To start off this post, I just want to give a great big Thank You to monos Raïsa and Vanessa for taking SO many photos and making them accessible to both staff and villagers! And Also a great big thank you to all the rest of the Lac Du Bois staff for making this an amazing summer!
As many of you know, I spent the past 6 weeks at Concordia Language Villages’ Lac Du Bois as a counselor (mono) in Bemidji, Minnesota. The very first thing I did while at Lac du Bois was choose my French name, Joséphine. Throughout the 6 weeks, I got to build upon this new character that was equally me and someone new. Joséphine was more confident, Joséphine was more organized, but Joséphine I feel was also very anxiety driven. I felt that I was stressed all the time about everything and didn’t need to be.
I’d be lying if I said that it wasn’t hard. Being a mono has been the most difficult thing I have ever done. But at the same time, it was the most rewarding and exciting 6 weeks in a very very long time. It was far from perfect, no experience ever is. I experienced fatigue and burn out about 4-5ish weeks through. There were frustrations and difficulties with the language, my planning wasn’t always the greatest, and I was leading groups of 10ish kids, not always on my own, but sometimes, with little to no experience. I had been a camp counselor in the past, but the first time was a day camp and I didn’t have near as much independence/freedom/authority. And the second time was also an overnight camp but only 2 nights and even more restricting than the day camp. Both times activities were already planned and led by other people, I was more of an assistant counselor both times. So Lac Du Bois was very different than anything I had ever experienced before. There were many days where I wanted to come home, I wanted it to be done. There were many times where my skills in the language weren’t were they needed to be. I have the sentence structures, I have the conjugations, but there was specific vocabulary and certain phrases. There would be times when someone would say something and I would have absolutely no idea what they had said.
But as in life in general there are good days and bad days, and at Lac Du Bois, that is most certainly true, but I have been fortunate enough to have had many more good days than bad days. As we always say, Ça va ça boume au Lac Du Bois. My first week was training and getting to know LDB and Concordia Language Villages and the team of Monos that by the end of the session, felt like family. The second week was adult week, we welcomed 12ish adults from 25years old to into their 70s. While I wasn’t directly working with the adults too closely, as I was on the team planning for kids to come and generally preparing the site. From setting up la plage (beach), putting the nets on the soccer goals on the terrain de sport, and cleaning the placard (closet) of beaux-arts (art room). We partook in numerous tasks throughout the week.
June 20 was the exciting day that our group of kids arrived. We had 83ish total from ages 11-18. Inside that large group there were two main groups. The crédit and the non crédit (you can earn a year of high school credit for college applications or jump a level or just get better at the langauge in a more « classroomy » setting. The villagers earned grades, and had assignments and projects, and were divided into classes by level). And the non crédits still did educational things but they were more relaxed. While the crédits are in class, the non crédits are also split into language specific groups, and doing either a travaux dirigé or atelier (directed work or project based learning). My cabin (pavillon or pav) was one of the smaller cabins. 8 kids, and ages 12-13, so all non-crédits, and we were named after the French city of Annecy, about 2 hours south of the city I will be living in next year! And I was paired with a mono named Marion, who I literally couldn’t have asked for a better partner to share a pav with. She and I really grew close over the course of the session and we were a great team.
The first two weeks were primarily all in our groups de pavillons, with occasional interaction with their language level specific groups. We would be outside as much as possible and had a certain number of covid mitigation strategies that we were to apply at certain times of day depending on the scenario. Whether it be masks, distanced, being outside, or a combination of them. We were also separated into teams/équipes for the first 2ish weeks. Each équipe had 3 pavs and we had 3 équipes. During snack time the villagers had to stay in their prospective areas with their équipes and we would do camp fires with those équipes, they shared bathrooms, and a few other covidy things. After 10 days we lightened up the restrictions after everyone successfully tested negative. Then 5 days later another round for certain people was given and we went to almost no restrictions for the rest of the session. It was incredible to be able to live in a world where covid wasn’t hardly a thought on our minds. We were restricted to site, and there were only a very small handful of people (like 3 people) who were authorized to leave site, so the risk of bringing it on site was minimal.
The first two weeks for the passe-temps (past times) we did a rotation of pavs and each mono that led a passe-temps got each pav once. I led friendship bracelets and they were a major success. So successful we had to buy more half way though because it was so popular. I also led an atélier with one of the monos, Édouard, who was also a great partner in leading projects about météorologie! We made sun dials and talked about weather on francophone countries and territories! We had the level 3s and 4s which was a nice change from being with my pav all the time who were mostly level 1s and 2s.
Week 3 was when restrictions were pretty much lifted, so kids got to choose their passe-temps like they normally do. And unfortunately week 3 was my rough week. I chose to lead a photographie passe-temps and I planned to do a day on the history of photography (daguerreotypes are a French invention!) and make pinhole cameras and talk about famous photos and black and white photography and film development and all sorts of stuff. But it was very poorly planned, one day got rained out, and I ended up changing my whole lesson plan last minute. It was not necessarily rough, but it wasn’t as perfected as the activities the weeks prior. I also changed activities from atelier to have a colo-eco. (environmental activity, which was adopted from a former French Village that closed in 2019, Lac Du Bois Hackensack, and we adopted some of their traditions. We did the first two weeks as colo-eco and then transitioned into activité en pav because we were having some issues with colo-ecos and it was just easier to have some monos do environmental things and then some just do some sort of something educational) For this activité en pav, we rotated and had each pav once for an hour long activity. Similar to passe-temps the first 2 weeks. I chose to do a French music activity! I printed off a list of about 20 songs, we listened to parts of each of them and talked about them and I attached my super-mega-hyper-swag 39 hours and more than 600 songs playlist that I’ve been working on for 5 years. Also a huge hit.
The final thing I got to plan was a few Veillées (veillée directly translates to evening) and they were our evening program! They always had themes, and even sometimes the food for the whole day (or at least dinner) was themed around the veillée. My first veillée that I helped plan was themed around the Eurovision contest (kind of like American idol or X factor or the voice or whatever singing competition mixed with the olympics.) Participating European countries (including Israel and Australia and a few others?) Have their own competitions to select a musician or band to represent that country and then there’s your typical contest with these countries singing songs. They don’t have to be in the language of that country but they often are. Fun fact, ABBA was Eurovision winner in 1974 for Sweden with their song Waterloo. There have been several winners/high scoring songs in French over the years and we had each cabin perform a lip sync/dance battle to a certain Eurovision song. And because nous sommes tous gagnants au lac du bois we didn’t have a winner (but I’m biased and Annecy totally won).
My second veillée was my idea, and it was something else that kind-of fell through but it turned out great quand même. I had the idea at the beginning of the session to email the Canadian astronaut, Chris Hadfield, and see if he would send us a letter, do an interview, send us a video, something, anything, that we could plan some sort of activity around, alas, I emailed him and his team and got no response. But we had a great veillée anyways! We opened it up to more than just Canadian impact in space and included more of the francophonie! We had moon walking (there were these ski/ moon walkers stilts things that we had that were pretty fun), we had a relay race to put on a "space suit" (a jacket, hat, and wig from the costume closet) the fastest, run across the courtyard and back, and give the space suit to the next person. We had space coloring pages, and we had draw your own constellations. It was a huge success!
My third veillée was on the Tour de France. It was similar as it was kind-of a station format and we were lucky that the Tour de France was actually occurring while we were at Lac Du Bois! A few monos, particularly Izo, Édouard et Raïsa, would do daily updates of la Tour de France! As I am writing this (18 juillet), the Tour de France finished this morning and those of you who are curious, Tadej Pogačar, who is Slovenian has won the Tour de France! At age 22! And for the second time! So he won the maillot jaune (yellow jacket, overall winner) AND the maillot blanc (white jacket, overall best under age 25) AND the maillot à pois rouge as well (red polka dot jacket, fastest climber). Anyways, we talked about the different jackets and how cyclists wear brands as sponsors and they colored their own jackets as well as talked about the history of the tour. The villagers also did two different types of relay races (one going up a hill was one and one showing how thepeloton grouping works with drafting and teaming) and then they also did a water relay race activity on anti-dopage as the Tour de France has a large history with steroids and other performance enhancing drugs.
Outside of the very educational activities we had two different types of free times and chanson (songs!) For free times, we had sieste, which was about an hour every day. Every pav was in their pavilion and it was silent and you could nap, work on homework, write letters, as long as it was silent. My pav wasn’t so good at the whole quiet thing. It was a whole ordeal. Right after sieste we had temps libre. Free time! The first part of the session we had to be in équipe and we would rotate between la plage (beach/lake), centre ville/Paris (main area, shops, café) and the campagne (sports field and art room) each day and in those areas you could do pretty much whatever. But the second two weeks villagers could go wherever in the village during that time. I spent lots of time at the plage as a gutteur (spotter), which is kind of like an assistant to the life guards. I wasn’t explicitly life guard trained but I kept an eye on the water, I helped make sure kids were putting their name tags on the board (to keep track of who was in the lake and whether they were in the big part or the little part,) I’d make sure kids had taken their swim tests to go in the big part of the roped area, and if an incident were to happen (nothing did) I would get the other kids out of the lake and keep them out if the way, but still at the beach to keep record for incident reports and things.
We also had chansons! There were 2 chanson times, after breakfast and after coloeco/activité en pav. Chanson 1 was when super français would visit! Super français is our superhero (or heroine). They give kids a special name tag (etiquette) to wear all day to signify that they were going to speak uuuuniquement le français during the whole day! And if they succeeded they would get a little bead to put on their normal etiquette! Super français has two songs that we sing each day. One that is like yay you won super français (tune of we are the champions by queen) and when the villagers go up to get a bead. And one when kids come up to get a super français etiquette saying they are accepting the challenge (to the tune of we will rock you by queen). Then this year Lac du Bois adopted 2 superheroes from Hackensack. Capitaine planète (encourages environmentally conscious decisions at Lac du bois and to continue them at home!) and inspectrice de la justice (encourages behaviors that will benefit living in a community with respecting space and keeping clean and being nice to each other and things like that) these two superheroes had their own songs too! Then we’d move on to just singing songs in general. Lac du bois la la la la, il y a un monstre dans le lac, vent frais, and mon beau village were some popular ones. My personal favorites are Kraft Dinner and Yalla (which both happen to be real songs that you can find on Spotify/YouTube/streaming service of choice)
My favorite part of the day were definitely the meal times, at least lunch and dinner. Breakfast was the same thing every day. Muesli, yaourt or milk, fruit, some kind of juice, and some kind of bread, brioche, sourdough, and if we were lucky, croissants and Nutella. It was good, but after 6 weeks it got old. Though now that I am back home, I would do anything for a bowl of muesli and yaourt. On the 4th of July we had pancakes and bacon as well. And one day we had waffles. But other than that it was pretty standard. Lunch and dinner was really varied. We had French food, Moroccan food, Senegalese, Belgian, Canadian, creole/Cajun, and all other kinds of Francophone food! My favorites were definitely the poutine, mafé, accras, tagine and couscous, Belgian Apple carbonnade, fufu banane, and so so so many more! Ahh the food was délicieux! And meals were fun too!! We almost never sang before meals like we did at the village weekends (I think we normally would though, but because of covid at first we didn’t and then we just never got into it? Not sure.) At first we ate all 3 meals with our pav, but after things lifted we started a new system. Breakfast was with pavs, lunch was with whoever, as long as there was 2 monos per table and then dinner was in famille. Families mostly consisted of one villager from each pav and then 2 monos (not exactly because not all pavs had exactly 9 people for the 9 familles so it was a little uneven, but that was the concept). My famille was the famille OVNI (French for UFO. The theme was things that shine/twinkle). My wife in my famille, Eliénore is amazing, she’s a prof for the crédit program, she’s so sweet and was a great wife! My famille in general was really great.
After dinner and before the veillée every day we had also one of my favorite things, Plaisirs D’Amour, our camp soap opera. We had 2 seasons. The first season was about this grandma that died and wanted to give her fortune to lac du Bois but didn’t tell her son which équipe to give it to and each équipe was portrayed by a character and they all wanted it including the son for himself and a lawyer got involved and they had competitions between the équipes. They found out the son sabotaged the competitions to keep it for himself and they teamed up and attacked him in a restaurant and he fled to Tahiti and the 3 équipes ended up splitting up the fortune equally. Spoiler the fortune was popsicles. I was a waiter in the restaurant. And the best friend of the son and the lawyer fell in love and had a date in my restaurant. I kept interrupting their date when they were about to confess their love or say something important about the competition by bringing them random vegetables.
The second season was written by a different mono and it was the back stage of a talk show. But the host was really mean backstage but really nice on stage. She loved throwing things and yelling. Then we (the crew) went behind the scenes of Waldsee’s (German camp) talk show and find out that the host was really mean onstage but backstage so nice. The crew realized that something wasn’t right with the French talk show and formed a union and got fired and started a new talk show. I was a camera man in the French talk show and was in love with the tech person from the French talk show. And the two talk show hosts were in love. It was very fun.
At the end of every day, after the veillée, we would often have a campfire where we would sing songs usually calmer ones and we didn’t usually teach them, we just went over ones we knew, and at the end of the camp fire, we sang one of my favorite songs, one that we sung when I was a villager during the weekend programs, bonsoir les loups. Then we would all head to cabins and do showers and conseil du soir. A little conversation in English with our pav. There would be announcements and villagers could ask questions they had about the day. And one of the best parts of my day, because we really get to bond with our villagers is our bonne chose (good thing) our défis (our challenge) and then our question. Which was almost every day, asked by them. Sometimes it was your favorite color butterfly, if you could live in a fruit what would it be, our favorite color combinations, and numerous others. To keep the conversations regulated, you could only talk if you had bowel in your hand. Little explanation: bowel is a mix between a bear and an owl. It is a dungeons and dragons prop. I have no idea how but my pav liked to joke that he was very rich and that bowel needs to pay for college and buy us houses and is richer than Jeff Bezos. Again. Don’t know where that started but it was a fun little inside joke. After that everyone would get into bed and monos either Marion or I, or we would invite monos from other cabins, and even sometimes villagers from our cabins would tell stories and often sing a song or two as the kids fell asleep.
Overall, my time as Joséphine has been incredible. It was an experience I wouldn’t trade for the world! The team of monos were incredible, they are some truly amazing people. I came to Lac Du Bois and was immediately accepted and everyone there made me feel like I had been coming to Lac Du Bois for years and treated me like I was family. And les villageois were also as accepting. Some of them have been coming to Lac Du Bois from 1 year to 10 years. To so many people Lac Du Bois is a second home. And I understand why. I loved my time here at Lac Du Bois. One of the lyrics of our favorite songs has a lyric that you will find the sunshine in the hearts of children, (tu trouveras le soleil dans le cœur des enfants) and it is so very true.
Merci le Lac Du Bois. Merci dans le centre mon cœur. My time as Joséphine these past six weeks is unforgettable and I hope that I will get to be Joséphine again in the future.
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