another lazy Sunday

Hello! Michelle and I have been virtuous already today. We were up early enough to eat breakfast before it became lunchtime, and we've been to the store for all those little necessities. This is important, because there's only one grocery store near us that's open at all on Sundays, and it's only open until one, which is not always good for young, responsible, sleepy people such as ourselves. It is terribly inconvenient when one is attempting to make dinner and one suddenly realizes there are no eggs or bread in the house (except the stale bread in our stale bread bag, which has injured me before). It is tough to keep ourselves in groceries at the little white house sometimes, because we like to feed people. Everyone comes over here for dinner. It is just love and more love chez nous, and also cookery.

It was a good week. I got a bruise that looked like skid marks at football, but my team finally won for the first time in weeks, and Max came back to play with us, which is always nice for me because he talks to me more than the other boys on the team, who are all serious serious serious (but they play beautifully). He brought some of his grandmother's delicious pickles as well. Thursday it snowed for a bit. I woke up to a miserable half inch of slush at 6.30, but by the time I caught the bus at 7.30 it was raining, and when I got to go home early around noon because all the teachers were on strike and the students weren't going to be at my classes, it was sunny and bright and drying off.

Hard to believe that on Tuesday I'm going to England. This trip seemed so far away when I first heard about it, and now I've got to start packing. Virginie approached me very seriously the other day with something important to tell me, which made me nervous until she started talking: "You know, for England, you have to bring pounds. They don't accept Euro." And now I'll have another country knocked off my list of countries not visited. Nice! A free four-day trip to England, and all I have to do is help chaperone 45 French high schoolers. On second thought, I'm not sure they pay me enough at this job.

School's a lot of fun in general. The kids don't always participate much during the lessons, but I got them listening to "Big Yellow Taxi" and filling in the holes I'd left in the lyrics, which was entertaining, and they did really well. For a bunch of kids who listen to R&B and metal, they seemed to enjoy Joni Mitchell pretty well, and then we pulled out the opinion cards and they really started talking. Some choice quotations:
"Oh, smoking! (like cigarettes) I thought you meant smoking! (makes a gesture like wearing a tuxedo)"
"I am a fashion victim." (True.)
"France is the most beautiful country in the world...because I live there." (Ah, David.)
"David Beckham is the best footballer in the world and I love his wife."
"Miss! How do you say 'how do you say'?"
"Ugly girls should wear makeup."
"All blonds have big breasts." (Said by a rail-thin blond boy)
"I don't like weekends! No school."

And everyone loves Spain because they like the Spanish teacher (and I don't blame them, he's a great guy).

I got cranky at my new haircut and dyed my hair red this week. It was funny when I got on the bus on Friday morning and realized the bus driver had done the same thing. What a faux pas! But I refrained from saying anything to him. Nobody wants to have the fashion sense of an American.

Off to make lunch, I suppose, and think about what I ought to pack.