Time for the holidays!

Yesterday was a packed day to say the least. Again, Thursdays are the only days I truly work all day in France – with six classes to teach from 9-5. But yesterday was also a day that I also had to teach 2 lessons myself and give individual pronunciation help to another class, while 3 classes I was still introducing myself. So it was the busiest day I have yet to have actively teaching here. 

I’d say that it went alright. I absolutely love helping students with their pronunciation; I have always been extremely interested in phonetics. Plus, it helps that these students are the ones that are the most advanced in English, so they are extremely motivated and curious on how to sound more American. They are a joy to work with. 

During the two classes in the afternoon that I taught, I used the same lesson but for two different levels: one terminale (last year at the high school) and one premier (second to last year). You would think that the terminale students would understand the activity more easily than the premier students, but this was not the case at all. The activity was to play the game two truths and a lie, but slightly different. Students were able to write out their phrases first, put them on the board, and answer questions posed by the other students to try and figure out which sentence was false. Then they got to vote on which phrase was a lie. In my first group, I had 5 very shy students who were quite confused on the rules of the game. But once they figured them out, they seemed to enjoy playing, though they kept speaking in a lot of French in trying to make up their phrases/questions. I didn’t mind this, as they were still focused at the task at hand.

The second group I had couldn’t have been more opposite. I had 12 students who knew exactly what we were doing and understood the activity, but were constantly just carrying on conversations in French during it, not caring at all. I had to tell them numerous times that if they weren’t speaking English, they shouldn’t be speaking at all. This didn’t make an impression on them. When the bell rang at the end of the lesson, I blocked them from leaving and told them that their behavior was unacceptable today, and if they wanted to profit from my knowledge and help this year, they were going to have to act better than they did today. I am not entirely sure if they understood every word of my lecture at the end, but I think that their shrugged shoulders and muttered “thank you”s and “bye-bye”s with guilty eyes as they walked out the door proved they understood enough. 

But for now, it is the holidays! That is how they say it here, as well as how Amy says it, so I am trying to assimilate myself. But in my mind it still is amazing that I have only been working for two weeks (not even that) and am granted a two week vacation. Last night, Amy and I decided to celebrate by going into town for dinner. We went to a crêperie that we have been dying to try for a while, where I got a salmon/cream/lemon juice crepe for dinner and then a scoubidou crepe for dessert (which included vanilla ice cream, nutella and speculoos* cookie crumbles). Yes, that is pronounced like the famous, crime-solving dog. Pretty awesome.

Savory salmon crepe. It was interesting.

Scoubidou crepe = PURE HAPPINESS

Thursday also marked one month of me being here in France. Crazy to think it’s been that long already, time has really been flying! I will be home again in 7 or 8 months**… still have so much to see, do and experience – I can’t wait to continue on this amazing journey.

Today, we are taking a sort of lazy day as our first day on vacation - went grocery shopping; sitting right now at Pizz'Burger uploading pictures, blogging and catching up on American TV shows; planning on eating in tonight, reading and relaxing. Not a bad way to spend our time before 10 days packed full of travel starting on Sunday. Where are we going you might ask?? Stay tuned for my next post....

*Speculoos is a cookie that is very popular here. It is very sweet and has a gingerbread like flavor. (Amy wants me to note that it is not a cookie, but a biscuit. Oh, the difference between American and British English)

**I am still not sure as I still don’t have a return ticket… but looking at the end of May!