Portrait #2: Monsieur DELEBEQUE

M DELEBEQUE
Professor

M D is my Civilisation teacher. My other friends, who are in classes of levels above mine, have Civi (say “see-vee”) classes which talk about French politics and social security. My first class was a degustation of Breton specialties (our prof brought Breton cookies, crêpes, and cider to class and we “deguster”d them. That was franglais for 'we “taste”d' them). We talked about them and then ate them.

M D has four kids, and I think he’s in his forties…maybe older, or younger. I don’t even know. Everyone dresses the same here, and a greater percentage of people are actually in good shape, and these things combined make it very hard to tell what ages people actually are. Delebeque wears jeans that, as Abby described them, are generally only worn by gay men. But that’s how it is all over France. Men wear the weirdest pants.

He’s short and small, but in good shape it looks like. Balding as well, so he shaves his head, or at least, keeps his hair so that it’s really really really short. His head is very round. He wears only long sleeve shirts and jeans, which isn’t a bad thing, but sometimes I look at what he’s wearing and wonder how he decided to like it.

The class itself is very easy. He answers questions, actually, he spends a lot of time trying to get us to ask questions. There isn’t very much which is confusing when it comes to French Social Security. Wait, no. That’s a total lie. It can be very confusing. But at least we know that when it comes to the final test, we’re not going to have to have everything tiny memorized. He doesn’t quiz us on things that are hard to remember. Maybe that’s why we also don’t ask very many questions…when one of the questions on your test was “Name a French wine” you kind of lose all fear of failing the class.

I don't have much else to say about Delebeque, since I very rarely have anything to complain about when it's Monday morning at 10h30 and I'm looking at two hours of him having us discuss French Social Security and underemployment and food.