Even though I was living with someone else Jacques kept on writing his pages of French to me. He was still studying and traveling a lot as usual. In 1992 I planned a trip to Paris to visit an art exhibition with my sister. I sent a postcard to his home address and two days later his mother rang to inform me that Jacques was in Singapore on a student work placement. She said she was sorry we couldn’t meet and looked forward to meeting me soon. Was there more going on than I thought? What had he told his mother? Why did she make the effort to call me?
As fate had it I ended up in Asia too. After graduating from Nottingham I worked for a few years in the Hayward Art Gallery in London and did a couple of seasons as a Chalet Girl cooking in France and Austria in ski resorts over the winter. A friend of mine was applying for a TEFL course and said that teaching English was fun and let you travel the world while working. This sounded ideal for me, who liked talking to people from other countries and learning a new skill.
I trained as a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) teacher in 1993. The first job I applied for, and got at the first interview, was for NOVA, a huge English Teaching company in Japan. I secretly hoped Jacques was still in Singapore, thinking maybe we could meet in the middle, in say Hong Kong? But no, he was back in France and looking for a way to avoid doing his obligatory one year of French National Service in the army. He found out that with his studies he could offer to work for a year in a Developing Country, helping with financial administration in a French company. After applying for exciting posts in Saudi Arabia and Africa to his dismay he ended up being sent to England. Meanwhile I flew out to Osaka, to start my new life in the city of Wakayama.
Jacques worked for a French pharmaceutical company, and was based in Gerrards Cross in the western suburbs of London. He had an easy life and was enjoying the cultural mix of London with time and money to spare and wrote glowing reports of England to me. However I still really couldn’t translate his letters. I would sit in the staffroom between classes in the language school ‘reading’ them. One day my American colleague and friend, Ella, asked who it was from. ‘A French ex.’ I said ‘I met him when I was a student, and I can’t seem to stop him writing to me, even though we split up.’
‘Wow' Ella said 'what does he say then?'
‘Actually I can hardly understand his letters.’ I admitted for the first time 'But to be honest I really look forward to getting his letters…'
'Ah!' Ella said 'let me have a look, I studied French at University!'
Curiosity got the better of me and I let her read them through. 'Hey!' she said when she had finished, ‘He sure likes you a lot!’
‘No, but it’s all over!’ I replied, suddenly wondering if he had ever understand that it was over, and maybe I didn't make it very clear...
‘Not what he says here…’ and she translated a very moving part about him buying a house and thinking of me….us….together one day…
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
I'll be wearing a yellow t-shirt on Platform One….
My trip around Eastern Europe was full of highs and lows. The first overnight ferry ride to Holland was bleak and I felt lonely. A boyfriend would have been nice. The daily booking of sleeper trains and leaving my rucksack at the station exhausted me. I was surrounded by jolly happy groups of English and American backpacking friends having fun while I pined for Jacques. However on the sleeper train to East Berlin I met a young German student from Berlin called Viktor who invited me to meet his theatre designer sister, Nina. I ended up staying with their friend, David, and meeting all their family and friends. I experienced the city through their eyes when it had just opened up to Western influences and really felt lucky to have met such kind people.
After Berlin I went to Prague, which seemed very quiet without my Berlin friends to show me around. So after doing the tourist sights and visiting a few museums I left early for Budapest and booked in at a student hostel. Jacques was due to arrive the next day and I tried to find where he could staying but with no luck. The travel agency seemed to have no idea if the train was on its way or if it had ever left Beijing.
Before we left we had made an arrangement to meet. Like a romantic film we had agreed to meet at the main station in Budapest at Platform One at 1 o’clock in the afternoon. I said that I would wear a yellow t-shirt. At midday I went to the busy central Keleti station where I had arrived, and I waited and waited by the platform. By one-thirty I was really bored and wondered if he had stood me up or was still stuck on the train? Jacques however had gone to the station where his train arrived - Nyugati, on the other side of Budapest. We were doomed. Luckily he had the sense to check out stations both while I stayed put in the station café feeling sorry for myself and drinking coffee. He eventually arrived, also dressed in a yellow t-shirt and chinos and looking like a mad explorer, after his week on the train.
We had some great times together in Budapest, feeling rich and eating out in restaurants. We loved Cold Cherry Soup and Goulash and eating cakes at the cafes by the Danube. We walked, talked and visited art galleries and parks. At the end we went to see a concert together. It was Brahms and it made us both feel sleepy. We were sitting behind a beautiful couple, who looked like they had a great life together. I was sure they had a stunning apartment in Budapest overlooking the Danube….I was jealous and wished for some stability and reality in our fairy-tale romance.
In the interval we went out for some fresh air, and with my thoughts on couples I decided to ask him what would happen next and how serious he was. I outlined all the possible options, me live in France, him live in England, we both go somewhere else etc. But my timing was bad, he was very tired (his train-journey was catching up with him) and not really listening, although he looked like he was.
Therefore when I asked him outright ‘So do you love me?’ He replied in English ‘Yes! I like you!’ In retrospect this was a stupid question, as he had spent the whole year declaring his love to me via his letters and gifts. However, Like and Love are not the same verb in English, although if I had cast my mind back fours years I should have remembered that from French at school. How many times did I conjugate the verb aimer? But I took it as a verbal slap in the face and decided it was over. He mumbled something about having to get back for his studies. I found out later that he did actually have an important exam to pass to get on the Masters course so he simply had to get back to Paris, but of course I had no idea at the time. All the train traveling for days on end had made him rather incoherent too.
He accompanied me charmingly to the train station for my last stopover in Vienna and at the last minute hopped on with a bunch of dried flowers. Why dried flowers? Was there a meaning there? Were we dead too? I had no chance to ask as the train began to move…So, due to terrible miscommunication I took off back to London and met someone else.
After Berlin I went to Prague, which seemed very quiet without my Berlin friends to show me around. So after doing the tourist sights and visiting a few museums I left early for Budapest and booked in at a student hostel. Jacques was due to arrive the next day and I tried to find where he could staying but with no luck. The travel agency seemed to have no idea if the train was on its way or if it had ever left Beijing.
Before we left we had made an arrangement to meet. Like a romantic film we had agreed to meet at the main station in Budapest at Platform One at 1 o’clock in the afternoon. I said that I would wear a yellow t-shirt. At midday I went to the busy central Keleti station where I had arrived, and I waited and waited by the platform. By one-thirty I was really bored and wondered if he had stood me up or was still stuck on the train? Jacques however had gone to the station where his train arrived - Nyugati, on the other side of Budapest. We were doomed. Luckily he had the sense to check out stations both while I stayed put in the station café feeling sorry for myself and drinking coffee. He eventually arrived, also dressed in a yellow t-shirt and chinos and looking like a mad explorer, after his week on the train.
We had some great times together in Budapest, feeling rich and eating out in restaurants. We loved Cold Cherry Soup and Goulash and eating cakes at the cafes by the Danube. We walked, talked and visited art galleries and parks. At the end we went to see a concert together. It was Brahms and it made us both feel sleepy. We were sitting behind a beautiful couple, who looked like they had a great life together. I was sure they had a stunning apartment in Budapest overlooking the Danube….I was jealous and wished for some stability and reality in our fairy-tale romance.
In the interval we went out for some fresh air, and with my thoughts on couples I decided to ask him what would happen next and how serious he was. I outlined all the possible options, me live in France, him live in England, we both go somewhere else etc. But my timing was bad, he was very tired (his train-journey was catching up with him) and not really listening, although he looked like he was.
Therefore when I asked him outright ‘So do you love me?’ He replied in English ‘Yes! I like you!’ In retrospect this was a stupid question, as he had spent the whole year declaring his love to me via his letters and gifts. However, Like and Love are not the same verb in English, although if I had cast my mind back fours years I should have remembered that from French at school. How many times did I conjugate the verb aimer? But I took it as a verbal slap in the face and decided it was over. He mumbled something about having to get back for his studies. I found out later that he did actually have an important exam to pass to get on the Masters course so he simply had to get back to Paris, but of course I had no idea at the time. All the train traveling for days on end had made him rather incoherent too.
He accompanied me charmingly to the train station for my last stopover in Vienna and at the last minute hopped on with a bunch of dried flowers. Why dried flowers? Was there a meaning there? Were we dead too? I had no chance to ask as the train began to move…So, due to terrible miscommunication I took off back to London and met someone else.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Rendezvous in Paris...
We both went back to our respective universities in September and continued sending each other letters, tapes and little mementos to each other. His letters were usually five pages long and in French. French was a language that I knew mainly from my truly pathetic attempts to study it at school, with a series of terrible bored teachers handing out lists of vocabulary and conjugasions. As a family we had visited France several times and I was always the one sent to buy a baguette or the entrance ticket but my French was basic and, like most English people, I couldn't pronounce the rolling 'r' and vowels very well. The usual response to my verbal French was ashrug of the shoulders and a 'je ne comprends pas...'
I did manage to scrape an 'O' level in French in 1986 but only with extra home tuition. My writing was childish to say the least and at the best boring, on the lines of 'Il fait beau aujourd'hui.'(it's sunny today). So when my French love-letters arrived in the post I had no idea what he was talking about half the time. I certainly had never been given that kind of spelling to learn. So I wrote back to Jacques in English, the same chatty five pages describing my life, my work and my thoughts. I did listen to the tapes though, which to me when I translated them as best I could, were suicidal. A chap called Jacques Brel singing about a lost postman or a dead son? It was awful and I began to wonder if I was missing the plot? Why would anyone send such sad songs?
We had a brief rendezvous in the autumn of 1989, when I was in Paris researching Raoul Dufy, the French painter for my art history dissertation. Jacques was passing through Paris too that weekend. We met for dinner near the Gare du Nord. It was a set-menu and we hardly ate anything except the dessert, mousse au chocolate, which came in a huge bowl with two spoons to share. Our language was limited but we communicated with gestures and smiles. Shortly after the meal he announced he had to go for a haircut. I wondered if I was understanding him properly. A haircut? Instead of a night with me? I found after several years later that he was going to stay with a family friend who was a hairdresser and he could not avoid it. My hopes of a romantic liaison in Paris were dashed as he courteously deposited me at the hotel nearby and practically ran away for his train!
Still the romance continued on paper and with the odd phone call. In the spring of 1990 I was writing my dissertation on the French painter and artist Raoul Dufy. A new book was published in France, which catalogued all his work and was essential to my work. My university librarian said there was no hope of it ever coming to their shelves since it was in French and expensive. Then the glossy newly printed book arrived in the post - a present from Jacques! That was the best thing he could have done and surpassed a million red roses and boxes of chocolates! I dedicated my dissertation to him.
For the long summer holiday in 1990 he invited me to accompany him on the Trans-Siberian Express from Budapest in Hungary to Beijing in China. It was only 60$ return trip. But the thought of being stuck on a train for a week was off-putting (where did you wash and what about toilets?) and I wasn't that bothered about seeing China then. I was more interested in Eastern Europe. So I declined and he went ahead anyway. But since I didn't have a job lined up I decided to have one last interesting summer holiday before my student card ran out. I booked a month long student Euro rail pass to cross Eastern Europe. Inter-railing for a month round Europe by train in the summer was so popular it could almost have been included in the university curriculum, but East Berlin, Prague and Budapest? These countries had just broken their Communist ties and were opening up to freedom. That was exciting! So I planned to meet Jacques on his return in Budapest. He would recount his tales of Russia and China and I would have some adventures in Eastern Europe on the way...
I did manage to scrape an 'O' level in French in 1986 but only with extra home tuition. My writing was childish to say the least and at the best boring, on the lines of 'Il fait beau aujourd'hui.'(it's sunny today). So when my French love-letters arrived in the post I had no idea what he was talking about half the time. I certainly had never been given that kind of spelling to learn. So I wrote back to Jacques in English, the same chatty five pages describing my life, my work and my thoughts. I did listen to the tapes though, which to me when I translated them as best I could, were suicidal. A chap called Jacques Brel singing about a lost postman or a dead son? It was awful and I began to wonder if I was missing the plot? Why would anyone send such sad songs?
We had a brief rendezvous in the autumn of 1989, when I was in Paris researching Raoul Dufy, the French painter for my art history dissertation. Jacques was passing through Paris too that weekend. We met for dinner near the Gare du Nord. It was a set-menu and we hardly ate anything except the dessert, mousse au chocolate, which came in a huge bowl with two spoons to share. Our language was limited but we communicated with gestures and smiles. Shortly after the meal he announced he had to go for a haircut. I wondered if I was understanding him properly. A haircut? Instead of a night with me? I found after several years later that he was going to stay with a family friend who was a hairdresser and he could not avoid it. My hopes of a romantic liaison in Paris were dashed as he courteously deposited me at the hotel nearby and practically ran away for his train!
Still the romance continued on paper and with the odd phone call. In the spring of 1990 I was writing my dissertation on the French painter and artist Raoul Dufy. A new book was published in France, which catalogued all his work and was essential to my work. My university librarian said there was no hope of it ever coming to their shelves since it was in French and expensive. Then the glossy newly printed book arrived in the post - a present from Jacques! That was the best thing he could have done and surpassed a million red roses and boxes of chocolates! I dedicated my dissertation to him.
For the long summer holiday in 1990 he invited me to accompany him on the Trans-Siberian Express from Budapest in Hungary to Beijing in China. It was only 60$ return trip. But the thought of being stuck on a train for a week was off-putting (where did you wash and what about toilets?) and I wasn't that bothered about seeing China then. I was more interested in Eastern Europe. So I declined and he went ahead anyway. But since I didn't have a job lined up I decided to have one last interesting summer holiday before my student card ran out. I booked a month long student Euro rail pass to cross Eastern Europe. Inter-railing for a month round Europe by train in the summer was so popular it could almost have been included in the university curriculum, but East Berlin, Prague and Budapest? These countries had just broken their Communist ties and were opening up to freedom. That was exciting! So I planned to meet Jacques on his return in Budapest. He would recount his tales of Russia and China and I would have some adventures in Eastern Europe on the way...
“Are you Jewish then?” - how we met
So a French-English couple! Where did you meet? People often ask us with the hope of an interesting story to entertain the dinner table or fill in time while waiting for a train or a plane. “Well, we actually met in Israel in 1989. We were both spending our summer holidays working on a Kibbutz” Then they ask about our religion, sometimes assuming we are Jewish or have Jewish roots. No neither of us is Jewish, although we both loved Jewish people, music and the kibbutz life. It was simply fate that we ended up meeting there.
Jacques was a mere teenager of nineteen when we met and I was two years older. It was my last student holiday before graduating in my Art and Design course at Nottingham University in England. Spending a summer on a kibbutz was a popular option in my faculty and a student agency organized trips, with five weeks working and two weeks holiday at the end. Israel sounded like an adventure and was an easy way to travel around, meet people and work while not spending much money. Jacques was doing a degree in Economics at Poitiers University, France and part of his course required a paper on communal living. We worked in teams from 6am to lunch on the fields out in the Negav Desert. He drove the tractor, while I planted and watered melon seeds in the dry desert soil of Eilat. We spent the afternoons by the pool or sleeping and at six pm we all ate together in the communal dining room and in the evening watched a film, had a disco or kibbutz-organised entertainment such as traditional dances or barbecues on the beach. It was a simple life and a great mix of young backpackers from all around the world. We were a mixed group of Irish, Brazilian, Australian, South African, English and French. The communal language was English but Jacques didn’t speak much; he just smiled and liked to clown around a lot. I wanted to talk to him but my French was so awful I just gazed at him from a distance.
On August 12th it was Jacques’ birthday and we had a party for him. Some of the young kibbutz staff had made him a cake and we danced the night away. Jacques had already been there for a few weeks and he was very popular. After the disco we all watched the August shooting stars, which I had never seen before and was stunned by the display of lights literally raining down on us in the dusty garden of Kibbutz Eilat. Someone said ‘make a wish’ and I wished impulsively that I could see Jacques again!
Afterwards in high spirits we decided to go ‘skinny dipping’ in the Kibbutz pool. I was rather reluctant, I hate water and in the dark it really scares me, but I didn’t want to miss out on all the fun. Skinny dipping was forbidden in the kibbutz but it was easy to climb over the fence and have a quick splash before the guards came. We all ran to the pool, jumped in, some naked, some still dressed. Soon the security guards heard the noise and everyone ran for it.
I ran by instinct to the female changing rooms, and a few minutues later Jacques peeped round the door looking for a place to hide. So with some embarrassment we sat silently in the changing room and waited for the guards to go away. We dare not go out for fear of being caught. To pass the time we whispered stories about our families, our hopes, dreams and plans for the rest of the holiday. Eventually we crept out and sneaked into the kibbutz canteen and made hot coffee and raided the fridge. The romance bloomed and we spent the next few days together, usually under the cover of darkness as we didn’t want everyone to know.
But as fate had it he had to leave for a trip to Egypt after just a few days and I was stuck on the kibbutz for another month. But this split was wonderful as he began to write long flowery love letters in French to me on the kibbutz telling of his undying love and sadness that I wasn’t with him. I made him Friendship bracelets from cotton thread and sent him photos.
Jacques was a mere teenager of nineteen when we met and I was two years older. It was my last student holiday before graduating in my Art and Design course at Nottingham University in England. Spending a summer on a kibbutz was a popular option in my faculty and a student agency organized trips, with five weeks working and two weeks holiday at the end. Israel sounded like an adventure and was an easy way to travel around, meet people and work while not spending much money. Jacques was doing a degree in Economics at Poitiers University, France and part of his course required a paper on communal living. We worked in teams from 6am to lunch on the fields out in the Negav Desert. He drove the tractor, while I planted and watered melon seeds in the dry desert soil of Eilat. We spent the afternoons by the pool or sleeping and at six pm we all ate together in the communal dining room and in the evening watched a film, had a disco or kibbutz-organised entertainment such as traditional dances or barbecues on the beach. It was a simple life and a great mix of young backpackers from all around the world. We were a mixed group of Irish, Brazilian, Australian, South African, English and French. The communal language was English but Jacques didn’t speak much; he just smiled and liked to clown around a lot. I wanted to talk to him but my French was so awful I just gazed at him from a distance.
On August 12th it was Jacques’ birthday and we had a party for him. Some of the young kibbutz staff had made him a cake and we danced the night away. Jacques had already been there for a few weeks and he was very popular. After the disco we all watched the August shooting stars, which I had never seen before and was stunned by the display of lights literally raining down on us in the dusty garden of Kibbutz Eilat. Someone said ‘make a wish’ and I wished impulsively that I could see Jacques again!
Afterwards in high spirits we decided to go ‘skinny dipping’ in the Kibbutz pool. I was rather reluctant, I hate water and in the dark it really scares me, but I didn’t want to miss out on all the fun. Skinny dipping was forbidden in the kibbutz but it was easy to climb over the fence and have a quick splash before the guards came. We all ran to the pool, jumped in, some naked, some still dressed. Soon the security guards heard the noise and everyone ran for it.
I ran by instinct to the female changing rooms, and a few minutues later Jacques peeped round the door looking for a place to hide. So with some embarrassment we sat silently in the changing room and waited for the guards to go away. We dare not go out for fear of being caught. To pass the time we whispered stories about our families, our hopes, dreams and plans for the rest of the holiday. Eventually we crept out and sneaked into the kibbutz canteen and made hot coffee and raided the fridge. The romance bloomed and we spent the next few days together, usually under the cover of darkness as we didn’t want everyone to know.
But as fate had it he had to leave for a trip to Egypt after just a few days and I was stuck on the kibbutz for another month. But this split was wonderful as he began to write long flowery love letters in French to me on the kibbutz telling of his undying love and sadness that I wasn’t with him. I made him Friendship bracelets from cotton thread and sent him photos.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Notes from the OPOL family - what is it all about?
This blog was set up by Suzanne Barron-Hauwaert, teacher of English as a second language and author of Language Strategies for Bilingual Families - The one-parent-one language approach.
I have been researching bilingualism and multilingualism for nearly ten years, and it is closely linked with my personal family life as a bilingual family. I am English, married to a Frenchman, Jacques and we have lived as expats in Budapest, Cairo, Zurich and Kuala Lumpur. We also spent time in England and France. We have three children, who are more-or-less bilingual, Marc (9), Nina (7) and Gabriel (3).
I wrote a dissertation on Trilingual Families in 1999 as part of my Masters degree in Teaching English as a Second Language. This led to a post on the Editorial board of the quarterly Bilingual Family Newsletter as writer and advisor for families. In 2001 I proposed to write an academic book on the pro's and con's of the well-known one-parent-one-language approach or OPOL. This book was published in 2004 and since then I have been doing talks and seminars on bilingualism and also writing an informal diary on our OPOL family in the Bilingual Family Newsletter.
This blog is a way to tell people about the reality of being an OPOL-family, the funny side, the frustrations, the language miscommunications and the decisions on schooling and langauge use that we have to make on a regular basis. It compliments the BFN column and gives readers some idea of how the family language use evolves over time and with more children!
I hope it helps any families in a similar situations - couples with two or even three languages, those living in a country with a different language or those parents wanting their child to speak another language.
Please contact me with your comments, and if you want a more academic summary of my book please go to http//www.opol4us.com. The book can be ordered through my publisher, Multilingual Matters in the UK. Their website is: http//www.multilingual-matters.com
I have been researching bilingualism and multilingualism for nearly ten years, and it is closely linked with my personal family life as a bilingual family. I am English, married to a Frenchman, Jacques and we have lived as expats in Budapest, Cairo, Zurich and Kuala Lumpur. We also spent time in England and France. We have three children, who are more-or-less bilingual, Marc (9), Nina (7) and Gabriel (3).
I wrote a dissertation on Trilingual Families in 1999 as part of my Masters degree in Teaching English as a Second Language. This led to a post on the Editorial board of the quarterly Bilingual Family Newsletter as writer and advisor for families. In 2001 I proposed to write an academic book on the pro's and con's of the well-known one-parent-one-language approach or OPOL. This book was published in 2004 and since then I have been doing talks and seminars on bilingualism and also writing an informal diary on our OPOL family in the Bilingual Family Newsletter.
This blog is a way to tell people about the reality of being an OPOL-family, the funny side, the frustrations, the language miscommunications and the decisions on schooling and langauge use that we have to make on a regular basis. It compliments the BFN column and gives readers some idea of how the family language use evolves over time and with more children!
I hope it helps any families in a similar situations - couples with two or even three languages, those living in a country with a different language or those parents wanting their child to speak another language.
Please contact me with your comments, and if you want a more academic summary of my book please go to http//www.opol4us.com. The book can be ordered through my publisher, Multilingual Matters in the UK. Their website is: http//www.multilingual-matters.com
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