

• There were 15 students at the French department orientation; we were told that there were 25 new students total. 11 from the region, one exchange student from France, one each from Martinique and Guadeloupe, and me.  13 young women, one young man, and me. The department head sort of explained to the others what the French exchange student was doing there and what I was doing there; she stood out because of her accent, and I stood out because of my age. All the same info about student services came up again, and instead of talking about adjustment to Canada the rest of the presentation was about what to expect from university academics.

• Both the international students' orientation and the French department orientation were three-hour presentations. There was no interactive stuff, no ice-breakers or get-to-know-you stuff, which was fine with me. Just sitting and listening. Both presentations did include lots of info about student services and student activities, and definitely gave me the impression that things are really well run around here. They do seem to truly care about student well-being; both orientations mentioned that there are really positive relationships between faculty and students and that the faculty members are approachable. Kind of like being back at FHS only on the other side of the desk!

• There are no dorm activities as we think of them in the USA. There is on-campus housing, all apartment suites, but it only accommodates a few hundred of the 15,000 students here, and is mostly occupied by international students, so I'm told. The vast majority of undergrads commute from home. I live in an apartment building with six apartments in a nice residential neighborhood which is all either apartment buildings or private homes with basement apartments rented to students.

So I'm all new-student-oriented. It helps of course that I've been here the past three summers and know where things are located on campus and know the neighborhood, the city, and the region. I'm all settled into my apartment.

One thing they do here that's really helpful (and maybe American universities do this too and I'm just not aware of it since it's been awhile! ...) is put the course syllabus online. It is expected that students will read it before going to the first class. So over lunch I read the syllabi for my four courses ... and promptly dropped one of the four. The total workload would have just been too much. So I'm at nine credits now. I'll write more about the courses next time when things are finalized in case I do any more dropping/adding.

All the classes meet once a week for three hours. So the two three-hour orientations were also an orientation to staying focused and following presentations in French for three hours (with no break in one case) in which information was flowing in a constant unbroken stream. The syllabus for two of the three courses said that cell phones are to be turned off and put in our bags, not on the table, and that we are not allowed to have laptops out. Good thing I have good note-taking skills.

I have one class each on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. That's going to be great for coming home weekends. Sometimes I think I'd like to come home most weekends. But I wonder if that defeats the purpose of being here. Time will tell.

The two orientations were very informative, but I'm glad they're done and I'm eager to go to my first class tomorrow!

it starts one week from tonight

I was updating my calendar today and realized that I will be settling into my apartment in Trois-Rivières, Québec one week from tonight. Woah.

I'm feeling a combination of excited and wistful. I've had a great summer. By this time next week, I will have accomplished everything I wanted to this summer: great times with family and friends, lots of music-making, and home decluttering (o.k., the decluttering isn't 100% accomplished, but is it ever?). My class schedule isn't set yet, more about that in a moment, but I'm really looking forward to being on campus and in classes.

The wistful part: for the first time since fall 2001, I won't be starting the school year at FHS. Last week I went to drop something off there, and for the first time I really felt that I'm not part of the staff any more. I'm still getting staff e-mails and thus got the e-mail with all the first-week-of-school instructions. I read it and realized that I won't be part of that. Of course, the first week of meetings was never the good part; that was seeing the kids. Still, seeing that e-mail really made it hit home that the FHS chapter in my book of life has reached its last page and it's time to start writing the next chapter. I still plan on going to games and performances, and if I'm around to sub I'll certainly be interested in doing so. But there will be kids and staff I don't know, and things will have changed as they inevitably do from year to year. Plus I'll miss my friends. I'm counting on e-mail, texting, and social media to fill that void.

FHS p.s.: it took them a year, but they have filled my position!

Last Thursday I went up to Trois-Rivières to report Friday morning to take the French test required of all non-Canadian students. It's essentially a French SAT without the math. I find it highly amusing that the test is published by the Educational Testing Service, the American company that brings you the SAT. And that was precisely the format; 180 multiple choice questions to answer by filling in the bubble sheet. 90 were listening questions where you only get to hear the text, not read it, and 90 were reading and grammar questions. Grammar is my strength (thanks to three decades of Latin teaching) and I know I got all the grammar questions right. Pretty sure the same is true for the reading. And there were a few listening questions where I had no idea what was said. Just a few, though, so I can live with that! Why this test is a big deal: none of the test-takers can register for classes until we get our scores. We were told that we would get them Wednesday in our e-mail. So I'll be spending Wednesday on my phone until that e-mail comes. 👀 Those who get a low score are required to register for remedial classes. I know I'm not going to get a low score. So I just need to get that e-mail, at which point the registration portal will be opened for me and the others. Shopping for fall classes, yeah!!

Calendar: Wednesday I get the e-mail and register. Friday morning I'll be back on campus for a mandatory meeting for all new international students. As I tell everyone, I hardly feel like an international student, but technically I am. Then I have to come right back as the final concert for my adult band camp (yes, that's a thing, and it's super-fun, this is my second year doing it) is Saturday. Sunday 9/1 I'll be heading up to Trois-Rivières with all my stuff, with a stopover in New Hampshire to watch a college soccer game, specifically to watch the member of the FHS Class of 2019 to whom I was the closest play in his first college game. Sunday night in Trois-Rivières I'll have to grocery shop and stock my fridge because I checked and the supermarkets will be closed there on Labor Day (or, as they spell it where I'm going, Labour Day, or I guess I should say Fête du Travail). So Monday 9/2 will be my day to settle in. Tuesday morning 9/3 I have yet another mandatory meeting for all new students in the French language and literature department. And Wednesday 9/4 it's go time!!

One part of this endeavor has evolved a little bit. I don't have a definite return date anymore. I will stay at least through the fall semester. Then if I decide I've accomplished what I went there to do, I'll come home. If there is something more for me, I'll stay for the academic year. If I want to stay beyond that point and can afford to, I will. All the back-and-forth travel I've done, or had to do, this summer has made me realize that I'm really not going to be all that far away. So I will keep my return date open and play it by ear.

A bit of housekeeping: some people have told me they have tried to comment on past blog posts and weren't able to. Try posting as "Anonymous" if you're having trouble commenting; I'd love to hear what you have to say! Thanks / merci!

one step closer, and what I'll be giving up

Earlier this week, I finally received my admission to the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières. Well ... conditional admission. The condition I have to meet: I have to go up and take a French test. I laughed. After the enthusiastic encouragement of the department head who had amazingly complimentary things to say about my written and spoken French ... I have to go take a French test. Fine. In my line of work, I understand that they want a test score on a piece of paper in my file. So I will go provide them with one. It will be a good excuse to go check on my apartment.

In making the trip up for the French test, I will be missing what would have been the last get-together of my women's circle before I return to Québec. This is a tough one. This group of women is so dear to me. We have shared our secrets, celebrated the wonderful events and milestones in our lives, and been there for each other during the difficult times. For four of the other six women, I had their kids in school. Our bond will always be there. But I will deeply miss being in their presence regularly.

I've also just found out that I'm required to go to the international students' orientation. I had to laugh again because I hardly think of myself as an international student there even though technically I am. And in attending that orientation, I will have to miss part of a music workshop I've already signed up and paid for and was really looking forward to.

As September gets closer, I'm feeling these and other impending losses more deeply. And there are more losses to come. I realized a few decades ago that once we are well into adulthood, no major move comes without some losses, without leaving some things behind.

My music has been taking off since I started studying guitar last December at the local folk music school and got involved with the school's groups and events. I found my performing niche with their new Cajun group for whom I'm the vocalist (in French) and one of two rhythm guitarists. The group is led by my guitar teacher who performed for a decade with BeauSoleil, probably the most famous Cajun band in the U.S. Mainers might have heard them at the American Folk Festival in Bangor where they have performed a couple of times. Earlier this week I saw my guitar teacher and we had a great conversation. He wants us to perform. And I want to perform, especially with him. We really hit it off and he is just an amazing performer. He knows I'm heading back to Québec shortly. So how will performing work? Will it work? I want it to. But I can't be in two places at once.

And then there's my ties to the school where I taught for the last 18 years of my 33-year career. There are a lot of incoming seniors and their families I'm close to. They won't be part of my day-to-day life any more. I know I'll be back some weekends and during school vacations. But the role the school has played in my life for the past 18 years is over. A few parents of seniors were nice enough to ask me if I would still stay involved with graduation planning. I said I would be happy to but that it has to be the school's decision. The responsible parties at school have said yes, that of course they would like me to stay involved. But will it be realistic? The academic year at UQTR ends April 24, 2020, well before graduation season. So it could work. But a lot of work has to be done before that point that I won't be there to help with. So is it realistic? Is it fair to the people who will be doing that work to just waltz in next April and say hey, I'm back, even though I've been clear that I will not be available until April?

After I wrote the first draft of this post, a tragic event happened in my school community that really brought home the topic of no longer being a day-to-day part of it. An incoming senior boy who was a student in my class as a freshman drowned two days ago in the Saco River. He jumped into the river off a rope swing and never resurfaced. His body was found about 7 p.m. by search divers. At 8 p.m. a parent texted me to tell me that kids were congregating at the school. My reply text: "I'm on my way." And off I headed for the 18-minute drive which I probably accomplished in less than 18 minutes this time. And when I arrived, there they were, all in a big mass in the middle of the parking lot. I estimated about 150 kids. I was a few steps from my car when a boy who had been in my class this year saw me, came running, and collapsed into my arms sobbing. I have no idea how long we stood there, him sobbing, me holding him. It was a while. Then another student came up. And another. And another. For an hour. A parent who was there on the periphery told me later that she wondered who it was that kids were waiting to hug. Then she saw. Oh. It's D-Whit. It was an honor to be there for them, and I'm humbled in the trust they had in me at that moment. And I'm very grateful that I was there in their moment of need and not in Trois-Rivières. At moments when a young person dies, it's important for their peers to see us adults role-modeling that we are grieving but not helpless with grief, that we are putting one foot in front of the other and carrying on, and that we are there for each other. (It's also important for us to take care of ourselves and process the loss away from the kids. Which I am doing. In private.)

Obviously this was an extreme event. But there will be others when I will be longing to be there and can't because of the distance or my class schedule. And it will hurt, whether it's a happy or sad event.

So these days I'm coming to terms with the fact that this choice to go to Trois-Rivières will not come without some losses. I'm dealing with it by reminding myself why I made the decision to go: because I was called to go up there and spend a school year in an area where I've spent three great summers. A calling. A Sirens' Song. And yet two nights ago when I was grateful to have been in town at the moment when we all needed to be together, I started second-guessing myself. This is my community. What am I thinking? Why leave? I have everything I need and want right here. Not everyone handles separations and good-byes well and I've felt some people pulling away already. Am I making a mistake? Am I reading more into "the calling" than is there?

For the moment, I just have to trust the call. I've said all along that the call is so loud and persistent that there must be something up there for me. I need to finish what I started and find out what that is.

a tentative Plan B for next year

August 1, the New Moon, and Mercury direct (if that reference means nothing, pick up an Old Farmer's Almanac and read up; weird stuff happens during Mercury retrograde and resolves when Mercury goes direct). August 1 is also the Pagan holiday of Lammas, which celebrates the harvest. Perfect day for an update. I'd been waiting to post until details were finalized, and they're not, but here goes anyway!

Recap: I learned on July 10 that l'École internationale de français (ÉIF, International French School) was cancelling the advanced level courses for fall due to low enrollment. My whole next year's plan had been built around that. So I needed a new plan. My four options:

1. Enroll in the regular French courses at the University, not the ÉIF. Super-intimidating.
2. Enroll in another ÉIF program which consists of one-on-one tutoring, 15 hours a week for two weeks max, with the same teacher. One of the teachers in this program is the one who has been my teacher for the past three summers and is fantastic. So that sounded good.
3. Look at other programs at other universities in Québec. There are good ones at McGill in Montréal, Laval in Québec (City), and Trois-Pistoles, in, well, Trois-Pistoles (115 miles north of Allagash, Maine). I'm actually an alumna of the one at Laval.
4. Pack it in and come home.

I considered #3 for about one minute. I already have an apartment in Trois-Rivières with a lease until April 30, 2020. Québec law does not allow the breaking of a lease. So the apartment is a sunk cost, and thus option #3, although I'm aware that it's not necessary to invest more money just because of a sunk cost, has been eliminated. On to option #4.

I considered #4 for about two minutes. But as I've noted before in this blog, I'm feeling very strongly called on an intuitive level to spend more time at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR) and in the Mauricie region (upper central Québec, named for the St-Maurice River). VERY strongly called. Something is up there for me. If that sounds crazy, so be it. I've spent my whole adult life making decisions on intuition more than facts, and it has served me well. Indeed I've learned that if I don't pay attention to my intuition, I regret it later. So option #4 to pack it in and come home has been eliminated.

Option #2, the one-on-one tutoring. I asked my teacher about this possibility. He checked and found out that I could do it, but with no guarantee that I would get him as a teacher as the ÉIF assigns teachers to students by seniority. I didn't want to take the chance on not getting him as a teacher and spending 30 hours over two weeks by someone I didn't know and may not hit it off with as much educationally and personally. So option #2 has been eliminated.

Option #1 is left.
Here's the list of reasons NOT to do it.
• More expensive.
• More isolated; the ÉIF is a community, a school within a school, and with option #1 I'd be just another commuter student.
• Tougher academic environment. It's a giant step from the ÉIF to taking regular UQTR courses with native-French-speaking classmates.

So why am I applying to do it anyway?
• The academic advisor of the ÉIF suggested it and said I would be able to do the work.
• My online/Skype tutor over the past year got her BA from this program and is getting her masters' in it now. She is one of two francophones who know my capacity in French better than anyone and she said she was "certain" that I could do the work. I asked her if I would be the only adult in the classroom. She said not at all, that she (mid-20's) was one of the youngest graduates of her program.
• I met one of the professors in the program through my summer program. She encouraged me to take her class.
• The advisor suggested I talk to the department head of the undergrad French department. So I made an appointment with him for my last morning of my summer program, which was Friday 7/19. He is very highly regarded so I was looking forward to meeting him.
It went great. He was utterly encouraging. He praised the quality of my written and spoken French and said that they had admitted non-francophone students with less proficiency than I have now. He went over the list of courses with me and gave me a copy of the letter they give to newly admitted students to the department with info about a big first-day meeting. He recommended that I apply as a matriculated student and pursue either a "certificat" (30 credits) or a "baccalauréat" (90 credits - university in Québec is 3 years of undergrad because they do two years first in a "cégep," something like a community college or junior college). I don't really need a degree, but the encouragement felt great.

So I left that appointment, and left UQTR and Trois-Rivières immediately following, on a high. It felt like I had gotten a new direction. I headed home that Friday and filled out the online application on Monday. Applying to college in Québec is a lot cheaper and easier than in the USA. It took me an hour, and most of that was spent looking in my apartment for my Ellsworth High School and University of Maine diplomas which the application requested a photo of. No test scores, no letters of recommendation, no resumé with academic honors and extracurricular activities. Just transcripts and diplomas. I knew right where my transcripts were, but not my diplomas. Thanks to this, I have everything in one place now!

So now I wait. I have an e-mail acknowledgement that my application has been received. I have the code and security questions to check the status of my application online -- which I have been doing a ridiculous number of times a day. Probably not unlike high school seniors around the country. Other than that ... I'm set. I have my apartment. I have a bank account. I know my way around. I know what my class schedule will be as soon as I'm admitted and sign up for it!

It's a little nerve-wracking to be waiting to be admitted. But I don't expect anything to go wrong this time. I'm considering the fact that the department head endorsed my applying and enrolling as a sign that things will work out this time!

And I have to be honest: I know I will work harder and learn a lot more this way than I would have in the ÉIF. I was already one of the top students in the ÉIF and it would have been very easy for me, more like a vacation than a college semester or year. The department head I met with told me I was "déjà trop bonne" ("already too good") at French for the ÉIF. Sounds like this is yet another case of things working out the way they're meant to work out!

To give me a reason to add a photo, here's how I met the professor from whom I'm planning on taking a class. Her name is Patricia Powers. Despite the English-language name, she is 100% Québécoise francophone. French people with English names are not unheard of up here. She is very high-profile up here; she is on Radio-Canada (Canada's French PBS; the English is the CBC, or Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) as a "chroniqueuse," a great word for which there is no exact English equivalent; it's like a podcaster but on the radio, not on a podcast. The masculine is "chroniqueur." She's big in the entertainment community and the UQTR community. She teaches French both in the ÉIF and the regular UQTR French department. And the icing on the cake, or as they say in Québec,  "le cerise sur le gâteau (the cherry on the cake)," is that she is a very warm and lovely person. She was looking for two ÉIF students from my summer program (for adults) to interview for a short video ad to put on the ÉIF website and wanted two people who spoke French well. (I'll share the link as soon as it's posted.) She picked me and a woman from Edmonton, Alberta who actually was francophone as a child but lost a lot of her French due to going to anglophone schools, having mostly anglophone friends, and marrying into an anglophone family. So she sounds francophone when she speaks. Here is a photo taken right before the interview. Left to right are Patricia Powers, me, and my classmate Sylvia. Who says older women can't look fine? I think this is an amazing photo of all of us. Notice how she's touching my hand and leaning in; very québécois. She encouraged me to take her fall course "expression orale," which is public speaking. I can't wait! I really enjoyed taking public speaking in high school and college in English, so doing it in French will be a blast!

So what is it about Québec that keeps me going back?

When I first did my summer study program in Trois-Rivières, Québec in 2017, I tried to figure out how long it had been since I'd been anywhere in Québec. I wasn't even sure. I knew it was pre-9/11. I finally decided it was probably 1999 or 2000. I used to enjoy going to performances of the Montréal West Operatic Society (now sadly defunct). I'm not sure why I stopped going to Québec. The first few years after 1999-2000 I was newly divorced and just keeping my head above water financially.  Eventually I got picked up full-time at Freeport H.S., so got back to getting my French on during the summers of 2005 and 2006 through a summer immersion program at Université Sainte-Anne in Pointe-de-l'Église, Nouvelle-Écosse (also known as Church Point, Nova Scotia). It was an absolutely fantastic fun program where I learned a lot. It's a tiny campus right on the ocean in the middle of freaking nowhere -- a beautiful part of freaking nowhere. So it was ideal for an immersion experience; no distractions. There were 400 of us if I recall correctly, ages 13 to 70's, and there was something to do in French every waking hour; classes in the morning and constant activity in the afternoon and evening and on the weekends.

Summer 2017 was coming up, and I wanted to get my French on again. But as much as I had loved my two Université Sainte-Anne summers, I had already worked through all the levels of French they offered. There was nothing left for me to do. So I looked elsewhere, and Google searching called my attention to the Road Scholar program at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières. Exact same immersion model as Université Sainte-Anne; class in the morning, excursions and activities in the afternoon and evenings, and out-of-town excursions on the weekends. I didn't know the city of Trois-Rivières but noted that it was exactly at the midpoint between Montréal and the city of Québec. Sounded good.

And it was. - so much that I repeated the program in 2018 and 2019. I've had the same fantastic teacher for all three years, and he has taught us as much about Québec culture, history, and life as he has about the French language. Outside of class, it hasn't strictly been an immersion experience as a lot of English has been spoken by participants, and the organizers have sort of looked the other way. This is a trip sponsored by a for-profit company, so they were inclined to give people what they wanted, as opposed to Université Sainte-Anne which was an academic program with credits granted so they had standing to enforce the all-French rule.

So even if the program wasn't in French as much, why have I fallen in love with Québec over the course of this program? First, I've had great French learning experiences my whole life thanks to fantastic teachers and professors, so I was predisposed to love a place right over the Maine border which is all French-speaking. Second, the people really are different in more qualities than the language they speak. Québec people are more physical and warm than their anglo counterparts. People kiss on both cheeks when they meet. People seem to be a little more direct in their communications too. Over my years in education I've learned to filter every word that comes out of my mouth or my keyboard lest someone take something the wrong way. It's so refreshing to just say what needs to be said and know that it will be received as intended, even if I'm saying it in my second language.

There is music everywhere, and people appreciate Québec folk music as much as whatever is popular at the moment. And the folk music is up-tempo and lively. I've heard very little English-language popular music when I've been there over the past three years. Finally, there is overt pride in their culture and language, and a certain strength of character and resilience that comes from the fact that they have had to fight to maintain French as their language. I truly did not understand that at first. I thought the French and English-speaking communities co-existed peacefully kind of on the scale of a Coke-or-Pepsi preference. Not so. My teacher over the past three years and the grad student who was my online tutor over the past school year have taught me a lot about the social history of Québec. It's more than just hockey and snow. There is rich literature and folklore borne out of their struggle to maintain their language and culture. And for a province / culture of 8 million people, there is a LOT of art-music-literature. Fun fact from my teacher who is an author and singer-songwriter (fun fact about the fun fact: I played on two tracks for his new album!): 3000 sales is considered a best-seller in Québec.

Here's a live video of the big hit of 2015 from the annual Québec music awards ceremony. When I asked my tutor for suggestions for Québec songs to learn to sing and play on guitar, this was the first one she mentioned. The group is the super-popular Les Cowboys Fringants, which means "The Frisky Cowboys." Their music is a mix of folk rock and Québec traditional. Note the violin and accordion in the band. The song is "Marine marchande," which means "Merchant Marine." In the tune, a man and woman in a couple are calling each other horrible names, the man says he has signed up for the merchant marine to get away from her, he goes and he's miserable, he says he wants to come back to her, and she says forget it, she has a new girlfriend who lives upstairs and is keeping his side of the bed warm. The refrain says "Let's drink, let's drink, let's drink, my throat is on fire, let's drink, let's drink, let's drink for all the unhappy couples, let's drink, let's drink, let's drink, just one more, babe, I've enlisted in the merchant marine." A cultural note about the "couple" thing particular to Québec: a much higher percentage of man-woman couples never get married in Québec than in English Canada or the USA. Something like one-third. People are in decades-long committed relationships, have kids even, and never get married. Québec French has something American English doesn't and really needs: a word for a committed non-married partner, any gender person or couple. It's "conjoint / conjointe" (in its grammatical masculine / feminine forms). And people also use it for their partner they're married to. So calling someone your "conjoint/e" means they're your partner with the marital status or lack thereof irrelevant. Pretty cool. O.k., here's the video!
Les Cowboys Fringants, "Marine marchande"

As for Trois-Rivières itself, it's a city of 137,000 and I'm not really a city person. Portland is plenty big enough. But what I like about Trois-Rivières compared to Montréal and Québec is that, in fact, I have to do everything in French. Montréal has a large English-speaking community and Québec has a ton of tourists. Trois-Rivières has neither. So I never, ever, ever hear or see English when I'm out and about. I'm learning more because of that. And as cities go, it's clean, it's safe, and it has a nice riverfront downtown area and a cool music and theater scene -- needless to say, right up my alley. I told someone once that the only thing I missed when I'm there (besides family and friends) was living less than 200 yards from the ocean as I do in Portland.

Corollary to that, I love that I'm learning all the time. Every day I pick up lots of new stuff: vocabulary words, conversational expressions, info I need for daily living, cultural or current events references. Sometimes it's a challenge; I find that when I have to interact with someone out in the city as opposed to on campus, I kind of steel myself before the interaction. I make sure I know the vocabulary I need to ask for what I need, and I hope like crazy that I'll understand what they say back to me. I don't always. But I can almost always get the gist. Once in a great while someone will switch to English; that's discouraging for me because it means that I wasn't successful at executing the interaction in French. But I just remind myself that they're doing it out of courtesy. And the longer I'm there, the less it happens, and the less it will continue to happen.

As I write this, I'll be back and forth between Portland/Freeport and Ellsworth for most of the rest of the summer. After that, still up in the air at present, but I'm checking out a few options. I should know soon. But I'm following news from up there, corresponding with a couple of new friends, and playing lots of lively Québec music on my phone through my car speakers whenever I'm driving anywhere. I'm lucky to have three places where I feel like I'm at home.

The colorful world of Québec swear words

I'm going to start this post the same way I did the last one: I have wonderful friends. The news from my last post about my program being cancelled for fall was a downer, and I so appreciate the messages of support I've gotten from folks. Thank you soooooo much. I'm working on a Plan B; nothing is settled yet.

I'm coming home for the weekend. Anyone going to be around? This weekend trip home was already planned before anything hit the fan, but the opportunity to spend time on my home turf and think about stuff will be good too. The reason for the trip: two of my former students directed an independent film, "Invisible Things." I was a financial patron and an extra in a few scenes, so I got invited to the première Sunday night, and I'm not missing it. So I'll be home sometime Saturday and heading back to Québec Monday morning.

Now to the topic of this post: "the colorful world of Québec swear words." Definitely not for delicate ears and far from school-appropriate. Being retired, I can survive a breach of professionalism. :)

In all cultures, the most taboo language reflects the cultural taboos. Québec culture was very strongly influenced by the Catholic Church for most of the last few centuries. So the most taboo words are words from the church. So it follows that words that are completely innocuous to us are highly offensive when used as expletives. It cracks me up!

Now to the illustration that I'm still cracking up over. There is an excellent museum here in Trois-Rivières devoted to Québec popular culture. Part of one exhibit is devoted to, sure enough, these swear words which are unique in the French-speaking world. Check out this photo of the exhibit:

I walked around the corner and saw this and started cracking up laughing. This is the unhibited nature of the Québécois! Now I want to spell out an equivalency for you just to illustrate how startling and how hysterical this was. Imagine that you are attending a museum exhibit on American culture. You walk into a room, and there in huge block letters on the wall you read: "Fuck, Shit, Goddammit, Son of a Bitch, Asshole, Dickhead, Jesus Christ." This is exactly what you are looking at in the photo: Québec swear words with that level of offensiveness! They started with "tabarnak," which is the big kahuna of swear words which is why I started my list with "Fuck." Coming out swinging!!

What do they mean literally? In order of the photo, it's "tabernacle" or church; "host" like the communion host or wafer; "ciborium" which is the box that holds the host; "chalice" which is the communion drinking cup; "sacrement" which is the same in English; "viarge" which is "virgin" referring to Mary, the mother of Jesus; and "Christ." Yes, indeed, those are Québec's most taboo swear words.

You do hear people say "Fuck" up here but it has no power to them. They think they're saying something with about the offensiveness level of "damn it."

I wanted to make a funny post after my last super-serious one. I hope you find this as hilarious as I do!

the honeymoon is over, the challenges begin ...

I have wonderful friends. Two people checked in on Sunday: "hey, haven't seen any posts from you, all o.k. up there?"

Welllll, let's start with this story ... I found out during a meeting with my advisor today that my academic program for fall is going to be cancelled due to low enrollment. They typically get the majority of their students from China, and due to tensions and problems, no Chinese students will be enrolled. There was something about students from Brazil dropping off, too, but I didn't catch all of that. It's not unusual for me to miss information when someone's talking. I can follow TV and radio news, lectures, etc., because people are trained to speak clearly, but in casual conversation people are more, well, casual. -- especially in my case. Because I speak with confidence (I stop short of saying "I speak well"), people assume I understand everything they're saying. Ha.

I'd been wondering why I hadn't gotten a tuition bill yet. Now I know.

So, my choices:
1. Enroll in classes for francophones. My advisor suggested it. It will be twice as expensive and 1,000,000 times more challenging. I don't know if I'm capable of doing college-level work for native French speakers.
2. The French school has a two-week private tutoring option. Five hours of one-on-one instruction a day. I know one of the instructors who does that and would really enjoy working with him. I wouldn't be able to come on my Canada study permit (like a student visa) since I wouldn't be a full-time student.  (UPDATE: Turns out that's not true. I can be a part-time student on a study permit. Whew...) Without the study permit, I would have a six-month time limit after which I would have to come home. (UPDATE: I can renew the study permit. Turns out part-time is o.k. Whew again ...)
3. Cut my losses and come home now.

So there's that.

Plus I've been dealing with plumbing problems in my apartment, specifically a shower that only ran hot water, no cold. And it was HOT. Took a week to resolve that. I was fretting wondering whether I had made myself clear to the landlord what the problem was. I contacted my landlord again yesterday morning and he came right over and fixed it. He thought his plumber had taken care of it. Message to me: don't wait a week next time I have a problem. Plumbing or home problems suck anyway, and layering a language barrier onto that just compounds the stress.

I'm not going to lie: I hit kind of a low before the weekend. The plumbing thing sucked. I went to a hotel for a few days just to get away from it. Even though I'm in (and halfway through) a three-week Road Scholar class with mostly Americans studying French, I'd been feeling a little isolated and questioning my decision to do this. I saw lots of fun photos of family and friends online doing their thing on the Fourth and missed what was apparently a fantastic family gathering. Even though family and friends are only a social media post or a text away, I miss people. I live alone and am happy living like that, but that doesn't mean I want to be alone all the time.

So I made sure to have an awesome weekend. I got out of town and went to the Mauricie national park about a 40-minute drive due north of here. I did that both Saturday and Sunday. Two beautiful days. I took my journal to write in to sort some stuff out, and also took my guitar just to hang out outdoors and play and replay the small list of songs I know (I've only been playing for eight months).  Here's where I sat and played for a really long time on Sunday. There is a beautiful small lake behind the gazebo.

There are many beautiful spots in the park which is actually pretty small. It never ceases to amaze me that Canadian national and provincial parks are never, ever, ever crowded.

Then at night I went to the last two nights of the Festivoix music festival. Saturday night I heard a group that is really popular up here, Kaïn (check them out on YouTube). They're billed as folk rock but I'd call it country rock. The crowd was having a blast and so was the band. Everyone recognized all the tunes and was singing along -- except me, but I was having fun watching people have fun! Sunday night, the closing night of the festival, I went to the performance by Jean-Michel Blais, a pianist who accompanies his piano playing with electronic sounds. (Check him out too.) I had my doubts about that before I heard it, but I really liked it. The common thread between the two very different performances was that the performers engaged with the audience a lot and kept expressing how appreciative they were of people's attendance and support. Cool.

So I've come out of the funk I was in. I very, very rarely get in a funk so it was weird. I didn't enjoy that. Well, I guess no one does or it wouldn't be called a funk.

I have no idea how I'm going to resolve the academic problem. I'm not going to decide tonight. It's late and I have the All-Star game on in the background. I'll focus on that for a few innings. The American League is ahead. As it should be. I'll watch baseball for awhile tonight, and tomorrow I'll start figuring out how to play the academic curve ball I've just been thrown. With thought, planning, and a little luck, I'll knock it out of the park.

Trois-Rivières, Québec: the start of my "immigrant experience"

Bonjour! If you are reading this, you probably know the basics of my last couple of years. In June 2018, I retired from a 32-year career teaching mostly French and Latin. In September 2018, I returned to my school as a long-term sub for the 2018-19 school year for the Latin teaching half of my position because they couldn't fill it. My catch phrase all year was "#irreplaceable." My other catch phrase was "bonus year." I was delighted to have a year at a school I really did enjoy, with kids and families I really did enjoy, and with fewer responsibilities and time commitments, just pure teaching and doing the fun stuff.

So why have I just moved to Trois-Rivières, Québec for a year? There is a little bit of backstory to fill in here, too. I spent the summers of 2017 and 2018 here at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR), at the École internationale de français (French Summer School). My particular program was sponsored by the Road Scholar organization, formerly Elderhostel, which I found simply by Google searching French immersion programs in Canada. I knew that I wanted to spend some of the summer of 2017 living in French, and really wanted to do it in Canada just because I like spending time in Canada. So I applied, got in, came here, and really liked it. The city is a clean and safe city of 137,000 with a cool art, music, and theater scene -- right in my wheelhouse! The university has an excellent reputation and the campus is also clean and safe. There were 40 of us and we stayed in on-campus apartments which were like new, four to an apartment with our own bedrooms and shared kitchen, living room, and bathroom. I tested into the advanced class; my instructor was outstanding. And several times a week we had excursions to museums, historical sites, parks, everything the area had to offer. The three weeks also included two Saturday trips to Montréal and Québec City, each about 90 miles away. To explain to people where Trois-Rivières is, I always tell people to imagine a straight line between Montréal and Québec City; Trois-Rivières is at the midpoint.

In 2017 I kept careful track of every hour I spent in class or on a sanctioned educational activity and used that for my teacher recertification hours for 2018.

I enjoyed 2017 so much that I came back for 2018. I was very pleasantly surprised to have the same outstanding instructor again. I had roommates that I really hit it off with, an English teacher from Arlington, Texas, a retired entertainment industry attorney from Los Angeles, and a nurse from the south shore of Boston. And I experienced it differently this time since I wasn't tracking contact hours for recertification credit. I was just here to enjoy being here.

And something else felt different in 2018. I noticed that I felt really comfortable making my way around the city, and I'm not a city person. Once I drove somewhere just one time, I remembered how to get there again with no problem, which isn't like me; usually I'm writing down distances, street names, landmarks, etc. because I know I won't remember and I have no visual aptitude at all. And not only did I feel really comfortable communicating in French with francophones (Canada term for people whose first language is French) on campus and in the city, I enjoyed the challenge. I mean, I was hardly ignorant of French having taught it for 32 years ... but I've spent almost all those 32 years teaching beginners. It never really put my French to the test. And I really enjoyed feeling like I was learning something new every day, as much about Québec culture and history as about the French language.

So that's why I'm back here. I wanted to put myself to the test. I could very easily have stayed at my school and transitioned from my half-time long-term sub job this year to continuing on as a day-to-day substitute teacher. Everything about my Maine life has been great. But I knew that if I settled into a routine next year of subbing and doing other fun stuff, I would be happy and have fun, but there would be no learning, no challenge. And I felt really called to look for a learning and challenge opportunity -- and specifically, here. Many of you reading what I'm about to say will think I'm nuts if you don't already ... but I am feeling very specifically called to be here at the UQTR. Not a specific reason. Just purely intuitive. I wrote a poem about it over the winter called "The Sirens' Song." Everyone reading this who knows me as a Latin teacher will no doubt appreciate the reference to the Odyssey. Here is the poem. (I write all my poetry in English and French.)

la chanson des Sirènes / The Sirens' Song
The ancient Greeks believed in the Sirens
   who sang to sailors to seduce them and draw them to their island.
I know that they exist today.
   But not in Greece.
   They live in the St. Lawrence and St. Maurice rivers
   and I hear their song every day.
Should I answer their call?
Les Grecs de l'Antiquité
   croyaient aux Sirènes
   qui chantaient aux marins
   afin de les séduire et de les attirer vers leur île.
Moi, je sais qu'elles existent aujourd'hui.
   Mais pas en Grèce.
   Elles habitent le fleuve St-Laurent et la rivière St-Maurice
   et j'entends leur chanson chaque jour.
Devrais-je répondre à leur appel?

So I don't know yet why I'm being called to be specifically here. But I'm giving myself until April 2020, the end of the university school year, to find the answer. I'll be taking classes with regular students in the École internationale de français. And I'll be looking for music opportunities too. Some have actually already materialized. That will be the subject of my next post.

So how is it going so far, four days in? I keep thinking that what I'm experiencing must be what it feels like to be an immigrant to the USA. Interacting with a landlord, a bank teller, a post office clerk, a store clerk, and a librarian in French definitely raises the bar from teaching a French I class. I'm soaking up new vocabulary all the time. I'm constantly on websites to find out key words I'll need before I need them. I haven't heard spoken English here even once. But that's part of why I wanted to be here and not Montréal or Québec City. Montréal has a huge English-speaking community and is truly a bilingual French-English city. Québec has loads of tourists. Trois-Rivières has neither tourists nor an anglophone (Canada term for people whose first language is English) community.

Even as much as I wanted this experience, there's an adjustment involved. I haven't understood everything that people have said to me, which is frustrating, and embarrassing if I think I'm answering the question they asked and that wasn't it. And I've found myself engaging in three "cheats":
1. I'm taking the self-checkout when I can instead of interacting with a clerk. I need to stop that.
2. I walked all over a store looking for light bulbs instead of asking a clerk where they were because I wasn't sure of the word for light bulb. I thought "ampoule" but wasn't sure. (It is indeed "ampoule." A lesson to me to trust my instincts -- just like I've been telling students to do for years!)
3. I can actually speak French very well (and am not just saying so myself, I get compliments from francophones on the quality of my French), but my speaking ability exceeds my listening comprehension ability. I have a little hearing loss and am wondering whether that's a factor. So I caught myself in interactions with a store clerk a couple of times speaking much more slowly and hesitantly in French than I do naturally so they would go slowly and speak clearly in return. I need to cut that out.

There is also the adjustment to being away from loved ones. I would have almost certainly been spending these last few days doing things with friends and seeing people I know wherever I go. I'm six hours away now. I have two friends up here, one of whom I met in the Road Scholar program, one whom I've known since University of Maine years. The former is out of town until Monday, the latter is busy moving, so neither is available. So I guess I'm more of a social creature than I realized as I've felt a little lonely and am not used to that at all. That will pass, of course, so I'm not in the least bit worried about it. I just surprised myself.
A really nice moment happened just when I needed it to: I was out for a walk on Thursday and the two Road Scholar program leaders from the previous years were driving by together, saw me, called out and waved, and did a U-turn to come say hi and give me a hug. That felt great at a moment when I'd been feeling a little isolated.

There are probably rules about how long a blog post should be and this is probably it. So I'll leave these stories for the next post: what my living arrangements are like here, photos of my apartment and the neighborhood, and stories about how I've already found musical opportunities.

Two footnotes:
1. There are older posts on this blog that have nothing to do with this Trois-Rivières experience. Feel free to read those and comment on them!
2. I mentioned my poetry. Here is the link to my bilingual poetry site which has a lot of poems inspired by my summer 2018 experience here: http://sites.google.com/view/poetepoetdiane

I like to end my posts with discussion questions, so here we go:
1. Have you ever taken something on just because you felt called to as opposed to having a rational/analytical reason?
2. Have you ever been in a situation where you felt out of your element but knew it was a good learning experience for you?
3. Have you ever surprised yourself with your reaction to something?
I love it when people respond to my post in the comments, and I'd love to get a good discussion going, so please jump in.

I'll try to incorporate more photos in future posts; the following will be a good start!