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International Exchange USA
SIS in Chicago, 2008
By Ruairi McCann
Chicagoans have a 150 year history of explaining to visitors just why their precious city is better than New York. After ten days of wandering the streets of the downtown “loop”, craning our necks to admire the city stretch into the sky, I suspect all the visiting Sèvriens were suitably convinced - except, of course, our very own New Yorker, Ms Antoine, whose Big Apple scepticism remained impenetrable, even to the seductive enthusiasm of our native guides.
I had read that the icy slabs of winter had only just melted into Lake Michigan a few weeks before our departure, so I think we were all surprised when we emerged, bleary-eyed and blinking, into the sunlight and heat at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. There was a throng of smiling, welcoming families who quickly scooped up their French guests and placed them into gargantuan waiting cars, cars that would rival my Paris apartment for space.
Mount Prospect, where most of our exchange partners live, and “where friendliness is a way of life” according to the town slogan, follows the mould of American suburbs familiar to most of us through cinema. Wide streets, big houses, manicured lawns, mail boxes standing awkwardly beside garbage cans waiting collection, teenagers “shooting hoops” into the ubiquitous basketball nets that sprout from every driveway. Driving through these streets, one can’t help but realise why American suburban life leaves itself so open to portrayal in literature or cinema, satirical or otherwise. It’s dreamy and inward-looking, a landscape punctuated with leafy housing estates and formulaic strip malls. Immediately, what’s most noticeable is that, despite the odd jogger, no-one is walking, the streets are empty.
Mount Prospect High School is recognised as one of the very best in the state of Illinois. The wealthy community ensures the school has the very best of facilities. Our first day was spent at the school, beginning with a very early morning welcome breakfast of creamy chocolate doughnuts and coffee, a presentation of school tee-shirts to our students, and then a guided tour of the campus. And what a campus! Sports facilities that outclass the most exclusive private Parisian gym, including a full-size athletics track and football pitch, an “autoshop” or mechanic’s garage complete with cars to take apart and put back together again, a simply massive carpentry workshop, a library boasting five fully equipped Apple computer suites, interactive language learning labs, science labs, and last but certainly not least, a professional television studio! At 9am every morning the students broadcast the day’s announcements to students through television screens in every classroom. On this particular day, our students were welcomed before the cameras, slightly abashed at first, then smiling and waving like celebrities, and introduced to the school.
All our students were keenly aware of the profound differences between school life in the US and Paris. When the school principal began to read the “pledge of allegiance to the flag” during the live television broadcast, I could spot more than a few bemused faces among the Sèvriens. This pledge, required by law in Illinois and common throughout the US, actually originates in Chicago, written in 1893. Perhaps that’s where Sarko got his idea for the letter from Guy Môquet, although the writer of the pledge certainly wasn’t a commie!
The strictness of certain school policies caused some surprise also. When some of our students were asked to remove their hats in the corridor, they seemed a little disgruntled. One grumbled to me about the “American paradox”, as he (over-)philosophically called it - that it was acceptable for girls to wear tiny skirts but the boys couldn’t don their baseball caps.
Security at the school is very tight too. One day, as I roamed the corridors looking for a few of our students, I was approached by a security man who promptly escorted me off the premises. He turned out to be a pleasant fellow (“just doing my job,” he explained) and later, when he processed my security pass, he said cheerily, “well, let’s be honest, Ruairi, you don’t exactly look like the teachers at Mount Prospect High School”. Whatever that means!
The rest of that first week seemed to sail by. Us Sèvriens spent our days in Chicago before returning to our separate hosts in the evening. Travelling every morning by train to Chicago (tall, chunky, steel-clad trains that evoke an almost Dickian technological dystopia) we managed to see a large chunk of the city’s downtown area, known as “the loop”, bounded by the Chicago River on the west and north, and by Lake Michigan on the other side.
An architectural boat tour along the Chicago River introduced us to some splendid buildings accompanied by the passionate commentary of our guide, a veteran of the Chicago Architectural Society who was delighted to have some “Frenchies” (as she called us) on board. The mix of neoclassical, neogothic and other styles is striking; the buttery yellow limestone of the Chicago Tribune Tower and the giant steel bracing that criss-crosses the façade of the Hancock building seem to complement rather than alienate each other.
Later in the week we took another tour, this time in a “trolley” or converted tram with rolled-up plastic curtains that allowed us to bask in the warm sunshine and make the most of the wind that whips off the lake and lashes up Chicago’s wide avenues. Another quirky guide, Jason, who had given up a promising career managing a Starbucks because he loved driving the trolley tour so much, was full of entertaining historical anecdotes about Irish and Italian gangs fighting for control of the criminal underworld. He almost ploughed into the car in front as he took pains to point out the steps of the cathedral where Dion O’Banion was gunned down by Al Capone’s “outfit”.
- Sears Tower foyer
Other visits included: the Art Institute which houses a surprisingly bountiful bundle of French impressionist paintings by Monet, Manet, Cézanne, Renoir, Degas et al.; the Chicago History Museum; and the Federal Reserve, where we snapped photographs as we stood covetously over a (surprisingly small) pile of a million dollars.
We had plenty of free time too. Most days we broke for lunch and the students were free to wander and explore. While many chose to “explore” the brimful shelves of department stores, others could be seen tearing like puppies along the beach behind Chicago’s “Magnificent Mile”, paddling in the water, or just gazing in wonder at the buildings that rise up behind the sandy shore of the lake like massive shards of glass and steel. Chicago has a wonderful darkness about it, especially in the sunshine, when the city transforms itself into a high-contrast myriad of wide streets and narrow alleys, of glaring reflections and dark shadows - there’s a sinister other-worldliness under the elevated iron railway tracks that thread the loud afternoon of the city.
On the weekend, the students spent all their time with their host families, often meeting up to drive to fairgrounds (the first Ferris wheel was designed by Mr Ferris for Chicago, apparently), or gathering at a house for a barbecue or bonfire. Some went to a baseball game at Wrigley Field, others visited aquariums, or just hung out with their friends. Our own host, Scott Russell (the French teacher at the MP high school), brought us to some interesting corners of Chicago’s less tourist-oriented neighbourhoods. One evening, Ms Antoine bravely read her poetry to the patrons of a wonderfully seedy, tumble-down venue seemingly propped up by the iron structure of one of Chicago’s elevated train lines.
The final day, the temperature dropped drastically and the heavens opened. Big globules of rain washed the city in greyness and the day was spent at the high school. We did get time to visit the local fire station and got the chance to climb on the stocky, red, well-polished fire engines as our cameras flashed. We called in next door to the police station where one officer (after having already jokingly handcuffed one of us to a chair!) managed to lock all our students in one tiny prison cell and then proceeded to lose the key - by far the highlight of the trip!
Emotional farewells ensued as we boarded the buses for O’Hare airport. Real friendships were forged, the hugs and kisses testament to that. As we chugged away in our yellow school bus, leaving behind the gathering of cheering, hand-waving Americans, I think we were all able to sit back and already begin to reflect on the too swift passing of a very enjoyable trip.
Dernière modification le 26-06-08 par