Thursday 9/30: Battling Homesickness with Pizza and ‘Ghost’

Photo: My bedroom!

I spent the day at school, observing more classes. In the morning I sat in on Bruno’s class of 7-8 year olds. It started out with music class, which was somewhat hilarious—not the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard… :p That was followed by a grammar lesson, but I spent the time helping a little Turkish boy who doesn’t speak French. Some of the time he used a computer program that taught French, some of the time he was supposed to make sentences with little pieces of paper that had words on them. It was interesting having me (who doesn’t know perfect French, or have a real French accent) helping him learn French! But, we had fun!

I brought a sack lunch to school, so I ate with the other teachers in the staff room. They are all really welcoming and I am starting to remember most of their names! Next time I’m going to bring more to eat, because a yogurt, a pear, and a piece of baguette isn’t really enough…

During the afternoon, I accompanied Margot’s class to the same big building that I ended up in the evening that I arrived. They were there to learn pelote, a traditional game in this area, which is played with a hard ball and either some sort of paddle or a bare hand. The ball is about the size of a tennis ball (that’s what the kids were using) and it is hit against a wall and the opponent has one bounce before they have to hit it back against the wall again. That’s all they learned during their first session, but I’m sure it’s a little more complicated. It was incredibly warm inside the building and I was getting really sleepy and bored. I think pelote would be more interesting to watch if it was being played by people who actually knew how.

I had tea with Catherine in the afternoon and a little later I hung out with Ralf and Margot while Catherine was at a city council meeting (she’s on the city council).

For dinner, we ordered pizzas! Yep, they have more than one pizza restaurant that will even deliver! I had a pizza with mushrooms, much to the surprise of Catherine who reminded me that I informed her that the only thing I didn’t like was mushrooms. I had to explain that for some reason I only like them on pizza…and I have no idea why. Oh well! Here each person gets their own pizza (they are super thin), which is pretty cool. That made it easy, since I am the only vegetarian. I was happy to discover that they just cut the pizza in quarters and pick it up, instead of eating it the normal French way with a knife and fork. I feel very dyslexic when attempting to eat pizza with a knife and fork…

After dinner, Catherine, Ralf, and I watched the American film, GHOST. They had the dvd and Catherine wanted to see it and I was definitely up for watching a movie in English! I liked it (Whoopi Goldberg was hilarious!!) and I really feel like Patrick Swayze looks like Neil Patrick Harris… maybe it’s just me.

It’s nice living with the Bergfelds. They are very good about including me, which definitely helps with the homesickness.