Meg: Thanksgiving Lessons

         Yes, I’m a little late in this post, I’ve been thinking about what to write for a while, without actually writing it down!  The two weeks leading up to the holiday itself, I spent time teaching students at both middle schools about what we do on Thanksgiving and the importance of the holiday.  Which, by the way, didn’t help with the home sickness I was feeling at that point, but it was still fun to share some real American culture with the students.  In the classes I started with a general kind-of-boring sheet explaining what Thanksgiving is, what we do on the day, and why it is so important.  After the first class of teaching about Thanksgiving that way, I decided that that was not interesting enough, so I started coming up with little games to play with the kids.  I don’t know if Rose and Rachelle find this to be true, but I find when I’m teaching the same lesson twice, the second time always goes slightly better.  I need to figure out how to get those results on the first time. 

       Anyway, by far, my favorite game to play with the kids was a word scramble.  I split the class into two groups and wrote T H A N K S G I V I N G   T U R K E Y on the board.  Then I told them they had 10 minutes to come up with as many English words out of those letters as they could, and the group with the most amount of words would win.  They had to discuss what words to use and then send up a team member to run to the board to put the word they came up with before the other team could come up with the same word.  It was super fun to watch them all get very into it.  Of course, they tried to cheat of each other, but it was a friendly competition.  I was very impressed by the number of words/which words they were able to come up with!  Words like Turkish and skiving, that I don’t think I even could have come up with.  A couple times they tried to write French words up on the board, but I informed them that I would take a point AWAY if they did that.  This game is the most successful lesson plan I’ve come up with so far- so I see more games in the future.  The only bad part was that they asked me what they had won and they were not very impressed by my answer of, “my respect and the feeling of accomplishment.”  I might have to get some real prizes one of these days.

        Another thing that I did at the beginning of each lesson about Thanksgiving was asking the students what they already knew about the holiday.  Most of the kids weren’t quite sure what to say, but I got some responses, such as “It’s like Christmas!”  Which, when I thought about it, it is fairly similar to the way they celebrate Christmas here, with family and a big meal together, but I had to explain that we also had Christmas.  My favorite reply was actually an ongoing exchange.  One of the kids said, “It was on the Simpsons.”  Everyone laughed, and I agreed, yes, there were episodes of the Simpsons that featured Thanksgiving.  I then went on to ask them to continue to describe it.  Another student, who normally doesn’t talk much said, “They have yellow skin,”  I was quite confused.  “Who has yellow skin?  The turkey?”  I had no idea what was going on.  “No,” the boy laughed, “The Simpsons.”  I burst out laughing.  Maybe you had to be there, but I thought it was funny that my discussion about Thanksgiving rapidly became a discussion about the Simpsons.

      The other thing I’ve found during these lessons is if I let the kids get away with a little bit of French they are more comfortable.  For example, if they don’t understand what I’m saying, they will ask me, in French, if this-and-this is what I meant, and I can confirm or deny.  They actually ask me lots of questions in French and I always just respond in English.  This was happening with a group of 6^th graders that I had the other day, them asking in French and me answering in English, and at the end of the class, they returned to their favorite question, “Do you speak French?”  Which was particularly funny because it’s obvious that I understand French, but it doesn’t cross their minds that even though I know what they’re saying that I can’t actually form words or sentences, this is one of the reasons I love the 6^th graders the most.  They’re more innocent than the others in a way that I find completely adorable.  If I had to teach middle school for the rest of my life, I would choose to teach 6^th graders.       

Rosetta: A French Thanksgiving (the conclusion)

So yesterday I ran out of cereal so I had some soup for breakfast. Now most of you know already that this is something I do, eat lunch/dinner type foods for breakfast. However, this was my first time doing it here as I was playing normal for my new roommates I have been on a strict cereal for breakfast kick (however I did have eggs for breakfast once which my roommate from the Canary Islands found just as strange as if I'd eaten soup). So I get to school and I tell Laurent that is is Thanksgiving and the first question he asks me is, "so what did you eat for breakfast." I told him honestly that I had had soup. He thought I was kidding. Even after I assured him I was serious. And finally he believed me and thought it was very strange but he relented far enough to admit that it is all in your upbringing what you find normal.

I had told the kids about peanut butter and had had my mom send me some from the United States so I could make them taste it. So I made the class some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that I cut into small bites so they could all try one. I told everyone it was a Thanksgiving present (even though it was just random that it happened on Thanksgiving). I explained that this is what school children eat for lunch, with a glass of milk of course. After everyone had tasted it, and most people liked it except for the one girl who hates jams, I boy raises his hand and announces that he is allergic to peanuts and he wants to go to the nurse. About 20 minutes later he returns to class still looking and acting a little sick but luckily it was not too serious, I totally forgot to ask if anyone had a peanut butter allergy (the teacher assured me that the kid was knew very well what peanut butter was made from and should have known better than to eat it). After that I had just enough left to let everyone in the teacher's lounge taste the sandwiches, I love when I just happen to have the perfect amount.

After class, I rushed home to clean the house for our Thanksgiving dinner. I cleaned up the living room and put some flowers on the living room table and then I started to set the dining room table for dinner. I was looking in our cupboard of things we don't use too often when I noticed we had nice china and tablecloths that we've never used. So I pulled them out and the table ended up looking great, I even put down a lace doily on the living room table and everything looked pretty fancy. Then Florie picked me up and we went to buy the 'Turkey'. Turkey is actually impossible to find here until early December because they only eat it as a Christmas food but we were able to get two smaller birds that were a pretty close approximation. Then we went back to Florie's house, cooked the birds, made some homemade cranberry sauce and backed up all the other foods (including Tiramisu) that she had already made the day before and that morning. We arrived back at my place just on time. Had some before dinner cocktails and then reheated everything and feasted. We even said what we were thankful for in full Thanksgiving tradition. There were 8 people there and I was the only one who had ever celebrated Thanksgiving before. Everyone had a great time. The cranberry sauce was a huge success and it seemed to me like some of them were planning on making it for themselves they liked it so much. After dinner we returned to the living room where we play a bit of Charades and some Taboo and everyone laughed uproariously the whole time. It was the perfect Thanksgiving and was even more special because I had not been expecting to have one this year. Florie was the sole reason it happened and she was super excited the whole time saying how this was her first time cooking for Thanksgiving and it reminded her of Christmas. I know she enjoyed it and I think a part of the reason she did it may have been for me, so I could have a Thanksgiving, which is really sweet and I deeply appreciate it. French Thanksgiving was more than I could've asked for.

Rosetta: A French Thanksgiving

Today I had two hours of class in the morning and two hours of class in the afternoon. The two hours in the morning consisted of having 21 students individually spend 5 minutes describing their internships to me. Everyone was pretty much the same and I had already spent quite a deal of time talking to students about this subject so it was very boring. But at least it went quickly. I was in charge of grading the students on a 1-10 scale. The highest score I gave was an 8 and the lowest a 3, I am not sure if that was what the teacher had in mind but she seemed to be in agreement with the scores I gave. My afternoon classes consisted of 4 groups of 4 students for 20 minutes each. The first 3 groups were a struggle. The students would come in and all sit in their chairs quietly in a row. And I had to try really hard to get even a couple of words out of them much less a whole sentence. But the last group came in and one girl sat in a chair at the edge of the room without a desk, and one girl sat ON the desk across from her and the other two students put themselves in a sort of semi-circle with them. So I went ahead and sat on the desk next to the girl and we all just chatted the whole time. We talked about school, movies, weekend plans, they asked me questions about me and I explained certain phrases when they came up (go back versus come back). It was so much fun, we laughed a lot and everyone spoke English. I left school today feeling just so happy. When I got home I did some paper work with the other assistants in order to get money to help pay for rent. It was stressful because it was in French and we didn't know all the right responses. We will see if what we put works out or not. Tomorrow we are celebrating Thanksgiving. This was completely unexpected for me. When my friends asked what I was going to do for Thanksgiving I had always just said, "nothing." But I mentioned that Thursday was Thanksgiving to Florie, the Spanish teacher, and she got super excited and invited herself over to our house for dinner. Then she invited her friends and started planning the meal. Today she bought all the food and made the mashed potatoes and some other Thanksgivingy foods. She is so happy about it and has done pretty much everything already. Tomorrow I am going to her house to cook the birds (they don't have Turkey here until December because it is a Christmas food but she bought a couple smaller birds of some sort), and finish up the cooking. We will bring everything here and eat a real Thanksgiving meal with my new friends. I am pretty happy about it.

Rosetta Shaw: Friday

Yesterday was Thursday. Today is Friday.
I had class at 8AM. And I will be doing that every other Friday from now on. The best part is that I volunteered for it and I am doing it outside my 12 working hours. I volunteered for several reasons, I like the teacher, I like to go above and beyond, I like to be useful, etc. Today in class the teacher, Elisabeth, told me that last year these students didn't have a right to the language assistant because they are doing a program where they only have class every other week and every other week they work. So she is very happy to have me. Which makes me want to help her out even more. So far, she seems like a very good teacher. She has a very good accent and is quite relaxed and sociable in class. The first class I had with her today had only two students and she just wanted them to talk. She wrote helpful words on the board and just let me talk to them. About halfway through she left us to go buy everyone a cup of coffee from the teacher's lounge. I am not sure if she did it so I could have some time alone with the students or if she just thought we would all enjoy a cup of coffee but either way I was tickled she did it. Elisabeth was wearing a small cross on her necklace and I asked her about it, because here they have laws stating that you can't wear any visible sign of religion in schools, crosses, head scarves, etc. She told me it was not allowed but she didn't really care. She is very nice and amusing and she offered to look up the best route for me to get to my doctor's appointment in Lille next week.
Tomorrow is Saturday and Sunday comes afterwards.

Rosetta: What A Day

Wow, so the day before yesterday was the kind of day were everything went a little bit wrong. But today is the kind of day where everything goes a little bit right! I had to wake up early to get to a 9AM class. On my walk to school, "Taylor, the Latte Boy" played on my iPod and put a huge grin on my face because, not only is the song just super funny, but it also reminds me of Savannah. So there I am walking down the street with this big smile and that made everyone I passed smile too. A good way to start the day. Class went fine, I did two more of those preparation oral exams. The first boy was fluent in English and had really prepared and blew me away, the second boy was a boy I knew already from a couple social gatherings and his English was at a very low level. Following the grading rubric Annie had given me I had to give him a very bad grade but I wished I could change it. I had this thought though and the next time I see him I am going to offer him an exchange, I will tutor him in English if he will tutor me in French. So then after class, I went to the teacher's lounge to pick up my stuff before coming home for a couple of hours before my next class. While I was in class I saw Mina, the spanish teacher who had promised to lend us her DVD player. So I asked her how she was and if we could still have the DVD player. She said that she would bring the DVD player tomorrow and then we proceeded to have a 30 minute conversation in which we talked about books, movies, Christmas planes and trains, and she told me my French had improved greatly and that a student had told her how nice the American assistant was! And then as I was walking out of the school, very happy and self-satisfied, I had the song "What a day for a daydream" running through my head, because it is a very upbeat cheerful song that I felt reflected my mood. I put my headphones in and skipped the song I had been listening to before, a techno dance type song, and the first song that came one was "What a day for a daydream"! So here I am at 11AM on my 4 hour lunch break, at noon we are going to hood up the internet box which finally arrived in the mail and today has already been a wonderful day!

Rosetta: Lovely

I had two hours of class today, which happily was interrupted by about an hour of class photo time. So I was in their class photo. I had such great kids today, it was a lot of fun. They were adorable and talkative and ready to participate in English with a smile. I wish all classes were like that. I ended up only being able to see 3 groups of 4 students for 20 minutes each. We talked about the photo the teacher had given them (to practice describing what they see) and after I felt like we had exhausted the subject I let them play the movie guessing game.

I have to go to the doctor next Tuesday morning at 8AM in Lille. This means I have to spend the night there, in a 20€ youth hostel. Talk about expensive. I am waiting to see if a friend of a friend in Lille will let me stay with her instead but on the other hand I guess having at least one youth hostel experience in Lille wouldn't kill me. The good news is that I have Monday off so I have the opportunity to go spend the weekend in Lille if I want. Or I can just spend the day Monday there with a girl I met at our last orientation.

It is getting cold here. Today I wore long-johns under my pants and a long sleeve shirt under my sweater, as well as gloves and a scarf. My face and ears were still pretty chilly on my walk to school, and my breath was visible. I hear that last year they got like 2 feet of snow here. I am excited for the snow. I will enjoy it, at least for a little while. They've started to put up lights and the center round-about has a field of fancy fake white christmas trees in the center. I can't wait for them to light up the town, I hear it is gorgeous.

Rosetta: Random Thoughts

There is a sign on the door of one of the shops here. It says in Egnlish, "If this store is closed please go to the store behind you, it is the same shop." And sure enough, you turn around and across the street is the same store. I'm not sure why.

There is this sign with rainbow block letters that keeps attracting my attention. Every time I see it I think, ooh what is that? It is a poster for the meeting of an Alzheimer's support group. I have been curious about this sing at least three times now, maybe I should go to the meeting.

Today in class a boy asked me i had tried Comté (a french cheese). A girl then informed him that they don't have cheese in America... or mussels.

I was at home alone today so I figured it would be a good time to vacuum and mop. About 10 minutes later both my roommates came home for lunch and our landlady's nephew stopped by (I was of course in my pajamas). Oh, and then the vacuum bag was full so I had to sweep and couldn't vacuum the stairs.

Laurent, my English teacher, was running at dusk and caught a twig to the eye. He came to class with the white of his eye entirely bright red. It looked very bad but he assured the glass that it didn't hurt anymore and didn't affect his vision but that it would stay red for a while... like a bruise.

Not once have I heard, 'this is how we used the English assistant last year.' I'm not sure why but I have heard that they did not have a great experience with their language assistants. I still wonder why everyone is acting like this is the first time they've worked with a language assistant.

I borrowed the film Billy Eliot from the library. I don't think I've seen it since I saw it with my grandparents in the theatre. I was happy because in theatres it was rated PG13 so I got to see it but when it came out on film it was rated R. So I got to see an R rated movie.

Last night I went to volleyball practice with my roommates. It is a community group that has an instructor and is open to the public. Afterwards they were going to go to a bar for a drink so I came home alone. It was 10 o'clock so I put on my pajamas and went downstairs to make dinner (I had not wanted to eat before volleyball but we ended pretty late). As I was headed downstairs my roommate came in, they had decided to have dinner at our house. My two roommates and 4 boys from volleyball. So I hung with them in my pj's and we made pasta, Surprise Soirée.

Mandarin oranges and Petit Écolier cookies (cookies with a layer of chocolate on top) are my new vices.

I counted 10 different kinds of Coke (vanilla, cherry, zero, light etc) and one Pepsi, but I was unable to find a single Rootbeer.

Rosetta: Last Minute

Okay, so today I arrived about 15 minutes early for my 1:00 class. It was a class with Annie so I was expecting to have a lesson plan all laid out for me like last time and I thought I'd have a couple of minutes to look it over. I waited 15 minutes in the teacher's lounge for Annie to come in and give me the lesson plan (last time it was waiting for me in my box but since it wasn't there this time I figured she'd hand deliver it). At 1 o'clock Annie comes in and says, 'Ah, there you are, the students are waiting.' She then brought me to her class room, handed me a course outline and 5 students and we all went to the classroom next store to work. It turned out the lesson plan she had designed this time was very similar to last time's: review the alphabet, practice some new memorized phrases, and do a role play (this time as someone leaving a message for someone staying at a hotel). The lesson plan lasted almost the entire hour, we had about 5 minutes at the end in which we played hang man (to practice the alphabet of course). The second hour was with 6 students doing the same work. We finished the assigned work in half an hour. I was not going to let the students play hang man for 30 minutes to I made them right their own role play using the phrases they had memorized. That worked well and left us with about 5 minutes at the end for hang man. After that I had another two hours of classes with Annie during which time we watched a 3 minute video as a class. She gave the students 2 minutes for notes and then let them watch the video again. After that she gave them 15 minutes to write up a summary of the video. Than she sent me one at a time to have a dry run of the test they will have on a similar video in 2 months. This is a serious test and I was given a grading criteria sheet, an organized summary of the movie that they should be able to get somewhat close to, and a couple of questions ('ask them questions like these'). I was not allowed to help them during their summary and I was to ask the questions as they were written because they had studied them (even though the grammar was wrong on a couple of them). I was supposed to have each student for 20 minutes. In the end I only talked to 3 students in the 2 hours I was with Annie (all that time watching the video and preparing etc.) I was unable to talk to a student for more than 15 minutes, although for one it was less than 10, because they could not answer the questions in detail and their summaries were short. I was supposed to be able to have a conversation with them for the rest of the 20 minutes about the film but as I could not help them with words and I wasn't supposed to tell them answers, if they got stuck or didn't know, we ran out of things to talk about very quickly. After that I had an hour with Laurent, he was giving a test and had told the students that they could ask me if they had any vocab questions. That was fairly easy except for when I didn't understand the question, their was more than one possible answer, or I couldn't think of a translation. I worked 5 hours today which leaves me only 7 for the rest of the week. However, this week I will only work 10 hours because that is how the schedule worked out. I am halfway done! Laurent asked me to write some transcripts of 5 minute video clips since I have some unaccounted for hours, this sounds like good fun to me and I am excited to get starts.

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I met another American assistant last weekend. She came to my house with the Spanish assistant from the town over to spend the weekend with us (their town is very quiet and boring on the weekends). I was not very interested in meeting her because, as I put it, I have enough American friends already. But I was surprised by how much I liked her and how relieving it was to fall back into my old pattern of banter. It really does change my communication style to be living with people from other countries and I didn't realize it until I met Katie and we struck up an easy relationship because we have such a similar cultural background. And I thought I had it bad with not knowing my lesson plan until right before class but Katie says that she shows up to class now knowing anything and the teachers give her a topic, for example the social security system in America, and then she is expected to talk at the kids on that topic for the whole hour while the teacher watches. It makes my job seem like a piece of cake.

Rosetta: Books Are My Comfort Food

I just got back from a very discouraging two hours. This was my last two classes before the three day weekend and I had already done the whole group thing plenty of times to feel comfortable. I start off with 'Hello, my name is Rosetta and I like chocolate chip cookies. Can you tell me your name and something you like?" I think this is a good way for me to hear their names and learn something about them. Well, all that is well and good but todays students were a lower level and as the teacher had given me the same directions: 'just talk about whatever you want,' I had prepared some topics of conversation as well as a couple of games to get the students talking. However, the students were unable to understand even the most rudimentary phrases and if I asked a student to say something they spent a good amount of time hemming and hawing and je-ne-sais-pas-ing before finally saying one or two key words to try to get their meaning across. All in all there was a lot of silent waiting time and a lot of me saying the phrase to help the student out. To be fair the first three groups weren't terrible, they tried to participate and seemed to enjoy the activities even if they didn't understand everything, but the last group I could barely get to say three words in a row and they would just sit blankly if they didn't understand. Although, I still don't know if the problem was that they didn't understand, that they didn't know what to answer, or if they didn't know how to say their answer in English because they would not talk to me (sometimes they would whisper to each other in French to get help). It was very frustrating, however I kept going for the full 20 minutes. I talked to the teacher afterwards and he explained that these were lower level students and agreed with me that further groups like that would not be helpful to the students. He told me not to worry and that next time he will give me a live of phrases to go over with them. As in make them all repeat the same phrases until they get them right. That sounds very boring to me, however much more useful than them staring at me blankly the whole time. So I was pretty discouraged and worn out from struggling to communicate for two hours because I have to talk to the students in English even if they have difficulty understanding. But luckily I am now done with class for almost 4 whole days (the rest of today, Friday, Saturday, and Monday morning). I went to the library after class to cheer myself up. I got a book in French that seems interesting, a book I have read in English and in French on tape in French (for comprehension) and a movie for tonight with my roommates (in French). So I am feeling reasonably cheered and still motivated to try again with the students so that is good. Oh, and I'm not sure if I've mentioned this but there was a girl at school who would simply say 'Rosetta' every time she saw me. Finally, I asked her was her name was and the next times she said 'Rosetta' I responded, 'Margot' in the same tone. Today for the first time she greeted me with 'Hello'.

Rosetta: First Week of School

Okay, so this is by no means my 'first' week of school, but it definitely feels like that. Up until now my teaching has been sporadic at best but finally I have a real (if somewhat fluid) schedule and this was my first week attempting to do a full 12 hours (although it looks like it will be more like 10 hours this week). Monday was fabulous. I was with Annie and she had a group of 10 students for 2 hours, which she split in half, giving me 6 students for 1 hour and 4 for the other. Annie was very clear that when her students are will me they are to be working! She wrote a lesson plan for me that was three steps: review alphabet by spelling names as if they are working as a receptionist and taking down peoples names, review the phrases the students have memorized regarding the hotel industry, and do a role play whereby one student  'makes a reservation' and the other student 'takes the reservation'. I was very impressed by how this took almost exactly one hour both times. I had the students start by telling me their own names and then spelling them and then I went on to spell a couple of the names Annie had given me as examples and we reviewed the tricky letters (the vowels, g and j, h, x, y, z, and r). After that the phrases went pretty well because the students had mostly already memorized them ("the hotel overlooks the sea" "I am sorry but we have no more vacancies"), I read the phrase in French and they told me the phrase in English. For the role play I had them work in groups and I wrote the pertinent information on the board and had the 'receptionist' sit will their back to the board so they could not see what the other person was telling them. I was very happy with how the classes went and I felt like we made a lot of progress. The next day I only had one class with Marylise and she had me stand at the front of the class with her while she corrected a worksheet she had given the students. My only use here was saying the words again with 'an American accent' because she teaches British English. Today I had another two hours with Annie during which I had 10 and 8 students each for one hour. We talked about their internships (a subject that is now quite boring for me as it is always the same, "I worked during July and August at a hotel/restaurant, as a cook/receptionist") with very little variation. After that we worked on describing pictures ("The plant is in the bottom right-hand corner." "The table is behind the plant.") These students were a bit harder to focus but the class still went fairly well (except for the construction happening in the hall which made it very difficult to hear what the kids were saying). After that I had two hours with Laurent. His goal is to expose the students to conversational English and thus I am given free reign. Having tired of talking ad naseum about the students internships I had prepared games. We played 'Two truths and one lie' wherein the students take turns telling three 'facts' about themselves and the other try to guess the lie. I had also prepared cards with the name of popular movies which I handed out and made the students tell the stories so that the others could guess the name. This worked well and was quite fun for everyone however since Laurent gives me groups for only 20 minutes we do not have time for everyone to talk very much. I have 3 more hours of class tomorrow with Laurent so I am going to try to prepare something that will at least entertain me (and get the students speaking English of course!) So there you have it, my very detailed account of my first week of teaching.

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On an un-teaching related subject, I found out that there was a theatre class for adults so I stopped by yesterday. When they say adults they just mean not the little kids and not the teens because the class consisted of 5 (usually 6 but one was absent) boys ages 19-21 who all had trucked in from the neighboring town where they attend a school for the handicapped. So as you might imagine I was a bit let down by the turnout because I had been hoping to make some fun actor type friends through this class. I had an okay time there, we did some improv games however the teacher set them up so they always ended up with the players arguing. For example there was one game where two people introduce a third person and that person can agree or disagree with any of the facts given about them, however this only led to all three people arguing about 'whether or not Jack likes horses.' All in all, not the best improv class I have ever been to. I might go back because my roommate, Maria, was there and said she might go back. So if she goes, I will probably go to solely because it is good for me to get out of the house in the evening and speak and listen to French, but I do wish the classes had turned out more to my liking.

Meg: What's Your Sign?

That's right... I'm back teaching!  Today was my first day back after the break, although I was supposed to start again yesterday.  My train in Nice got cancelled due to bad weather, however, and I couldn't get home until yesterday, far after when I was supposed to teach my class.  Thankfully though the teacher was super understanding and not upset with me, which was great, because I was super nervous about going back today after be absent for three whole days.  (I skipped Thursday and Friday to stay in Nice with my friends.)

Anyway, the order of business for the day was to use horoscopes to teach the children how to describe their personalities, something I thought was quite clever and fun.  I had some teen magazines that I brought with my from the US that happened to have horoscopes in them, so I brought them along, although, as it turned out, I didn't really need them.  The teacher gave me a piece of paper with instructions on how the students should get into pairs and practice having a dialogue about their horoscopes.  I didn't realize that they already had some in their books, so I had everyone in the class tell me their signs and then had each sign's horoscope read out loud by someone in the class.  It was pretty funny, actually, because, of course, they didn't know all the words, so I had to come up with some creative ways to rephrase what the horoscopes said.  My favorite was teaching them what a crush is.  Since I don't know the word for crush in French (I purposely didn't look words up before the lesson so that I might be able to break my habit of translating for the students) I had to explain what it meant in simple English.  This is harder than you would think!  Seriously, right now, pretend that you have to explain to someone what a crush is with a very limited vocabulary, and then pretend that it's a group of giggly middle schoolers.  Yeah, not easy, but pretty entertaining.  I ended up (after having failed a couple of times) using celebrities to describe crushes.  Zac Efron, to be exact, because I figured the kids knew who he was, and there was a picture of him on the horoscope page, so I thought of him first.  It was pretty funny and I think the kids enjoy my silly animated attempts to make them understand.  I'm still not quite sure they got the concept, but I hope they did, and if not, at least I provided them with some entertainment for the day.

After giving the students a couple minutes to practice talking to each other about dialogues I had them stand in front of the class as do it.  (As the teacher told me I should.)  I was actually very impressed at how well they did, I only had to correct a few mispronunciations and a few sentence structures.  (Not Ju-lee, July ect,)
I really enjoyed today, which was a great way to start back on the job.  I only have one other hour of teaching this week to do, partially because Friday is another day off.  It's slightly frustrating, but I think I'm going to ask to sit in on classes, and hopefully that will up my hours of not sitting at home on my computer.  In fact, the observing I've done has already helped because today the teacher was able to tell me to do the assignment the way she had done during a class I sat in on.  Hopefully more teachers will allow me to sit in and watch because I think I will learn a lot that way!




        

Rosetta: "No tips needed"

The Bibliotèque Media (library) is located right behind my bank/post office, that is to say about a five minute walk from my house. It is a cute building with all the books and movies I'll need to keep me occupied during all the time I will have not working. It also has a small section of audio books of which I plan to take full advantage. Listening to a book on tape is one of my favorite ways to practice my comprehension (other than meeting some awesome people who want to talk to me in French but that will come too I am sure). The door to get into the library is easy to close from the outside but a bit harder to close from the inside because it has one of those push bars to open and so to close it from the inside you have to sort of slam it past the 'cobalt' (the little device that keeps the door closed but move out of the way when you turn the doorknob). Because of this, when I am leaving the library I always hold the door open for people entering so that I can close the door from the outside for them (where there is a proper handle so you don't have to slam the door). This ends up being a tad bit awkward however if the people are a couple steps from the door because then I end up holding the door very conspicuously (especially if they walk slowly as a lot of the older population here does). So the other day I was holding the door very awkwardly as this old couple walked up to the door and the women went in the man held out his hand to me. I realized too late that he was pretend offering me tip. I wish I had been quicker on the uptake so I could've said something clever along the lines of I don't need a tip. But by the time I figured out why he'd done that he was already inside and I was closing the door for them. Oh well, next time I will know what is going on.

Rosetta: Work Not Play

I got my 'official' schedule. I will have Fridays off! Sometimes. If I ended being needed on the occasional Friday I will work but in most cases I will have a three day weekend. Thursday was my first day back after break and I had three hours of class. One hour with a part time English teacher, Anne-Marguerite, and two hours with my English teacher, Laurent. Anne-Marguerite had requested me because she was holding a special one hour session in addition to her normal class time because her students are going to have a month of to do an internship and then a couple of months later they have there big exams. So she had asked if they'd be interested in an extra class and they'd agreed. She invited me along so the student could practice explaining what menu items were to me in English (a task that will be required of them on their exam). This was a good idea in principle but in reality was a huge waste of time. Five of the ten students were absent and the rest were unresponsive and unprepared. Granted, it was 9 in the morning the day after a two week vacation, but having me there would've been a lot more beneficial if they'd known any of the dishes they were meant to explain. These kids didn't even know how to explain the dished in French much less English. We spend the hour with me selecting one kid after another and asking, 'can you tell me what the quiche lorraine is?' or whatever dish I happened to pick from the list. And then the kid would struggle vainly to answer, sometimes the other kids would through out words like 'eggs' or 'butter' but in the end the teacher ended up telling me what the dish was. I think if I had been in charge of the class and they had acted like that I would've given them a couple of minutes to prepare an explanation for each dish (even if they were supposed to have already done that it was obviously necessary). And, since they were supposed to comport themselves as if they were waiters and I was the customer, I think it would've helped if we'd made them stand next to me while I sat instead of the other way around. My two hours with Laurent went a bit better. He gave me groups of 3 students for 20 minutes at a time to talk to in English about whatever we wanted. I took some time to prepare the classroom and wrote 'helpful phrases' on the board such as 'what does that mean?' 'Can you repeat that?' 'I don't understand.' Because I had had difficulty with getting my groups to express these ideas in English in my prior experiences. But in fact, the groups I ended up with all spoke English very well and had little difficulty understanding me. We talked about vacation and internships and future goals and the 20 minutes went by quickly. The only down side was that I ended up with 4 groups over the 2 hours I was with Laurent and I tired of asking the same questions over and over, I even forgot at one point if I'd already posed 'that' question to 'this' group or not. But one of the things I learned at orientation was, if nothing else, make sure the kids leave the room with a smile on there faces. I think I accomplished that, especially with the last group which was a bit rowdy and laughing a lot of the time, but I know that they enjoyed themselves and they did participate and speak English so my job there was done. Next week I will have class with Annie, another full-time English teacher, and she had meticulously planned everything I will do, and unlike Laurent, she wants her students to see my sessions as work not play.

Rosetta: La Nausée (Sartre Joke)

I woke up this morning feeling very light headed and nauseous. The nausea stuck with me the rest of day. However, I still ventured out of the house for the planned lunch with Laurent. He picked me up in front of the school because he didn't know where I lived and he drove me to Berck (the neighboring town) where we walked along the beach and through the small town. Then we went to his house in Verton and had lunch with his wife, Cecil, and son, Benoît. Cecil was very nice and easy to talk to. She had lost of pertinent and interesting questions to ask me and so she kept the conversation going very well. Benoît (20) spoke only when spoken to and generally was very quiet. We had a 'typic french' lunch consisting of a sliced tomato and sliced ham sausage for the 'entrée' (in this case meaning the entrance to the meal or in English hors d'oeuvre), the main course was a 'poupiette' which was some kind of meat hash wrapped in a beef filet wrapped with a strip of fat and all tied up in a string, this was accompanied by a vegetable mush that was pretty decent. After of course we had a cheese plate and then dessert which was baked apples and was very good. After that we had coffee and the Ferrero Rochers which a brought them. When I presented them with the Ferrero Rochers they had teasingly responded by saying that they didn't like chocolate. But again, they seemed to have been the perfect choice. If you ever are wondering what will go over well I recommend little chocolates of some sort since there will most likely be a coffee after dinner and this will present the perfect opportunity to eat your chocolates (or cookies would probably be good too). During coffee there was a knock on the door and Laurent answered to two little kids who said 'un bonbon ou un sort' (a candy or a spell) so he gave them some typical Halloween candy. I was glad to see this tradition respected even in France however it seem to be only little kids and only during the afternoon.