Oh, the dangerous, dangerous Arctic!

Interestingly, the Arctic has been the theme of my last several days in Northern France. This strikes me as ironic because, in my opinion, here it is about as un-Arctic as it can get. It’s never below freezing, just foggy drizzles all the time. Nevertheless, the North Wind has been calling my name and I can but follow the siren’s voice.

I went to Paris on Saturday. The goal of the visit was to go on a guided tour of an exhibit about the art of the native peoples living in the regions around the Arctic Circle at Musée Quai Branly – the quite impressive museum in Paris dedicated to indigenous art. Because the visit was guided I had to reserve and buy my ticket well in advance. Well, I was eating lunch with a friend at this great Italian restaurant, and time just got away from me. When we looked at the time, it was 14h (yes military time here) which meant that I had exactly 1 hour to get to the museum which was in a completely inconvenient location to access by metro for my 15h reservation. Plus, I had to stop by a “Best Buy” type store which is where you pick up the tickets for such spectacles that you reserve online. Anyway, after finding out at the store that I couldn’t get a refund for the ticket I was committed to making the mad dash to the museum in the 20 or so minutes that remained or lose my 15 dollars. I hopped on the metro and after promptly drifting into a dream world, only remembered to leap out of the train at my stop as the doors were closing. Then with 8 minutes left, I ran/sprinted the ¾ of a mile to the museum in my sweater and overcoat along the banks of the Seine. I arrived in such a state of disarray. Of course I didn’t see the tour group, and only after a series of texts with the acquaintance who was waiting for me, did I find them. I was sweaty and basically just embarrassed. So during the explanations of the ivory artifacts that were carved mostly into animal shapes, something struck me and continued striking me. It seems that the Inuits had a real liking to carve the semblance of “Fucks”. Hmm, well that’s just vulgar, I probably would have thought normally. But to be honest, from the context, I could tell that it was the name of some Arctic animal. As the visit went on, I eventually figured out that a phoque is a seal. Great, mystery solved.

Well, yesterday, I had prepared an article about polar bears to teach to some students in the “European Section” which means that they speak much better English than the other students and we get to discuss interesting stuff – like how Global Warming is affecting the animals that live in the Arctic. As we go through the articles, in general, I stop periodically and if there is a word that I don’t know in French, I assume that they won’t recognize it in English and we stop and I try and get them to explain it in English if there is someone in the class that knows it. If not, then I try to explain it in English. Well, we came to the part of the article that described the polar bear’s diet, and well, guess what? They eat mostly seals. “Do you know what a seal is? Who knows what a seal is? Oh, great you do D. Could you explain it to the rest of the class in English,” I said. Picture to yourself, a group of sophomores, 16 years old. Now, picture D. I think he is a year or 2 younger than the others, maybe he skipped some grades. Anyway, he is 6 inches shorter than the other guys and looks like such a little boy with such a baby face. In his soft voice he responded quietly, “It’s a Fuck.” I had to turn my head a bit, to hide my smile. After taking a few seconds to fight back the giggles, I calmly said, “You know, you really need to be careful with that word.” Anyway, everybody knows what a seal is now.