Mais Pourquoi?

I have officially taught for two days now and so far it has been really fun!  My first class had already had some English from the year before so it was interesting to see what they knew.  We played Simon Says with simple things like ‘stand up’ ‘sit down’ ‘turn around’ ‘clap’ and ‘jump’ which they just freaked out about.  They could play that game for a half hour straight if I let them.

For the classes where they haven’t had any English yet besides what they have learned outside of school, I spoke a lot of French with them.  The job itself requires more French than I anticipated but I’ve loved getting that back.  I’m supposed to be speaking mostly in English with them but there will come a point where they will just have NO idea what you’re saying and zone out.  I did that sometimes when I was learning French so I’m trying to remember what worked for me when learning a second language.

Yesterday I went to my other school across the bridge and had a lot of fun teaching the older kids.  I spoke mostly in English with them and to ensure that they weren’t zoning out, I had someone who did understand directions explain back to me in French.  Many students told me that English is their favorite subject and were disappointed to hear that I wouldn’t be there everyday for their English lessons.

In one class, we were reviewing animals since they said that they had learned them last year.  After hearing dog, cat, horse, etc, one child said “bee-hr” which caught me off-guard.  I didn’t know if he was just saying another English word he knew “beer” or…?  Mind you these are 8-9 year old children.. Then I got it, he was saying the animal “bear”!  Their accent makes it so hard to understand!  In addition to their own accent, they are pronouncing things with a British accent so it’s just a little bizarre for me to listen to.

In my last class, I got to teach a small group of six 6-year-old children for about 20 minutes.  My lesson consisted of saying hello & goodbye, yes & no, and counting from 0-6 which they all just absorbed so quickly!  I’ve never seen anything like it.

In that same small class, one little girl named Océane asked me something with the seriousness of asking the question of “why isn’t there world peace?”  What she asked was so simple and yet so hard to explain: « Emilie, mais pourquoi est-ce que vous parlez anglais, et moi, je parle français? » / “Emily, but why do you speak English and I speak French ? ”

One boy tried to explain that I come from America and we speak English there.  She understood that but wanted to know why it had come to be like that.  Smart little girl (with a very cool name, might I add).

In other news, my vacation is all booked!  I’ll be in London visiting Katrina for the first part, seeing other friends in the UK for the middle, and then seeing Hannah in Brussels for the last weekend (Halloween included).  I’ll be back to enjoy three more days off of work before teaching again.

The national strike about retirement has been all over everywhere.  I was walking home across the bridge yesterday from teaching (where half of the teachers at this school were striking and didn’t teach that day) and it was blocked off!  I ended up just joining the parade of strikers that went through the whole downtown area until I got to the street I wanted to turn off on.  It was a very surreal French experience.  I really hope that the strikes don’t mess with my travel plans!  Public transportation gets involved with the strikes which is very effective but sucks when you’re caught in the middle of it!

Well, I’m going to walk into town to enjoy my day off!  In my region, elementary schools don’t have school on Wednesdays and neither do I. :)

Bisous!