Friday 12/16: What a Great Day!!

Once again I woke up to the sound of high winds, whipping the palm tree around outside and rattling the shutters. It was, of course, pouring rain as well. Since I had an early class today, it was still dark when I got. I can’t say I felt to eager to venture outside…

However, I had a wonderful class with Emmanuelle's class of 10-11 yr olds (they are the best-behaved class) and we had fun talking about differing Christmas customs in the US vs. France, learning Christmas vocab, and singing together! That was my last class (the other three were canceled), so I headed downstairs where I was hailed by the CE2s (8 yr olds) who were playing board games.

Photo: Playing board games with the CE2s

Also, they all wanted to show me the many snowflakes that they’d cut out…probably they’ll spend the entire winter break cutting out snowflakes! Their parents are going to kill me… Since I didn’t really have any plans for the rest of the day, I ended up playing games them for a while.

Later in the morning, I went up to my most challenging class (where I normally would have been teaching English) and chatted with the teacher and gave the kids some Christmas coloring sheets, which I gave to all my classes.

For lunch today, we had a big potluck in the staff room. All the teachers brought in a different thing to share (I brought my apple cake) and we ate around the long table. It was so much fun—I really enjoyed it! We sat around and talked and ate and drank. There was so much food!!

Photo: Our potluck lunch (that's Emmanuelle in the back...)

At the end, I passed out little invitations to a dinner at my house on Dec 27^th. I figure that I may as well invite them all over while my host family is out of town! It’ll give me something to do and I would love to get to know the teachers better. I’m not sure how many are coming yet, but I asked them to rsvp, so we’ll see…

After lunch, I decided to stay for the rest of the day. In most classrooms the students were just playing board games, coloring, or hanging out. It was a really relaxed (albeit noisy) atmosphere. At 2:00pm, the classes of CM1 and CM2 (students aged 9-11) all congregated in the entry hall to sing. They sang some traditional songs that they’ve been learning in their music class, and then they sang some Christmas carols!

Photo: The Christmas "Concert"

I was excited that they sang verses in English! For the song “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” (ah, that one again!), they sang in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese!

Photo: Some of my CM2s

To see a video of the songs they sang: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5cGasggd8Y&feature=youtu.be

I went upstairs to Margot’s classroom to see what they were up to and ended up playing Connect-4 with a group of boys. It was a new & improved version, though, which allowed you to either put in a piece at the top (like normal), or poke out one at the bottom! I impressed them all with my talent…

Photo: Pablo playing a game with the kids

If you want to see how the new connect-4 works, check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkJsWFSbT5k&feature=youtu.be

Pablo and I hung out for a while in the staff room, making snowflakes and talking. I taught him how to make paper cranes and then we helped distribute the Christmas snack to the CM1s (Chocolate milk, croissant, pain au chocolat, and a mandarin orange). After handing out the food, I thought my head was going to explode…the noise was intense for a such a small room, packed with hyper children!

When the bell rang, the kids all went running off in all directions, headed home for their vacation. I hung out for a little while in the staff room, cleaning up from the lunch and talking with the other teachers. There were quite a few leftovers and I brought some home to share with my host family.

I had so much fun just hanging out with the students and teachers today! It’s great to finally be getting to know them. I already have plans to hang out with several of them over the holidays, so that’ll be great!

When I got home, the storm was still raging outside. I was really tired and headed up to my bedroom to read for a while. Of course, I ended up deciding to take a nap… (yes, I know, Maria…it’s inevitable) When it came close to the time that I would need to leave for folk dance, I just couldn’t do it. I was too tired (and I’m still sick) and I couldn’t imagine spending several hours dancing. I love going, but I couldn’t face it tonight. Not to mention that the thought of going outside in weather like this would be most unpleasant. So, I called Aurélie and informed her that she didn’t need to pick me up tonight.

Instead, I helped Catherine make dinner, I watched a bit of “Dr. Quinn” wih Margot, we ate dinner, we watched the news (which talked about the huge storms coming in from the Atlantic), and I spent the rest of the evening on the computer and reading!