Quel Aurore!

I have several noteworthy updates and then a bunch of anecdotes that aren’t necessary, but that’s never stopped me from sharing in the past, has it?

Noteworthy update #1: There is a new person living at the internat. Her name is Aurore (which is too similar to “horreur” for me to trust myself saying it out loud so I don’t really call her by her name). She’s here for a month doing an internship in town. Like Estelle, she lives nearby and goes home on the weekends so her presence hasn’t really had much of an effect on the social climate. In fact, I’ve only ever spent more than 5 seconds with her once, when the fire alarm went off. She mostly makes her presence known by labeling her possessions like stuff in the fridge and her own soap dispenser in the bathroom.

Noteworthy update #2: A couple of days ago I got a call from the principal of one of my schools. He explained that his daughter had passed the first round of applications for a competitive university and now had to do an interview in English so he asked if I was willing to do some conversation sessions with her. The program she’s trying to get into is a political science program and so he said we could talk about current events and “the British institution”. I had to admit that due to my lack of internet, television or daily newspaper, I’m not all that up to date on current events and my knowledge of the British institution (whatever that even means) is pretty minimal, but despite these failings, they still wanted my help and I was happy to oblige. The daughter’s name is Romaine and she’s really sweet. For the past week (ending yesterday), we’ve met for an hour everyday at her house. Walking into their living room is like walking into a Buddhist temple and each room is filled with objects from all over the world. Apparently they are currently in the process of doing an upstairs study that’s Native American themed. Now I’m thinking that totem pole assignment he gave me a while back wasn’t for the school…

After the first day when I told her how I missed American coffee, the lessons would start off with her handing me an enormous mug of coffee and then I’d get around to making up as legitimate-sounding questions about world politics as I could, which she’d always handle with poise (and often confusion). All and all, a pleasant experience. Plus they have a suuuuper cute dog named Pepito who I am in love with. I was perhaps a little too honest with them about how lonely things have been since the boys left and so they’ve invited me to dinner later this month and Romaine invited me to concert her band is playing in. Hooray for pity invites!

Now the little stories I thought I’d share because what I’ve written so far is too short to be considered a true Julia post.

At school:

In one class the kids were answering a list of questions about themselves and the question “What if your date of birth?” was immediately followed by the question “what is your age?” I was making the rounds helping people when I came to a girl who looked really confused, and she asked me “do I say what age I am now or how old I was when I was born?”

In another class the teacher had made a handout to help the kids to answer the question “how are you?” and there were pictures and corresponding replies like “I’m fine, thanks!” but I thought it was kind of funny that all of the replies had an exclamation point at the end. It works with “I’m fine, thanks” but seems a bit strange in sentences like “I’m tired!” and “I’m not very well!”

Not at school:

I had a skype date with Erik the other night so I went to a bar with wifi. As soon as I sat down, this little girl walked right up and sat down across from me at my table. I’m not sure if maybe she goes to one of the schools I teach at and recognized me or if she was just a very bold child but she just started talking and talking. She told me how many brothers and sisters she had and when I asked her what her name was she said “ I’m Collette and I’m the sister of my brother and sister” (aha, that Collette). She talked about how she wanted a kitten and did I know Germany? Before I knew it, Erik was calling and I had to explain to her that I couldn’t talk with her anymore and ended up showing her Erik on my computer which was probably a mistake since she was fascinated and so came and sat down right next to me to watch. I think it kind of creeped Erik out for a very wide-eyed six year old girl to be on the screen with me, but he handled it like a pro and eventually she left since it was probably past her bedtime.