Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Monday 1/16: Day 118 of My Adventure. ;)

Today I taught in Margot’s class at 8:30am and that went really well! We had a lot of fun briefly reviewing the seasons and weather before talking more about “What is your favorite _____?” After having them practice asking each other questions, I had them do a questionnaire about their interests so I could pair them up with their future pen pals. I haven’t received all the letters from the US students yet, but I’d like to know more about the kids here so that I can match them up with kids that have some similar interests.

I was incredibly exhausted for some reason, so when I got home after Margot’s class, I slept for 2 hours! I really needed it, so I was glad that I have a big break on Monday mornings! After lunch I biked over to the other school and taught my two classes there. The first one, with the little kids, went by quickly (as always) and was pretty successful. They are *finally starting to catch on to the colors! I did one activity where I would say, “Who is wearing blue?” and if they were wearing blue, they would stand up. Then I would continue with the next color. At one point, a little girl in the front leaned toward me and whispered, “But, what if I have blue on my undies??” I informed her that it surely counted and she could stand up. I love little kids!! However, they seem to be significantly slower at learning English than the students at the school next to me. Each thing takes longer to teach and they have a lot more trouble remembering it the next time. I wonder why…

My second class was spent trying to write letters to the pen pals. Talk about exhausting for me! There were 14 students who all wanted my help, but I could only talk with one at a time. And we only had 25 minutes for the class because today was their swimming day and the class is only 30 mins, but they are always late! Well, we didn’t get them all written (sigh) and I won’t be there on Thursday because I have to go to my visa meeting in Bordeaux. Hopefully we can get them done next Monday!

I hurried back to teach a class at the school next to me—ah, my favorite class. NOT. It wasn’t too awful today, it’s just a constant effort to keep them somewhat engaged and not chatting amongst themselves. They did pretty well with presenting the person they’d interviewed (a fellow student in the class) in front of everyone. There are sometimes mix-ups between “HER favorite _____” and “HIS favorite _____,” but overall it was pretty good. One problem is that last week they were practicing the questions by interviewing me and someone asked “What is your favorite song?” I just threw out one at random, “Piano Man,” and now they want me to bring in a cd so they can hear my “favorite song.” Greeeat. I’m not saying that I don’t really like “Piano Man,” but you can imagine how a whole class full of skeptical 9 year olds is going to react to Billy Joel. Oh well! Maybe they’ll forget that they asked me…

Margot and I had planned to watch the movie “The Bridge to Terabithia” and since she has to go to bed pretty soon after dinner, we decided to watch it before dinner. I had forgotten that I had seen it a long time ago, but I remember the book being one of my very favorites in elementary school! The movie is good, but I’d really like to read it again.

After dinner I skyped with Maria for 2 1/2 hours! Her skype was actually working really well and we got to just hang out and I watched her massacre mosquitoes. It’s so weird how cold it is here (and how it’s snowing at home) while Maria is sweating like crazy in 80ºF weather!

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