À l'école...

Since I've been here I haven't really said much about the schools themselves.  I work in three different schools, two of which are 20 minutes away and one of which is literally next door.  The kids are all great, well-behaved for the most part, and very curious about my life Over There in that Faraway Land. 

I wanted to share with you some of the sweet/hilarious things they've said :)

•  The first week I visited the schools, I introduced myself, telling them my name, my age, where I'm from, and what I was doing in the classroom.  Then I asked them if they had any questions. 
        "Do you go back to your house in The Tennessee every night?"
        "Do you know Michael Jackson?"
        "Did you drive here from The Tennessee?"
        "Are there roads/pools/people in The Tennessee?  Do you wear shoes?"
  It was pretty funny to debunk all their misconceptions :)  Hooray for shooting down the dreams of little children!
• This past weekend I visited some friends in the Champagne region (which will come in the next post, promise!)  My friend's little sister is 12 years old, and she's learning English in school.  She showed me her English notebook, which had some astonishing facts about The States that even I didn't know!  My favorite was this:
          "Americans love hamburgers.  They eat at least 3 hamburgers per week." 
  They also had an English-language phrase book that Aurélie bought when she was going to spend the summer in The Tennessee.  Their pronunciation guide didn't take into account the proper way to say anything, just the French-accented way...and it was hysterical.  

"ouatss Ze néïm ov Ze lowkeul déïli niouzpéüpeu?"  :l

• When I visited the class of CE1 at one school (the equivalent of 1st grade), three little girls approached the teacher after class and started whispering to her.  She pointed to me and said, "Go tell her that yourself;" they all came up to me and said, "Kali, you're so pretty!"  "Kali, you're so beautiful like flowers!"  "Kali, you're beautiful, and your shoes are beautiful, and you have the same water bottle as my mommy." Too cute :) 
• One girl in CM1 (4th grade) spent the whole class doodling.  She had answered a couple of questions, and I knew she'd taken German up until now, so I let her be for the rest of the class because learning English is a lot harder for her than it is for the other kids.  Right before I left she ran up to me, smiled really big, and pushed something into my hand.  Turns out she'd spent the whole class period drawing this:

I don't even like cats....but this makes that fact not matter :)

•  While quizzing Halloween vocabulary with the CM1 at another school, I asked one girl (glasses, freckles, dark brown pigtails, super skinny) what the English word for vampire was.  She screwed up her face in trying to remember it and then pronounce it, and when she finally remembered and said the word, it came out "wampum."  I couldn't help but laugh (especially because the French word for vampire is literally the same word, just pronounced Vaaahhhhm-peeeer.)  That made my day--it's not every day you hear the word wampum. 
•  At the school I visit on Tuesdays (which I don't particularly like because the kids are so loud and disrespectful), one little boy came up to me and asked, "Will you be here every day Miss Kali?"  I told him no, that I only came on Tuesdays, but still he smiled really big and said, "I can't wait until next Tuesday." 
• Yesterday I visited a class that I only see on Mondays.  The teacher I work with, Nicolas, told me that during the kids' recess the teachers were going to have a snack of "vin et fromage fort"----"wine and strong cheese."  I helped him out in the kitchen while he cut up a baguette, spread a cheese-y sauce on it, and threw it in the oven to grill for a couple minutes.  As I poured the white wine into Dixie cups (and, yes, I did feel like I was back in college!), he told me that the cheese was from his region, Macôn (not far from here), and that he freezes it when he comes back from visiting his parents.  Basically, in the olden days, people would keep the ends of cheeses that they didn't finish, let them age for a LONG time, and when they had enough of them they'd add them all together in a big pot and add white wine over heat, thus coming up with what has always been known in Macôn as "fromage fort."  We balanced the plate of cheese on the radiator, opened up the window onto the playground, and passed it and the wine out the window to the other teachers.  It was one of those moments when I wish I'd had my camera, but instead of separating myself from the scene with a giant lens, I was really there, in the moment, and got to memorize all the details for myself.  Still, I wish I could share that vignette with all of you! 

I never thought I'd so enjoy being a teacher.  If you know me at all you know I have minimal patience for just about everything--children, obnoxious people, annoying animals, waiting for holidays to arrive, etc.--so for me to enjoy this job is really a surprise!  The lesson planning is pretty easy; most of the kids in each class are at about the same level of English, so I can plan one activity and change it slightly depending on how hard or easy I need it to be to suit them.  Plus, the job of the assistant is to make learning English fun once a week, so we usually play games or I'll teach them the words to a little song or read them a story.  All of the teachers I work with have been very accommodating--one of them drives me to school on Mondays and Thursdays!--and extremely helpful in the classroom (i.e. never leaving me to direct the wee hooligans all by myself.)  This just may be something I continue when I get back to the good ole US of A :)