Enter the Darcy Drunk
Shortly after our plane left the US, an attendant broadcast a message to the flight – in French only, not in English – and I was lucky to have picked up on it.
“One of our three luggage containers for this flight has gone missing. If you discover that your baggage is missing when you land, please contact the United personnel at Charles DeGaul.”
I looked at Sunshine, she looked at me both knowing we would be one of those with baggage missing – and we were right, we didn’t receive our luggage until a week after we arrived in Dijon.
We arrived on a Sunday. Early Monday morning we had our first of two orientation meetings at the CRDP – which was located at the university where we were housed. We didn’t have to travel far – all of about 100 meters. Oddly enough, there was a bus stop immediately in front of our dorms and another in front of the CRDP. Yes, two bus stops no further apart than a football field.
The orientation was conducted entirely in French – which made sense, somewhat. We were expected to have 2 years experience in university level French (though I got in with just one year) - since the orientation consisted of a mix of nationalities – there were people from all over the world speaking every language imaginable, holding it in French seemed logical. Further, we were promised that a second session that day would be held in our native language.
During the English orientation, the head of the Language Assistant program for Dijon spoke first. He gave us some weird analogy about coffee, tea, biscuits jam and toast (I think), soup and how, if you say them in the right order with the proper voice inflection, it mimics the sound of a train. I am not lying. That is seriously what he said.
“Coffee… coffee… coffee, tea and biscuits, tea and biscuits, tea and biscuits, jamandtoast, jamandtoast, jamandtoast, soooooooup! SOOOOOOOOOOUP!
It reminds me of taking the train as a child. Thank you, good luck in Dijon and have a good day.”
Somehow that was supposed to make us feel at home and comfortable. Instead, I felt the people in charge of the Language Assistants Program smoked a little too much pot. All us assistants stared around at each other, wondering what the hell that meant. I thought about it for maybe five seconds, realized I was jet lagged beyond belief and tired from having broken the lock to my room the night before, so I fell asleep. Anyway, the rest of the orientation was in French and I couldn’t follow along at all.
We broke for lunch. We had hamburgers. Hamburgers! In France! The very food they make fun of U.S. citizens for eating. It was there, at the cafeteria, that I learned that French people can not queue. Not even remotely. The cafeteria was made up mostly of university students – several hundred of them. They all gathered in one massive mob trying to get food. This huge throng of people, pushing, shoving, yelling, trying to get food. It was surreal. There were British assistants everywhere weeping, holding each other, cowering in the corners. Who knew? Had the French simply tried to queue when the Germans invaded, perhaps they’d have scared them all off.
During lunch, I received word that my lock had been repaired. I headed back to my dorm, showered – realized all my luggage was still lost, put on the same dirty clothes I had now worn for three days and headed back to the CRDP.
That evening Michelle and I went downtown to meet Jean-Luc, the liaison between SJSU and Dijon. He took us to H&M, a sort of Macy’s for France (actually, H&M is now in the U.S. – go check it out for yourself!) I went shopping for some winter clothes (real winter clothes, unlike these mild winters here in San Jose) and I quickly discovered how overweight I am. In France, the width of your pants is tied directly to the length of your pants. Here in the U.S. I wear 38 / 30. In France, that calculates to, literally, a 38 / 40 (compensating for metric here). And there is no way to get a length that works better for me. It’s 38/40 or nothing. For a week, I wore these pants that were WAY too long and I had to roll up half-way to my knees. I must have made a great impression.
That night, Jean-Luc asked us to meet him “at the arch”. Most large cities in France have two things: A cathedral called “Notre Dame” and a sort of Arc d’Triumph in the center or edge of downtown. Amber showed up shortly after we did. Then Jean-Luc. while we waited for Katie and Julia, a drunken man with a guitar strapped to his back staggered over to Amber. He tried to kiss her, she pushed him away, he started to make a scene. As I headed over to intervene, Amber made an even BIGGER scene, and he wandered off into the night, singing horridly.
Little did I know that he would become my nemesis while I was in Dijon. He is the man known only as “The Darcy Drunk”…
