Benevole a Paris

Thought I would update you all on my volunteer activities here in Paris. I wasn't aware when I signed up for my program that the "Service Learning" was mandatory, but it's actually turned out to be pretty cool. It's not really what I would choose to do with my Friday evenings, but I'm coming to enjoy it.

We are all assigned, in groupings of 2-3 of us (Central Folk), to various community centers in the poorer neighborhoods of Paris. I myself am in the 19th arrondissement, in Belleville. Which appears to be Chinatown. It's a heavily immigrant neighborhood, emphasis on the Asian influx. All of our centers involve working with children.

[Side note: I forgot to mention this in my London updates, but there is an incredibly large Middle Eastern influence in London. Part of it was probably just the area I was travelling through, but I don't think I have ever seen so many hijab and business signs in Arabic in my life. I wonder what the history and politics are behind that?]

I have been assigned to a good age group- 7-9 years old, mostly girls. This makes me incredibly happy, because at this age, they are still cute and easily cowed by authority, but they are old enough to have a sense of reasoning and logic. They haven't learned how to gang up or be malicious yet. Working with kids always scares me- I always feel like I don't have the knack for it. Generally I attribute this to always being the baby in every situation. I'm still not a Kid Whisperer, but as it turns out I'm not a Kid Repeller either!

I help them with their homework for about an hour. This is where I appear to have my knack with kids, if I do indeed have one. Somewhere along the line I seem to have picked up the concept of "teaching." I don't just give the kids answers, I show them why, and new tricks. Thus far, I can claim to have taught one girl the concept of subtraction (in French, than you very much), and another girl the concept of 100 cents in a Euro. It took about ten minutes of me going through various examples (and they were probably very annoyed that I wasn't just confirming their correct answers), when suddenly the light of comprehension would explode onto their face and they would suddenly rush through and finish everything else, beaming. There's a bit of a high that comes with that. I guess the program director has noticed, because apparently he has already given my program director glowing reviews, when normally they say nothing or offer critiques.

After homework, the kids play for the rest of the time, and I sort of watch to make sure nothing goes wrong, and chat with other benevoles.

Benevole: A volunteer. Etre benevole: to be a volunteer, or, essentially, to volunteer. 

There is one guy who tends to volunteer on the same day as I do who is great fun. His name is Daniel, and he is a retired grandpa type who is an absolute sweetheart. He speaks very little English, but my French is improving, and he is very good at adapting to my level, so we are able to hold quite lengthy conversations with relative ease. I continue to get little thrills whenever I realize that I have successfully functioned solely in French for a length of time- at the end of one of my language classes, or after an hour-long conversation with Daniel about travel- where we both had been, where we would like to go, the wall in Mexico, etc. 

I have just passed the 1/3rd of the way through mark, and it is amazing how much my French has improved. I find myself using all of the grammar and vocabulary I learned at Etole (the little language school we were at for the first month) without a thought. I can follow my history class (though I do a little double-checking online in English later). I still have a long way to go, but I'm starting to feel the effects of total immersion, the way I wanted to before I came. It was so frustrating, the first few weeks, when nothing was happening. Now, I still have twice this amount of time to go, and I've already come this far. I sometimes have to consciously stop having my mental conversations in French, because I realize that whenever it is I have them, I will be someplace where they speak English. As it is, my mind has gotten used to the fact that everything is in French now, and automatically gets to work on translating anything that comes into my mind as potential speech (i.e. imagining future emails, future conversations, etc.). 

So, nothing too exciting from a tourist standpoint, but some nice little personal victories. I hope to update you soon with some plans I am making for Scotland, once they become more concrete!