Feb 2008

1) It's the 2nd February, Candlemas, La chandeleur, The Feast of the Presentation of Jesus Christ at the Temple...most importantly (?!) Crepe Day! Traditionally the French eat crepes today but before they can be eaten they gotta be cooked, and tossed, and if one succesfully tosses them with his left hand while holding a gold coin in his right he'll be rich and his family prosperous for the year. Sounds like another good French tradition to me.

2) Sarkozy has married Carla Bruni. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7224017.stm

3) Lucy has had a good day spent in Bordeaux. Have made friends with a lovely French girl Cecile who is keen to practice her English so its a win-win situation as we speak a bizarre back and forth between English and French. Have spoken quite a lot of French today and have that good feeling when I'm kinda thinking the sentences in French and wanted to right this blog in French today...it's really good, need to make sure I have this feeling more often. Today Cecile was driving to Bordeaux to buy ballet shoes and she was kind enough to take me, Lynn, Lou and Magaly along. We had a lovely day, although I kinda hit the soldes a bit. again, oops! Was happy to be in H&M and found this awesome book store and discovered the 2EUR Librio range, but best of all we left at 10am and didnt get back till 8ish, the weather was sunny but fresh and I just have that lovely feeling kinda slightly tired from walking/travelling but in a really good way and all like inspired to make good use of my time here and stuff. Twas fun.

4) Lucy has discovered there is going to be "carnaval" in Perigueux. 6th April. In the diary.

XXX

I made my first child cry today. :-(

So it turns out I've been pronouncing his name all wrong and that my pronounciation of it sounds like "gros mots" (which means "swear words") and "all the children laugh"...although to be honest I hadn't even noticed, they laugh a lot more when I drop a flascard! I feel awful...oops...but he seemed quickly reconciled when I just told him how rubbish my French was...Oh dear.... :-(

Oh and if you're interested his name is "Rom-u-ald" but I think I'd thought it was "Rom-auld" and with my dodgy French "r" apparently "gros mots" was what came out!

Otherwise teaching today was much better than yesterday. It's so difficult; classes just have good days and bad days and the same activities can be wonderful with one class and awful with another. But coming out of an awful class you just feel soooo rubbish. Have been doing Weather Forecasts with my big map and an imaginary microphone which has to be passed around and was the one thing which saved me in two classes yesterday and yet today with exactly the same age group it completely flopped, they weren't interested and after like the first go I just took the map back down and told them we were going to do something else and then had to lecture them about concentrating and making an effort. My older classes were great today though...some of the kids do rock and I'm glad because yesterday I would have quite happily never walked into a classroom ever again. I guess you're going to worry a bit like this in your first few months in any job right? Plus I was dead tired yesterday which never helps. Starting new topics Monday and going to make an extra effort to be REALLY well prepared I think I had been getting a bit more laid-back with lesson plans and the kids, somehow, see right through it.