Thursday 10/6: Marbles, Geography Quizzes, and Running in the Rain

I spent today in a class of 8-9 year olds—taught by the director of the school (Bruno). He teaches on Thursdays & Fridays and another woman teaches on Mondays & Tuesdays. They started out in music class (these are the same kids I was with the last time they went to music class!), which is pretty cute. Today Pablo was in the same class, so that was nice to have someone to talk with occasionally. Mostly we just observed. We also helped Samet, the little Turkish boy, with his French. He cannot really participate in all the subjects because he just doesn’t understand what the teacher is saying (or what they are doing), so he does other activities on the side. We tried to help him with pronunciation and reading—I think he got some of it, but mostly he was just guessing. It’s hard because the teacher really doesn’t have lots of time to spend with him—there are 25 other students who need to be taught as well!

I ate lunch at home (leftover spaghetti) with Catherine, then relaxed a bit in my room until it was time for me to go back to school at 1:30pm. It’s so nice to have a rest after lunch and to not feel hurried. At all.

Photo: The Kitchen!

The afternoon was more observing. Pablo didn’t come back after lunch (I’m not sure why), so I was all by myself. By 3:30pm I was really getting bored and I asked Bruno if I could go home and use the time to prepare my courses for next week. He said yes, so I happily headed home! I (of course) had tea with Catherine before getting down to any work. ;)

When Margot got home from school, she came in to show me the marbles that she had won during the day. Every day she comes to show them to me and have me tell her which one I think is the prettiest. A lot of the kids have little sacks of marbles that they bring to school so they can play marbles during their breaks.

Photo: Margot and her 1,200 marbles

After we decided which marble was the nicest, I showed Margot a geography quiz that I do online to practice my knowledge of world countries. It’s pretty simple—there’s a blank map and you have to type the names of all the countries into a box at the top and it automatically places the names onto the map. There are 196 countries (currently, since the recent addition of South Sudan), so that’s a lot of names to remember! Especially the spellings (Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Tajikistan, etc.)! After I took the quiz, Margot had her turn. I had to type for her because the names had to be in English and she only knows them in French. She ended up getting 30 countries (not bad for a first time, especially since she’s only ten), but when it gave all the answers, she kept saying that she knew a lot more. I told her to study a bit and she could do it again this weekend. She told me I should teach geography instead of English… :p

When we’d finished taking our quizzes, I decided to go for a run. Since Ralf showed me a nice route through the woods, I headed directly there. However, it isn’t very long, so I ended up running it twice so that it would take 30-minutes. I found a set of monkey-bars by the path (I think they’re for people who do certain work-out routines), so I practiced my pull-ups. On my way home (about 5 minutes from the house), the skies opened up and it started pouring. I was absolutely drenched within a minute—but it felt great! I just kept running, letting the rain and sweat run down my face. It made me think of Oregon, except here it seems to rain a lot harder, but for a short period of time. When I arrived home I took a hot shower and hung my clothes (and shoes!) up to dry.

Photo: Soaking wet after my run...

We had rice and spinach for dinner (and they fish, I had cheese), which was delicious. I’m used to eating a lot of rice at home (either in a burrito or a stir fry), so I was missing it. Catherine also made enough so I can have rice and beans tomorrow for lunch. YAY!! I miss Mexican food!

Photo: The Living Room/Dining Room

This evening I watched a program on TV with Catherine that was about people who have weird obsessions that sort-of take over their lives. They were kind-of random: fancy cars, a radio host, boxing, a boys band… all of them were ridiculous. The one obsessed with the radio host was the most crazy—she had a boyfriend, but all she could think about was meeting this radio host. She even got the host’s name tattooed on her foot! At the end, she was trying to convince her boyfriend that they should move to Paris so she could be closer to the radio host. Absolutely nuts. Even though the TV programs can be interesting sometimes, mostly I watch them to hang out with Catherine and practice my French. It’s good for me to listen to it on the TV—and, of course, Catherine and I talk during all the commercial breaks! That’s fun, especially when there are crazy people on the program who we can laugh at!

Tomorrow I don’t have to be at the school until 11:30am, when I will attend the meeting where I find out my hours! I’m really looking forward to finally starting!