Weetches, Speeders, and Skeleteens (I think the last one should become slang for anorexic highschoolers)

Today marks the third time I’ve stepped in dog poop since I’ve been here. Third time’s the charm? No, third time is just as aggravating as the first and second time. Right in the middle of the sidewalk! Now, I LOVE dogs. A lot. But so far the amount of time I’ve spent with any has been far exceeded by the amount of time I’ve spent scraping poop off of my shoes.

On a happier note, school was a success this week. A bunch of my lessons involved the kids (and almost always me) doing impressions of Halloween things which I think they very much enjoyed. And in one class we were talking about costumes and I got a little carried away and started talking about Lanie and my costumes from when we were kids (ex: mime, Santa Claus, pizza delivery man). I don’t know if the kids were amused at the costumes themselves or how excited I was about them, but either way, they liked it.

Today, I got to one of my classes a little early and the kids were reading aloud from a book. They were getting really into it and reading in different voices and everything. It was so freaking cute.

Home life: The fire alarm kept going off yesterday which was rather annoying. And it wasn’t even Tommy’s veal-hamburgers that was setting it off. A blameless offense is an annoying offense. Also, Estelle is gradually coming out of her shell and becoming a really fun person to hang around with.

The end of the school day today marks the beginning of the first school vacation. They didn’t even give us time to hit our first wall and we’re already on a 10-day break! Hannah over in Autriche has got the same break (and unlike Tricky is not studying up for the physics GREs) so we’ve planned a little adventure together. Come Monday it’s Luxembourg-ho!

Over and Out, but first…

Random note #1 : It’s interesting that at each school, there seems to be a diffent toy/game of choice. The school I’m at on Mondays is the one that hasn’t banned soccer so that’s what they all do. At Tuesday’s school, from a distance it looks like the kiddos have started a little cock-fighting ring during recess, but upon closer inspection, they’re playing with their toupis (=spinning tops on steroids). They have their own little arena platform and they watch and root for one kid’s toupi to knock the other out of the ring. At Thursday’s school, it’s all about the hula-hoop (you know, for kids) but I have yet to see anyone actually hula-hooping as it were. They prefer seeing how many kids they can fit inside one hoop and then try (usually in vain) to move in one direction together. I think that one is my favorite. What’s better than one cute little French kid? A whole mass of them bound together by a hula-hoop!

Random note #2: There comes a point in every American teenager’s life where they realize they have been duped since what our elementary school teachers tell us about cursive (“when you’re older, you’ll need to use it”) never really comes true. EXCEPT if you become a teacher in France. I always print when I write on the board since my cursive is atrocious, and I was recently called out on it—by a nine year old girl. Ouch.