Sunday peaceful Sunday

Another Sunday, another email. Not a whole lot going on at the moment: Michelle's friend Andrea is here so we stayed out late visiting the bars and the dance club we like to go to. Let me tell you, there's not much more entertaining than going to a dance bar, not drinking, and watching drunk French people dance. Plus, there were so many of us that we took over tables like Genghis Khan (by which I mean more reckless efficiency and less blood and smoke). It was fun, but now we're sleepy. But then we're always sleepy of a Sunday. It's a quiet day, aside from the church bells, and all the shops are closed. Today the weather is bad, so we won't even have much of a walk, I would think. So I'm listening to peaceful music from a mix Bristol made for me a couple of Christmases ago and writing this email and uploading photos from Christmas break and Mom's visit.

Yesterday we had a German dinner, since last Monday was the official Franco-Allemand Friendship day or something like that. Steffen and Ellen and Matthias invaded our little white house and took over the kitchen (not at all like Genghis Khan, unless he also needed help lighting the oven). There was apple streudel and weinerschnitzel (possibly) and some kind of potato salad and a couple of different veggie things for me and Katie, and it was nice to have a big group of people all around the table. I think there were more people than we've ever had at a dinner party, and only one glass was broken, so all sorts of records there. It was all of the assistants in Cambrai except for the mysterious Anne (including Sally, who only came in November and who teaches at primary school and whom we almost never see) plus Max, Ellen's boyfriend, and of course Andrea, and after dinner we split into teams and played Ticket to Ride, affectionately known as the train game. It's funny to play it with a load of Europeans, because it's set in the States and Canada, so there's a lot of "Where is Dull-uth?" "Doo-looth is there." "Oh. Where is Houston? Is that Chicago?"

It was a long week at school. I had my first bad class, as in really actually quantifiably bad class, involving a lot of shouting and a bunch of kids who wouldn't shut up. It was Thursday afternoon at five, so I understand that everyone's hungry and tired and just wants to go home (me too! me too!) but that's not an excuse. In high school here the students are grouped into classes of around twenty that study the same subjects, a kind of tracking program. I have those groups split into smaller groups of about five kids, and usually that's fine. Although technically I ought to have the kids during their English classes, I have them during their study hours instead, so sometimes I have some extra kids come to class. Again, usually that's fine. I had three or four extra girls stroll in and that would have been okay if they hadn't sat down at the end of the table and started chattering. The kids wouldn't shut up and listen to the lesson, which I was cranky about anyway because it was hastily prepared from old books since the printer was broken. One of the kids kept getting up and singing and dancing and the rest were just ignoring me.

The worst part (well, the part I felt worst about) was that they'd brought in some snacks to share, because I'd given a couple of them some pumpkin pie at the bus stop last week and they wanted to return the favor. First I had to take the snacks and put them out of sight to get them to pay attention, and then I got fed up and threw the stuff into the trash can (it was all pre-packaged, so I knew they'd be able to salvage it from the clean trash can, which only had a little paper in it, crumpled up handouts I'd just given them). I had to send the singing and dancing kid out of class, which made his little girlfriend threaten to walk out of class, and they complained every time I told them to sit down. But eventually, after moving kids around and a bunch of threatening glares and some fast loud English they couldn't understand (the power of language as a tool of intimidation!), they settled down. The sassy girl protested that she didn't want to read, but I bent her to my will after a little bit. It's tough some days, this teacher gig! I'm either sitting around for long hours doing nothing, trying to coax reluctant kids to talk, or trying to convince severely hyper kids to shut up and sit down.

But the rest of the classes this week were okay. I did a lot of stuff on river pollution, which is a bit difficult to explain when your handout is full of idioms (also, Not In My Back Yard doesn't make sense to people who don't have yards). But I had them write the words they didn't know on the board and then we all looked them up together (which means I now have some completely pointless French vocabulary, like the word for "slurry") and it was interesting to see which classes knew what words. Some kids wanted to look up "lakes" and "seas" and "farms" and the others just needed "sewage" and "nasty". Hopefully next week will be better, and there are only a few more weeks until vacation anyway. And really not very long at all until I get to go on the school trip to England on the 13th of February! We're going to Cambridge and London for four days with a group of about forty kids and I'm excited. Free travel! We get to go through the Chunnel! This is mostly because of the bad windy weather which might delay the ferry, but it'll be fun. Virginie told me about going through the Chunnel last year and how a couple of kids had their noses pressed to the windows, looking for fish. Oh, small town high schoolers. You've got charm of your own.

New photos up here from Mom's visit and my trip to Belgium with Dunkerque Dan (not a lot of photos from Belgium, given that my camera battery died and I was too lazy to charge it). I suppose I ought to trot off and help clean up now. The stupid sink got clogged against last night after dinner, and though I bailed a lot of the dirty dishwater out of a convenient window, we've now got to figure out how to fix it again. And the tub's a bit stopped up. And a cabinet's broken and a bit came out of the locking mechanism on the bathroom door (which oddly enough made it work better). A language assistant's work is never finished.