MC in Gap: Language Assistant in the Hautes-Alpes

[lola]

My daughter MC, the recent college grad, has been in Gap, France now for a week, preparing to start her seven months' teaching English to Gapoise primary school kids.

As I'd mentioned earlier, she was disappointed when she learned her assignment, because she had assumed she'd be posted in one of the cities near the Mediterranean in the Aix-Marseille department, within easy reach of airports and TGV.

Gap (pop. ~ 39,000, elev. 2,400 feet) lies in a valley along the Luye River, south-southeast of Grenoble. Napoleon passed through on his return from exile in Elba. (now ~ 8 hrs by car, according to googlemaps.com.) It's fairly isolated, surrounded by mountains, but it does have highway and railroad connections. Three hours by bus to Marseille.

Earlier this week she had to go to Marseille overnight to do paperwork, and the school district put them up in a hotel near the train station, never the loveliest part of town. So her first impression of Marseille was not the best.

Now she's feeling fortunate in her assignment, has clean and inexpensive lodging and a ready made social group in the other assistants: 4 American, 2 Canadian, some British, a couple each Italians and Spanish, and a German or two. They mostly speak the lingua franca, I hope. This weekend they plan a picnic in the mountains.

MC promises to start a blog soon. Since I don't do Facebook anymore, that'll be my chance to see her photos.

[lugg]

Really good to hear that your daughter is enjoying herself.

[bjd]

I think she'll have a more interesting and rewarding French experience being in Gap than she would have had in a big city. Let's hope she gets to speak something other than English though.

I wonder why there are so many foreign teaching assistants in such a small city.

Does she ski? Gap isn't very high up, but there should be good access to nearby resorts.

[Deleted]

I am surprised also by the number of foreign teaching assistants there. While it is certainly a blessing to the local educational system, it is both a blessing and a curse to the teaching assistants. They don't feel as lonely as MC (and her mother!) feared, but they won't be in contact as much with the locals due to the "ready made social group."

But it's still early -- there will be all sorts of evolution as the year progresses. Can't wait to hear more about it.

[htmb]

I'm looking forward to hearing more about MC's adventures, Lola, and hope she has a really good experience. This is definitely one of those things I wish I had done at her age.

[Deleted]

This is certain to be very interesting.

[lagatta]

Thanks for the news. Did they manage to get out and about in Marseille, which has a "tough" reputation, despite the hotel location?

Gap is not too tiny. I do hope she manages to get involved in cultural and other activities in French.

Has she got her own little flat?

[Deleted]

I was thinking of the confusion that MC can cause in the future when talking to others about her 'Gap' year.

[lagatta]

True, and there is also the ubiquitout Gap clothing line...

[lola]

Thank you all for your kind and supportive words. Kerouac had predicted that there'd be more to Gap than met the eye, and he was right.

MC is staying in a 35 room foyer, a short- or longer term residence for young people, and also for the families of patients at a nearby hospital. She has her own functional dorm style room, with shared bathroom, kitchen, and TV lounge. The foyer is run by elderly Italian nuns, and was recommended by the Irishman who had her job last year. Easy walk to the centre ville.

Most of the other foyer residents are French, though the two Spanish fellow assistants are staying there for now. I don't know what the age limit is for "jeunesse." She talked to a young man in the kitchen the other day who thinks of Gap as an intimidating big city. I'm glad she's not actually living with anglophones, anyway.

I'm glad she's seing the charm of Gap. She likes how the narrow streets in the old center of town widen out into "places" with cafes, parks. I think that area would make a great summer vacation base. MC says it's a combination of two of her father's favorite things: France and Yellowstone. MC hasn't skiied, and this should be her chance to learn.

There appear to be almost 20 assistants there, which does sound like a lot. MC has three primary schools she divides her time among: one in town, another in a suburban village a few miles from the center, and a third in a village ten miles away. Gap has free bus service, which sounds so civilized to me, that should get her where she needs to go. I imagine the other assistants also spread out into nearby areas.

She got out into Marseille enough to get a little of the flavor of it; found the North African influence there interesting but not really her thing. MC spoke with some assistants in Marseille who hadn't yet gotten to meet any of the others working there. It would be more difficult to be in a big city without that support, I think.

[lola]

Here's a link to MC's blog, if anyone cares to glance at it : themc123.wordpress.com/

She has some very nice photos, if I do say so.

[htmb]

Lola, MC sounds like a very intelligent young woman. You must be very proud of her. I enjoyed reading the beginning of her blog and think her photos are wonderful. She certainly has a good eye for framing a shot. I look forward to reading more about her assignment to Gap. I didn't realize she had just spent a semester in Paris. What a difference it must be for a young person to go from Paris to Gap. Still, she's going to have a memorable time.

[Deleted]

The photos are really fantastic and of course the commentary is just as good as when MC was in Paris.

The French know it, but apparently it is always a surprise when other nationalities visit Marseille for the first time: Marseille and Algiers are nearly identical. It's as though the DNA of the two cities was mixed and redeposited on each side of the Mediterranean. People who visit Marseille feel as though they are in North Africa, and people who visit Algiers feel as though they are in France.

[bjd]

I really like the picture of the boy looking out the window framed by the shutters in Nice.

[lola]

Thank you, all!

[lola]

htmb, MC isn't a Paris sophisticate. She spent one brief semester there fall '10, then returned to the college town that's half the size of Gap. She had heard that Marseille has a good salsa dance scene, and that's something she'd enjoyed in Paris and back home in St. Louis, so I think that was part of her expectation.

Thank you Kerouac. Kind of you! I never knew that about Marseille, though I realized it wasn't a typical sleepy town full of beret-wearers riding bikes with baguettes under arms.

Thanks, bjd. I like that one, too.

[Deleted]

Although Saint Arnoux is the patron saint of Gap and has a cathedral, my eyes fell on the "saint of the day" box in today's newspaper, and pious person that I am, I saw that Saint Dimitri was very important to the city of Gap, as he was the first bishop of the city. Being Greek and all, a fabulous Byzantine basilica was built to house his relics and his tomb in Gap, and there was also a source of miraculous oil in the church. And then, after many centuries, it burned down in a fire in 1918 -- nothing is left!

[Deleted]

It's supposed to snow in Gap this weekend, so I hope that MC has her camera ready. Then again, the two-week Toussaint school holidays started today, so she may have decided to run off elsewhere!

[lola]

Great postcard, Kerouac. Makes me want to send her warm socks.

MC is going to Colmar for a salsa dance conference and then will rendezvous with a friend from college who's an assistant in Lyon. They plan to travel a little in Switzerland for their break. I do hope and trust she's taken her camera. Colmar looks beautiful, not to mention Suisse.

I love the idea of taking a break already after nose to the grindstone < a month.

That's a great story about St. Dmitri. I wonder whether the miraculous oil was just a touch flammable. I'm a sucker for mysterious sources of things; in Chimayo NM there's an old adobe church with a miraculous hole of dirt in a back room. People scoop out the sandy dirt, get cured, throw away crutches etc, and the dirt is always replenished. I was sorry to read recently about how the priest sure enough pours more miraculous dirt in every night.

[Deleted]

No snow yet on the Gap webcam...

www.ville-gap.fr/fr/citoyen/vivre-a-gap/webcam.html

[fumobici]

Doesn't look likely to snow any time soon either with that blue sky. Gap looks pretty dead on a Sunday afternoon too doesn't it? The forecast for Marseille(s) today looked dreadful.

[Deleted]

And yet very close by, there are tons of snow -- they showed it on the midday news. This morning it was even snowing in Strasbourg.

[lola]

A webcam on Place Jean Marcellin! Thank you, Kerouac!

[lola]

MC finally blog-posted a little about her Switzerland trip.

In two months she's gone from dismay at being stuck in the middle of nowhere to maybe semi-kiddingly saying she wants to settle in Gap permanently.

So much appreciate the webcam link, K. Now it's wet in Place Jean M., and has a still-L'heure bleue look.

[Deleted]

So, when are you arriving there for the holidays?

(I read the 2 blogs posts that I had missed -- they are as fascinating as ever. And it is true that the French do not refrigerate nearly as many items as Americans -- and yet American food poisoning statistics are something like 500% higher than in France. Go figure...)

[lola]

Thank you, Kerouac!

Her sister, father and I will rendezvous with her in Paris just before Christmas, and stay there ten days. Then the girls and I have a little more time together in London. Looking forward to it, of course, and enjoying the anticipation phase.

Most American food poisonings must be caused by anxiety and germophobia.

[Deleted]

Probably. I learned on my huge number of seminars and training courses in Cairo ( ) that absolutely everybody who thought they might get sick got sick automatically, even if they ate every single meal in the Sheraton or Hilton, while the rest of us had great meals of street food in totally unhygenic conditions and never had a problem.

[mossie]

If you didn't get food poisoning from street food in Cairo, then you are totally immune. ;D ;D

[Deleted]

Still looking for snow, but I found the Christmas lights on the square shown on the webcam to be nice...

[lola]

I love that webcam, Kerouac. Thank you. Place Jean Marcellin is covered with snow now. Looks like at least a couple of inches, and with the Christmas lights and version agrandie, beautiful.