vendredi 1 août 2014

Being Broke in France

This summer has, despite the constant inundation, been lovely and I'll have to post separate articles about the things I've been up to, for this one has a much less noble cause and sometimes we must start from the bottom and work our way up. I've had trouble finding work this summer since my main draw (preying on unsuspecting children needing to learn English), has proved a bit dry. I have yet to figure out exactly what French children do during the summer, but I am forced to believe that, like everyone here, they take their vacationing very seriously (really it's like work!), which means no prepping for the school year. There might be kids somewhere here wanting to avoid the beach and  improve their linguistic prowesse, but I have yet to find the cranny in which they hide. Anyway, there are summer camps (like some that shall remain nameless in case I decide to work there one day ;)  which purport to be  like taking a trip the US without leaving France, but after perusual of their website appear to be places where a bunch of kids shack up together in an old French estate and play on the computer. As an addendum: I actually have no idea what kids do at these places, but I am still going to judge them harshly for what appears to be their false advertising and crappy internet pictures), to which I probably should have applied had I  been more on the ball and less lazy. I just thought that living on pasta and an ever growing list of ccrushed dreams would be a more pleasant experience. I've cleaned up my act a bit recently though and have been applying like mad to anything that crosses my path; it would be nice to go home for Christmas and avoid all the "so I bet this meal is better than all that Mcdonald's that you eat at home" ignorant discussions that spending any significant amount of time with French people tend to bring about. The problem with this is that I am still slightly terrified of speaking on the phone with professionals- seriously I can't stand these conversations even in English, but their being in French just brings out an entirely different éventail of insecurities. Despite all that, theys have gone pretty dang well and while I still don't have an actual job for the month of August, hopefully I'm getting over this fear a little bit. There's probably a silver lining hiding around one of the corners of this bastard.

It's funny, I thought briefly about consecrating this article to tips on how to survive here on a low income and I imagined all the happy people who would come and read it and go away with bright smiles and hope, but yeah who are we kidding? I don't want to brag or anything, but I am just really fucking good at being poor. It's become a facet of my being and trying to enumerate the steps to  pull it off is like trying to explain how to be born a brunette. That said, maybe I will post some advice on here someday and help out a bunch of poor saps who think that moving to France is a splendid idea (which it totally is!!). Just don't keep your hopes up.

Aucun commentaire:

Enregistrer un commentaire