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Sarah Tate

Excerpts from

ete bourguignon

"Are you ready to dance? Move your body? Shake your
ass?"

This little, balding Frenchman had no business saying
this to his class full of apathetic foreigners. Yeah, you're
funny, I guess, Emile, making slightly-outdated American
culture references and pseudo-hitting on the pretty girls.
Oh, well - at least I got some attention, too (it's not often
that I'm considered a part of that category).

In my first month in Dijon, I was an apathetic
foreigner. The friends I made were all American or
English, and we used our privilege of language without
thought, only occasionally switching back into French for
the benefit of the hopelessly lost Brazilians and Japanese.

My French professor, Emile, was just a part of the
background - a typical Bourguignon, cursing and chain-
smoking - an extra, superimposed over a neo-classical
backdrop. I laughed at his jokes in class (the good ones,
anyway) and then went on my way. Dijon is a beautiful
city, and I appreciated that - for the distance of the walk
home. Each day, I stepped off the tram and went down
the rue des Godrans with its cute, wrought-iron balconies,
past the ecbeuguettes and the accordion buskers on the
rue de la Liberte, and through the children, splashing in
the fountains of the place de la Liberation, chaperoned by
the tower of Philippe le Bon. Then I would punch in the
code to the gate of my host family's hotel particulier,

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