Not too shabby

Just got in from seeing “La Chance de ma vie,” a comedy about Julien, a marriage counselor who is jinxed when it comes to women. Even though at times they talked really fast and it was difficult to understand some things, it was really funny and had a great soundtrack. It was a nice way to end a fairly busy week.

I had off on Monday so I slept most of the day. On Tuesday I had my afternoon classes before I went to my neighbors for dinner. We had the French version of chili – struggling, but Corinne gets an A for effort – and la galette des Rois or “King cake” celebrating the Epiphany. It’s a combination of puff pastry and frangipane, baked to a crispy buttery perfection. Inside the King cake is “la fève” or a little porcelain figurine, and whoever is lucky enough to get the fève in their slice gets the crown and is King or Queen for the day. Emmanuel got the fève (must be the name), but everyone got a crown because Paul and Émeline had saved theirs from years past.

On Wednesday, I had the day off so Qunxing and I went to Dieppe. I never made it last Sunday, but I saw the weather was supposed to be nice so I took advantage of the extra free time. I couldn’t have asked for a nicer day, and that’s reflected in the fact that pretty much every one of the pictures I took that day looks like it could be a postcard.

Thursday afternoon at the collège I attempted to teach the 6ème how to tell time. Their teacher had yet to do it because she didn’t have a clock, and now I understand why she wasn’t exactly eager to get to it. They had a hard enough time telling time in French, let alone trying to understand it in English. I thought it would be pretty clear for them, especially since the American way of telling time is less complicated, but after a half hour they still weren’t getting it. In my last class of the day I had a 4ème from one of my Tuesday classes come and ask if he could sit in with the 6ème because he wanted to learn more. Normally if a kid asked that you’d think he’s a nerd, but he really isn’t very good at English, and it’s not hard to understand why considering his classmates make it impossible to learn.

That night I had fondue bourguignonne at Sylviane and Jean-François’s house. Fondue bourguignonne is different from “regular” fondue in that you dip beef in hot oil rather than bread in cheese, and you have a variety of dipping sauces. I think that Jean-François and Sylviane were both genuinely amazed (and maybe slightly disgusted) at how much I ate. I was hungry and it was that good. I lost track of how many times I heard “oh la la” and “I’ve been beaten” from Jean-François, and from both of them “I’ve never seen anyone eat so much.” Sylviane recounted the spectacle the next morning to the students, telling them that she and her husband are thinking of entering me in a contest.

Friday night I went to a 20^th birthday party for one of my students. It was smaller than the last one so it was easier to talk to everyone and make the rounds of bisous. For one of her gifts, she got tickets to Barcelona – nice friends huh?

Say "la vie"

Even though the music video is terrible I really like the song. After a combination of OneRepublic, this article, and a Friday night at home, I’ve realized that I’ve regressed a little and let myself slip into some sort of “comfort zone;” something that I set out to avoid when I started this adventure. I went to a graduation ceremony and party at the lycée by myself tonight, and it really was weird being the only English speaking person in a gymnasium full of people. I did get the chance to talk to some of my students and teachers, but being there was still a little overwhelming. While at that point I was looking over the metaphorical edge, in terms of taking full advantage of my surroundings, point number 2 of the article has really made me reflect on my experiences so far. In the beginning, I started off strong and surprised myself at how I was breaking out of the shell that I’ve managed to build over the years. But now I realize I’ve done what every person in a new and unfamiliar situation does – I found a group and I’m sticking with it. Yet after the commencement ceremony tonight, I’ve realized that some things need to change. The weather is supposed to be nice this weekend, so Sunday I’m going back up to the coast to visit Dieppe – one of the cities on the “Bucket List” I made before I came back. Time to do work.

On Tuesday I had a couple new groups of kids for the first (and unfortunately last) time. I learned that I’ve got a nickname circulating: “BG” because “tu es un beau gosse.” Hey, I’ll take ‘em where I can get ‘em. The kids were all really enthusiastic, which after seeing how things can be sometimes with their real teacher, is a nice change of pace. Wednesday afternoon I had a class by myself because the teacher never showed up. After waiting for her in the hallway for about 5 minutes, I opened the classroom to let the students in and found that she had left her bag, laptop, projector, etc., on the desk, so I figured she was just running late. I sent a couple of students to go look for her, but they were unable to find her. Honestly, I was impressed at how long they paid attention and participated so late in the afternoon. After the first exercise though they did crash and burn, and with 10 minutes left in class I had to pull teeth and cut my losses. Thursday afternoon at the collège was fun as usual; I did a physical description crossword and several rounds of “Guess Who” with the 6èmes and watched different versions of “A Christmas Carol” with the 4èmes (tough, I know). Marianne, the 6èmes teacher asked if my timetable was going to change any time soon because she wants to put me with a different class. She was smiling while she said this but she commented that, “they come back to me and are like, ‘I hate you!’ They think I’m terrible.” I know that’s not the case because when I sat in on her classes even I enjoyed them, but I guess they prefer me because I'm something different and have given them candy.

While I didn’t end up booking my trip for the first part of winter break, I’m glad I held off this long because originally I had planned to go to Tunisia and Morocco - dodged a bullet there (literally) because now there are massive riots in Tunisia with people dying and things getting burnt.

But back to the ceremony earlier this evening. So the theme was “Gastronomy through the Ages.” They did a really nice job of decorating the gym with different booths from Neolithic and Egyptian times to the 1800s and even the future. Each booth featured a couple of different cocktails as well as a variety of fancy finger foods. Faculty, friends and family were all invited; one of my teachers said they were expecting around 500 people, which is a pretty big deal considering the event was in honor of at most 30 some students. Here are some photos of a couple of the booths:

Bon week-end à tous!

Who would've thought that Thursday would be the best day of the week

Well, it’s been a while, but nothing too out of the ordinary went on this past week. I don’t think I’d fully gotten over jet lag until Thursday since my series of half-hour afternoon naps that ended up lasting 4 hours kept messing things up.

Tuesday night I ate out with Sam, Alex and Liz at a restaurant in town that one of my teachers had recommended to me – La Tannerie. It was reasonably priced and the food was great, a starter, main dish and dessert was only around 15 €. It had a really nice interior too.

I had a couple of new classes this week at the lycée, the one group of students I have in another class, but the other two I’d never worked with any of the students before. Their teacher had warned me that their English wasn’t very good, and their French not much better, but I was able to improvise a couple of activities to get them talking since the only help she provided was that I should “talk about ‘selling’ vocabulary with them.”

I was really proud of my lessons at the collège this week, and the kids seemed to like them too. One of my teachers said, “My kids come back to me and they’re bilingual saying, ‘oh we’ve already done that with Matt.’” We worked on physical descriptions and after a PowerPoint with some pictures of people who look like their dogs (Google it and you’ll see what I mean) and superheroes, I had them draw Wanted posters of an imaginary criminal.

This weekend a group of us went out in Rouen for a round of “pub golf” to celebrate Alex’s 21st birthday. Usually you’re supposed to go to 18 different bars and get a drink at each (there are a bunch of rules apparently) but Rouen doesn’t have 18 bars so we settled for only 3 or 4 holes before heading to a club. People may have hated us as we disrupted traffic playing with a plastic golf set made for 4+ or because of our golf get-ups, but we had a good time.

Not too much planned for this week. My Monday tennis routine will start up again, but not sure yet of any side trips for the weekend. But speaking of trips, goal for the week: plan my trip for the first half of winter vacation.