Sortie Scolaire

With only 8 full days left in dear Deauville I am trying to make the most of my time here so that I can leave with good memories and few regrets.  This endeavor has occasionally proved to be more difficult than anticipated recently due to the fact that my students are all very excited for the end of school and no longer particularly interested in English (or in behaving).  Still, I'm having fun.  Tuesday night was my last time with my young ward Felix, so his mom and dad took us out for dinner at a nice seafood restaurant where, between the two of us, Hortense and I filled 4 bowls with crustacean and mollusk detritus.  As a reformed seafood hater, this is a big deal.  I ate tons of crevettes roses et grises (pink and grey shrimp), huitres (oysters--okay, I just ate one, but still, Cousin Bob would have been proud after all the Christmas Eve parties he spent trying to trick me into eating one), tourteaux (smaller crabs) and crabes (normal sized crabs), langoustines (mini lobsters--not sure what English version is), and even an amande de mer (no idea, but it looked like a little clam).  It was all quite tasty and we had a nice conversation.  They also were nice enough to give me a cool mug that shows the 4 seasons of Normandy (here's a hint: pluie, pluie, pluie, et...pluie) and a really nice illustrated grammar/phonetics/conjugation guide/dictionary that's written for 5-7 year olds but will still be perfect for me to use with my classes next year.  A very thoughtful gift indeed.

(Oh wait, I haven't shared my big news yet:  I have a job! I've been hired by my old elementary/middle school to teach Spanish to the K-4th graders and French to the 5th-8th graders.  Very exciting!)

Anyway, while I will certainly miss the pastries, the cheeses, the wine, the moules...as well as being surrounded by French, being a 5 minute walk from the beach, the markets, etc.  I know that what I will miss the most when I leave here will be the people, and particularly my students.  I've already had to say goodbye to a few who have left on vacation and it's been hard knowing that I won't ever see them again or even that I won't know who they become as they grow up.  

All of this sentimental blah blah is to say that today I went on a field trip with the GS classes (kindergarten) and I was very glad to be able to spend some quality time with the two classes that I've grown the closest to this year.  We went to Caen to visit the Jardin Botanique and the Colline des Oiseaux, the latter of which is a landfill that was turned into a park, complete with an enormous rose garden and a labyrinth (definitely a hit with the students).  I was in charge of 3 students, Charlotte, Aymeric, and Lea.  We had a great time searching for the objects ranging from plants to wells to fences with interesting patterns that the two maitresses had taken photos of and distributed to us as a sort of scavenger hunt.  All in all, an excellent (if a bit tiring) day.

My cute group: Charlotte, Aymeric, and Lea

Yay!  We found photo #9!

We're big kids in the grande section (literally, big section), but not so big that we don't sometimes suck our thumb.

Eva loves explaining things to the class.  Aaaaand jumping on the stairs...

Hoani inspects the cacti

Enzo (birthday boy--6 today!) is eating sandwiches that are as big as him.  The bread is normal sized--it's just him that's tiny.

Friends.

Lea J inspects a rose.

Matteo and Lea sniff the rose

Clemence

My buddy Louis (or Lou Lou, as he sometimes calls himself) in the maze

Petting the donkey

Charlotte, la coquine.

A mon pays

I was reminded today in class by Marin that I had forgotten to transmit a message from him.  Here's the story:  I was leaving the area where we had the D-Day picnic on Monday when I heard Marin yell "Dis merci à ton pays!" (Say thanks to your country!) at me.  He can be rather precocious at times (and not always in the best ways) so at first I thought he was just being cute, but then I realized that Lydia had told him to say that to me.  Still, I thought it was sweet that they would ask me to tell my country thanks for liberating them.  I had totally forgotten about this story until today in class when Marin asked me if I had thanked my country yet.  I'm not sure how he expected me to be able to reach every US citizen, but here's my attempt.

Un pique-nique français

Recipe for a French picnic:

1 cheese sandwich (1/2 baguette, butter, emmental cheese)
1 ham sandwich (1/2 baguette, butter, ham)
1 100 g package of potato chips (3-4 servings total)
1 apple
1 container of apple sauce
1 water bottle


Whew!  And they say that Americans eat too much!!  I ate about half and saved the rest for my lunch the next day.


This is the picnic the City provided for us on "Normandy Day" this past Monday (June 6) when the whole elementary school ate lunch with some of the middle and high schoolers, plus some adults from the town, to celebrate the 67th anniversary of D-Day.  And here's a piece of info for you: Cathya, Katherine, and I all knew about D-Day and that it took place June 6, 1944 before we arrived in Deauville.  We actually learned about it in school!  (One of the subs accused us of ignorance on this topic.)

And here are some pictures of the CM2 (5th grade) trip we chaperoned to Omaha Beach and the American Cemetery the next day.

Two students and the principal with the wreath they were going to lay on the statue symbolizing American youth at the cemetery.

Cocoons

Since the weather here in Deauville has been so springlike it could almost be called summer lately, I figured I had better act fast in terms of teaching spring vocabulary to my students.  Specifically, this has meant that I have been reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar to several of my classes as well as the twins that I give extra English lessons to on Wednesday afternoons.  The students have all had very positive reactions to the story; how could you not with such awesome illustrations and such an easily understandable plot: somehow it encompasses nearly all of our daily routines (counting, days of the week, weather, emotions).  Anyway, I like to pause at the penultimate page (you know, the picture of the Very Hungry Cocoon) to ask the students if they know what the caterpillar is going to turn into, just to get an idea of their grasp on basic natural processes.  A surprising number of them are aware that caterpillars turn into butterflies, but when I asked that question today in tutoring, Angele responded with "A princess!".  If only.

Of salons, sand, and salles de classe

Just 3 days between me and Easter vacation with my lovely parents and then my darling cousin...three more days left with her in Deauville for that matter.  2^3 classes left for me to teach.  It makes sense, then, that my time since I last posted can be divided into three categories.  

ONE:  The Salon du Livre

Enter authors, artists, illustrators, musicians, publishers...some very nice, some very self-important, some very bizarre.  Friday, the day when the salon was open to school groups, I accompanied Rudy, an editor for Benjamin Medias, to the creche and the 3 year old preschool classes.  We did listening activities with bird sounds and dramatic recordings of his book "L'ours qui fait ce qu'il veut" (The bear who does what he wants), as well as walking around the room like a bear.  Rudy proved to be a good ally throughout the salon, which for me as an indentured servant had its ups and downs.  While I was doing "filtrage" (ie being a bouncer, ie generally being bored witless) for the authors' meals he would come over to entertain me a bit with discussions of why his American flag sweater has 56 stars and the like.  When I was off duty Maggie and I enjoyed visiting the various book stands, workshops with illustrators and authors, and seeing the drawings the schoolchildren did as part of a contest for the salon.  Speaking of my students, I saw tons of them this weekend and even got thanked by one mother for teaching her child both English and to put on his scarf.  What can I say, I go above and beyond in my work.

The painting my CP/CE1 class did in a workshop with one of the illustrators in attendance.

TWO: Sand
Maggie made a good choice in deciding to visit at the end of her break because for the most part she has had excellent weather and we've been able to take advantage of the beach.  I believe that's been the site of much reading for her during my lessons, and she and I have taken tons of walks along the water's edge.  We have to do something to offset all the cooking (and eating) we've been doing!  

This photo was not taken on the sand, though it would have been an appropriate spot.

The port

Maggie poses with the Trouville market

 

Katherine came to the beach to chat with us during one of our breaks from the salon

This has nothing to do with the beach but everything to do with how we are making the most of our time together. Blue cheese burger with sauteed mushrooms and onions, salad, and fruit and yogurt for dessert.  YUM.

THREE: Salles de classe

While dear Marge and I have been forced to spend some time apart she did accompany me to my CP and CE1 (1st and 2nd grade) classes on Monday.  For one thing, I wanted her to get the full Deauville experience and see how cute/crazy my students can be.  I also figured I should take advantage of having another native English speaker around so that the kids could hear another accent.  Maggie helped me present a conversation about pets to my CE1s and read the childhood classic "Caps for Sale" to my CPs, who loved it (see below for proof).  Also of note: my students were shocked to learn that Maggie's house in Colorado is a 2 day drive from mine in Kentucky.  Understandable, but still funny.

CAPS FOR SALE!  CAPS FOR SALE!  50 CENTS A CAP!

I think this was the part where the monkeys stole the hats.  Something was causing some problems, anyway.

In the famed Salle 1.

I'm an English teacher.  What of it?

"Mais je comprends rien de ce que tu dis."

Is it sunny?

Shaving Cream and Odds and Ends

Someone was kind enough to remind me today that I have been neglectful in my blogging, and since I'm leaving tomorrow evening to begin my trek to ESPANA to see the lovely Molly and Alejandro I thought I'd take the hint lest my blog die of neglect.  

1) The title:  Katherine bought shaving cream the other day so that we could channel our youth by spraying it on the table and drawing in it.  I won't tell you how long we spent this evening drawing where we're going on vacation, our patronuses, various animals, men with beards, our names, strange shapes...but it was fun.  


2) I have an amoureux.  Lalou, one of my favorite 1st graders (the one who I've been helping illustrate his book) ran up to me at lunch recess today and gave me a big hug, and then at afternoon recess hugged me around my leg and told me I was his amoureuse, or girlfriend.  I said oh? but you don't argue with Lalou because he's pretty sassy.  Our love affair has thus far consisted of us dancing around holding hands and of him sharing his snack with me (he insisted), except for his chocolate milk because he told me he didn't want to get my microbes.  I'm not his only girlfriend, though--he later informed his married teacher that she was his amoureuse, too.  We should probably make a club.

3) I have a sore throat and an earache.  I think it's just from a cold, but the timing's not very good.  I don't have a fever, so I'm not particularly concerned, but it's still annoying and kind of painful.  I don't feel like taking the time to go to the doctor so instead I went to the pharmacy, a delightful little place in France where you walk in, tell them your symptoms, and they give you drugs.  This isn't too different from the US, because here they give you the drugs that you can just pluck off the shelves in the US.  Anyway, I am now going to bank on some unknown pills and lozenges to cure me.  Let's keep our figners crossed, because I want to be able to enjoy Spain!

Talk to you in a few weeks!

La fête des amoureux

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!  My students at Fracasse asked me today at lunch if I had an amoureux (boyfriend) to which I responded no, of course, and shocked them since they each seem to have a handful.  One of the kids I was eating with, Matthias, told me had had 4 girlfriends.  No mean feat for a second grader.  I shouldn't feel too sorry for myself, though, because I got a card in the mail from my mom today, one via email from my dad, and one from one of my CPs, Elie (French for Elijah, incidentally).  We made cards in lunchtime activities today, and he gave his to me afterward.  How sweet!

Can you guess which one is from Mom and which is from Elie?

Chef d'oeuvre

Since I know you were wondering what my Princess Bride drawing actually looked like.  I showed Marion and the rest of her class on Friday and they were really impressed with it (why, I don't know), and particularly with my ROUS.  I think this scene was a pretty popular one amongst the students, though I know Louis drew the torture scene.  Grisly!

Tonight's Homework

Katherine and I just finished watching what may be the greatest (and most ridiculous) movie of all time: The Princess Bride.  And guess what--it was for homework!  About a week ago my students at Fracasse went to see the movie (I'm not sure how the school justified that as an educational activity, particularly since I don't think it was in English), and today when I picked my CPs up for English they were coloring a picture of their favorite scene from the movie.  Marion, who reminds me of Ramona Quimby, asked me how to say the Princess Bride in English as we were walking to my classroom, which led to a discussion of the movie in general.  I told her I had it with me in France, and she suggested that I watch it tonight and then draw a picture of my favorite scene to show her tomorrow.  She was so cute with the way she suggested it that even though it's not usually the students who assign the homework I had to oblige.  Plus, I don't really need an excuse to watch the Dread Pirate Roberts best ROUS-es, return from partial death, and storm a castle to win back the Princess Buttercup.  

Katherine can tell you that I spent the entire movie saying "This is my favorite scene", but because a) I can't draw and b) I didn't think Marion would understand why I drew the marriage scene (I doubt the priest's ridiculous voice was rendered very well in the French version) I decided to draw the fire swamp, complete with Westley climbing out of the lightning sand, a blast from the fire, and (of course) and a Rodent of Unusual Size (ROUS).  And I don't think I'm the only one to prefer that scene, since I saw my CP buddy Elliott's paper and it was covered in fiery blasts.  I guess some things have a universal appeal.

Zombie attack

There are some days when nothing of interest seems to happen at school.  Today was not one of those days.  
-Brigitte, who teaches MS and is one of my favorite teachers at Breney, was sick today and all of her students speculated on whether she would ever return to school.  Children amuse me with their ideas on illness. 
-Meanwhile, Zoltan (one of my GS kids) threw up in the classroom and all of his classmates felt the need to tell me about it, even though they had just heard the other kids tell me.  Odd.  
-Alessio (also GS) finally came back from Italy (where his dad lives) today, and when the teacher asked him if he goes to school when he's there and he responded no, several of his classmates explained "Of course not!  There's no school in Italy."  This led to a brief discussion of where school does and does not exist.  I was glad to be there so that I could explain that we do have schools in the US, Nathalie explained that there are schools in Australia, and we speculated on whether they exist in the desert.  The consensus was probably not.
-I wish that every unit I taught was as fun as the animals one that I am just finishing up.  We've been able to play a lot of games (like charades!) with it and I can tell the kids really know the animals' names.  
-I was talking to the kids about their English teacher from last year, Patrick, who apparently sometimes used a cane to help him walk and learned that two of my students used to try to steal his cane from him and hide it.  Mael told me that those two kids were probably going to end up in prison when they were older.  Egad!
-My students are very confused by the fingerless gloves that Benjamin gave me for Christmas.  I don't think a day has gone by without a student asking me where the rest of my gloves are.
-And finally, a huge herd of them pretended to be zombies both when we were walking back to the classroom and at recess.  I pity those poor teachers who have to try to teach despite zombie attacks led by 5 year olds.

Back by popular demand

So it seems that I haven't been the most faithful blogger thus far in 2011.  In my defense, I got sick my first weekend back and things have been very busy ever since: teaching, translations, service d'anglais dinner invites, and the post June 30 job search.  Still, I apologize for my negligence.  

Until today we had been enjoying some unseasonably beautiful weather here in Deauville--blue skies and temperatures in the high 40s and low 50s.  We took advantage of this on Saturday afternoon by taking a nice hike around Beaumont en Auge, a small town around 20 minutes from here.  My pictures will tell you more than I can, but it was very pleasant walking alongside the haras (stud farms) and fields with cows wrinkling their brows at us.  

The view of the coast from Beaumont.  Deauville is in the little dip you see about 2/3 toward the right on the horizon.

Beaumont en Auge

Half timbered houses in Beaumont

One of the many happy farms we saw during our hike

The road ahead...

I'm not sure why these people had a huge barrel in their front yard, but I thought it was impressive.

Taken as we walked back up the hill to retrieve our car in Beaumont

A happy horse on a haras (stud farm)

Also of note is that this evening we attended the mayor's state of Deauville address (advertised as his New Year's wishes) at the CID--we were tempted by the enormous galette des rois that had been advertised as coming after M. Augier shared his wishes with us.  I'm not sure that we would have attended had we known that the wish sharing was going to take well over an hour (we were standing the whole time), but now that I'm seated I'm glad we attended because he specifically spoke about the service d'anglais and our work and mentioned all of our missions.  This was particularly neat because there were tons of other services that he didn't mention at all (for which I am very thankful) and because it shows that he knows what we do.  Our translations were specifically mentioned, which is gratifying because they're probably my least favorite part of the job because I feel like no one ever uses them.  Au contraire, apparement.  I wish I had my camera with me so that I could show you all how enormous the galette des rois was.  I would say it easily had a diameter of 6 feet.  I'd like to see the oven it was baked in!


Finally, a word about my students.  For some reason my CE1s have been very taken with me lately, whereas previously they were always nice but not particularly interested in engaging with me outside of class.  Now Romain asks me almost every day as we walk to lunch if we can hold hands ("On se donne la main?")  and they beg me to sit at their table at lunch.  [Note: the students typically hold hands when they line up to go someplace, and it's normal for us to hold the kid's hand who's next to us as we walk to class or lunch.]  They're really cute at lunch, all wanting to know how to say things like Obi Wan in English and asking me what my favorite Star Wars movie is, and today Alexis asked me if I was born in Paris like he was.  Nope!  I'm not going to take myself too seriously, though--the CP who was in love with me last semester, Marin, has pretty much forgotten about me, so I know that it's only a matter of time until ils se fichent de moi encore (they don't care about me anymore).