Oof, it was hard to get up this morning. I would have given just about anything to have been able to sleep for a few more hours. I think all the cooking yesterday really tired me out. Perhaps it’s because I spent pretty much the entire day on my feet…
In any case, I got up and headed off to my 8:30am class (saying bye to Alison, who was catching the train this morning for Paris), where I squashed US history/US anthem/the history of Thanksgiving/making Thanksgiving cards into a 45 minute lesson! Whew! I’m glad it was the last time I had to do that!
I’m not sure why, but they decided to change my Friday schedule, so now instead of having two classes back-to-back in the early morning and then a nice long break until after lunch, I now have an annoying 1 1/2 hour break between them. My Friday schedule now goes like this: 8:30am-9:15am, 10:45am-11:30am, 1:30pm-2:15pm, 3:45pm-4:30pm. Ugh. It makes it impossible to do anything all day because all the classes are so spread out! Sigh.
Anyway, I came home for a little rest and some class preparation during my first break, returning to teach the 9-10 year olds. But, their teacher wasn’t there today. When a teacher is absent, they do one of two things. If they have enough advance notice, there’s a substitute teacher (like in the US). If not, they split up the students into groups of 2-3 and stick them in the back of all the other classrooms in the school. So, they just spend the day doing worksheets or coloring or something. Not particularly interesting, but they have to be monitored. So, when I arrived to teach, the room was dark and empty. One of the other teachers informed me of the situation and sent two of her students to go around the school collecting my students from the other classes. Unfortunately, they didn’t actually go to ALL of the classes. In any case, 15 minutes after my class was supposed to start, I finally decided to begin…I only had 10 students out of 23. Oh well! Nothing I could do about it. I really preferred it, though—much calmer!
Then I went home for lunch (leftovers from last night!!) and returned to the school at 12:30pm with an apple pie. I made two and we ended up eating most of one, but the other was untouched. So, I brought it in to share with the other teachers. Pretty much everyone loved it and they asked for the recipe. They commented that I’m always bringing in food to share and they want to make me some food that is specific to this region. I had to remind them that I’m vegetarian, which made things a bit more difficult because most of there specialties here involve meat. But, hopefully they’ll actually make some food because I’d absolutely love to try it!!
After lunch I had the younger students and we made Thanksgiving cards and I told them the story of Thanksgiving. They are all so adorable. It’s really cute how much care they put into their coloring.
This evening I went to folk dancing again. I didn’t get a chance to try the stilts (maybe next time…), but I did dance a lot! I remembered all the dances from last time and then I stayed an extra hour to dance with the intermediate group. Those dances were much harder, but I kept up! The last dance was really hard and the leader told me I should probably go sit down because it was too hard for me. So, I went to the side and just learned it by myself (even faster than some of the people who stayed with the group). When she saw that I had figured it out, she told me to come back and dance with everyone else. Sweet! I officially signed up (and paid my €18), so I am a member of Lous Crabots de Semisens! (That’s the name of the folkdance group)
When I got home (at 9:45pm), I had some pizza, salad, and leftover pumpkin bread, and then headed upstairs to skype with Brigid!! Afterwards, I called my Grandma and was very happy to get to talk with her for a while. It’s so good to catch up and hear her voice!! I was sad to miss out on Thanksgiving, so it was nice to at least get to talk a bit.
I’m looking forward to a relaxing weekend…so far I have no plans!
Today I received a package from my mom!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment