A (semi)quick post before Christmas break:
Teaching about Christmas (I opted not to do the Hanukkah lesson) went pretty well. There were, of course, the inevitable questions like “Does Santa really exist?” and “How does Santa get in if you don’t have a chimney?” and of course the more cynical “Santa doesn’t exist. My parents buy me presents.” I think my favorite comment though was when we were talking about the elves who make the presents and a really little kid got super excited and yelled “and they also repair shoes!”
Various highlights of the last couple weeks:
-Alex mastered the art of mulled wine which was a nice treat for everyone.
-The recording of “Jingle Bells” that one of my teachers has is actually a cd of French children singing christmas songs. It’s pretty hard to teach a group of kids a song when the example they’re learning from is a mumbled mess that sounds more like “mudsfjnjuenwjjdneuajhuewjfh” rather than “oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh”
- Last weekend Alex, Tommy and I decided to go to the movies. Keeping things interesting as always, Tommy decided that rather than sneaking in a bag of candy, he would sneak in a roast chicken. Additionally, once we settled into the theater, as the aroma of roast poultry permeated the dark room, Tommy whipped out his sunglasses—the only prescription glasses he owns—and explained he needed them to see the movie. We’d had a good amount of mulled wine just before so both Alex and I passed out in the middle. The sight of the three of watching the movie, two sleeping and one wearing sunglasses and eating chicken, may have been more entertaining than the movie itself.
-Alex lost his keys again (which have since been retrieved) and this time the replacement key they gave him was the master key to all the rooms on our floor. So naturally we went on a little treasure hunt into the rooms next to mine that are marked “reserved for theater”. Most of the rooms were pretty boring with random tables and broken chandeliers, but we struck gold with the costume room and now are left only to think of some genius way to put them to good use.
-As a little Christmas celebration before we all parted ways, the assistants and the teachers (or at least Estelle and Aline) went out for Kebabs one night. Everyone was getting on very well, and we had a fun time training Tommy to act more straight in preparation for meeting his boyfriend’s family. (“How do you think I feel? Betrayed, bewildered…”)
-I went to see Alex play in the winter concert with the St. Dié Orchestra. It was perhaps the strangest concert I’ve ever been to. It had a little slide show going on the whole time (like a youtube video of a song accompanied by a quasi-related photo montage) and the encore was a rendition of the YMCA complete with village people costumes donned by various musicians and the conductor. Not exactly the nutcracker or Handel’s Messiah, but certainly entertaining.
Tomorrow it’s off to Basel to meet up with the fam. Hopefully everything goes well, but apparently whenever Europe gets a little bit of snow they freak out and cancel all their flights. So, things could be getting a later start than expected but in any case I’m still really really excited!!!!!
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