As une petite pause from my incessant sharing of photos (never fear, there are plenty more to come) I thought I'd post a passage from the book I'm reading (The Blessing, by Nancy Mitford) that epitomizes how I sometimes feel about the conversations I have during recess with the teachers at Breney. To give a little context, Grace is an Englishwoman who just moved to France to join her French husband and his family after World War II.
Grace felt that they were trying to place her. ... They wanted to place her views and inclinations, her turn of mind. They wanted to know if she was Oxford or Cambridge, whether she preferred The Times or the Daily Telegraph, what she felt about Shakespeare and Bacon. Their questions were not at all hard to answer, but she felt that by her answers to these, possibly deceptively, simple questions, she was being for ever judged.
She found it a great strain, and had said so to Charles-Edouard after the last tea-party.
'But that is what French people are like,' he had replied, shrugging his shoulders. 'In France you are always in a witness box. You'll get used to it. But you must sharpen your wits a little, my dearest, if you want a favorable verdict.'
-p 67
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