Are You Feeling Fine?

Well, the first week of classes was a hit I’d say. I started out kind of rocky, trying to do a lesson plan about anglophone geography (which in my defense had been in the booklet they gave us) that turned out to be too much for a 45 minute session with a bunch of fidgety 8 year-olds. But little by little I started to get a feel for their attention spans and things got better.

In most classes we worked on introductions. At first it seemed like the kids had it down pat and I worried I was wasting their time. But then I started noticing a lot of dialogues like the following:

Child A: What’s your name?

Child B: I’m fine, thank you

Child B: Where are you from?

Child A: I’m nine

So I think working on it a little more was probably a good idea…

I did another question and answer session in one of my classes and I got some more rather strange questions:

--Do you have electricity in the United States? (a bit of a change from Mali where everyone asked me if all Americans drove around in limousines)

--Do you know about the Titanic

--Are there lots of woodpeckers ?

--There was one kid who was really fascinated by the time difference and kept on asking “if it’s midnight here, what time is it there?” “If it’s ten o’clock here what time is it there?”, etc and then he started just raising his hand and telling stories about other places he’s been or heard about with other time differences.

--My favorite question though: “are you a lady or are you still a kid?” (Hmm, good question. I ended up picking adult, but I’m still not so sure)

In another class, we were learning school objects and since everyone here teaches British English, they were learning “rubber” rather than “eraser” I started off trying to explain that there was a different word for it in American English but it was clear that we could only use one name for classroom learning purposes so: rubber it is. It really is off-putting hearing one 9 year old ask another 9 year old “do you have a rubber?”

School aside, I also had some nice leisurely days off. I did some mom-shipped American crosswords. (Alex and I tried to do a French one the other day, but when Estelle, our resident French person, couldn’t even do it,, we gave up. So Mom if you’re reading this, keep ‘em coming!) I went to the library and checked out the first in a murder mystery trilogy based in Nancy (the second of which is set during the FIG and thus in our very own St. Dié). I also checked out the dvd collection which was fairly sparse. There are some crowd pleasers, some classics (I took out « le Jour se lève » with Jean Gabin since I wanted to open with something classy and French) and some were just very random. We’ll see how desperate I get as the months roll on.

I also took advantage of the extra time to make some more time-consuming meals. I made some chili which turned out surprisingly well. Though the next afternoon when I was eating the last of it, Mr. François popped in and asked me why I wasn’t eating at the cantine and that their food was much better than what I was eating. I was slightly offended but let it slide.

Pretty tame weekend (apart from a fairly heated debate betwixt the roommates about the value of spectator sports. Shockingly, I was pro-sports. Who knew?). The weather has been pretty gross and the nasty cold which has been slowly spreading down the corridor has finally reached me. Blegh.

I’m still going to buck up and be energetic for next week’s classes though because they’re going to be Halloween-themed! Wooooooooo! (that is both excitement and ghost noise)