Les Fleurs

So this photograph doesn't really sum up my day at all. But hey, pretty flowers with a very low aperture can't go wrong!

Very long day, as every Tuesday is. For those familiar with me will know by now that Tuesday is my longest school day, leaving me pretty knackered and not in the mood to stray too far afield to find a photograph, or pester find a friend to take a photograph of. So here we are, flowers.

My day started early with the lively normal sixième class, who were so confused to why they had to ask how much something was, "when all the prices are on the clothes"...but Vivianne and I soldiered on, and managed to get each student to at least be able to ask how much something was. What happened after class was one of those rare quiet moments of connection that you only get every once in a while, where Vivianne and I spent an hour talking about when she went to England (in the 1970s!), and how she was glad that she had managed to keep most of her English, even though she felt sometimes it had "slipped" (trust me, not that much in 40 years!). It surprised me in a way that we had so much in common in our outlooks, and also really encouraging that she thought I would make a good teacher no matter which country I decided to be in in the end. Always nice to hear!

I was feeling pretty calm going in with the cinquième INTER after my chat with Vivianne, and things worked...well, pretty well to be honest with you! The only problem being I did the same topic with the troisième EURO's lunchtime club and enjoyed doing it a lot more with them than I did with the first group! The theme of the lesson was the English accent, so I used this video to explain to them that it is not only words that are important...but also, accent. I didn't tell them that the characters were speaking nonsense and it was hilarious to watch all of them concentrate so hard to understand what was happening. I mean, the story is pretty easy to get without words...so when I asked them what had happened they all answered really well...and when I asked them what the characters talked about they all had to admit they had no idea. Bless 'em. I think it did prove the point that in English, sometimes accent is just as important as words. The next part of the lesson was American vs. English accents...and what words sound different, what words are different, and how the two accents sound different. Was great to see the realisation dawning that the two "languages" are actually really different, and that if you asked an English girl to the "movies" you might as well shoot yourself in the foot and go home, she ain't going to say yes!

An enjoyable lunchtime lead to an enjoyable afternoon spent with the rest of the troisième INTER...where we created a trial for Mary Maloney, the main character of Roald Dahl's 'Lamb to the Slaughter' where I gave each student a role to play, and each of them had to speak at least for a short amount of time. I was more than happy with how the lesson went, especially when some of them came to me at the end to ask if they could do it again with a different character from another story. These are the lessons that make me recognise that teaching is what I really want to do.

My final lesson of the day was with the sixième INTER, and our second instalment of the film 'Tangled'. It makes me really happy that one of the new students (who is rather quiet and passive in the bigger class, with the bigger voices) is actually quite loud in my smaller class. I do worry for another one of the students though; they seem to have given up ever succeeding in the International Section and have therefore lost a lot of enthusiasm for the language. It must be hard when you're not fully bilingual in a class of almost bilingual children with British or American parents...

My evening was spent Skyping, cooking and finally starting to organise my life and sort out the mess of going out too much and not having the time to tidy. This is also due to the expectation of the lovely Beth arriving on Friday for a weekend visit from Saint-Quentin!

Now for today, after the conversation with Thibaud last night, I decided to find some French idioms...you lucky, lucky people:-

- un bouillon de chou fait perdre au médecin cinq sous - an apple a day keeps the doctor away (or if you are French, a cabbage soup a day makes the doctor lose five pence)
- la goutte d'eau qui fait déborder le vase - straw that broke the camel's back (well, the drop of water that overflowed the vase...but same thing !)
- garder une dent contre quelqu'un - to hold a grudge against someone (also known as, to keep a tooth against someone)
- tenir la chandelle - to play gooseberry (or, to hold the candelabra)
- vendre la peau de l'ours avant l'avoir tué - don't count your chickens before they have hatched (or of course, to sell a bear's skin before you've killed it)
- faire une queue-de-poisson - to cut someone up driving (literally, to do a fishtail)
- pédaler dans la semoule - to try in vain, to get stuck doing something (to peddle in semolina)
- couper la poire en deux - to compromise (to cut the pear in half)
- être reglé comme une montre suisse - to be meticulous (to be as punctual as a Swiss watch)