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?