Well, this has been an interesting week

Today's post will be coming to you in three parts.

Part 1:  Um.. pardon?

This week officially marked my most bizarre student interaction to date. A 3è class at collège S had been given the assignment to work in small groups and to create a short presentation on a music celebrity of their choice. The day that I was to work with the class, they had already started giving presentations, so I would work with the students about to present in another classroom, giving them a chance to do a practice run-through before doing it in front of the class. I would offer some quick feedback/corrections, and then they would go back to their classroom to present. It is because of this assignment that I have now discussed porn with two of my students.

What? It's December Already??

How did this happen?? Time has flown by so fast, I can't believe I only have two work weeks left until the Christmas holidays.

Well, today was a rough day at work. Let's talk about it.
It's not that any of my classes went poorly exactly, it just didn't go as smoothly as possible and then, there was that one class....that just...ow.

Fame (and Speculoos)

Guess what? I am famous. You may ask, how do I know this? Well, famous people are asked for their autograph. I have been asked for my autograph. Therefore, I am famous. You see? In fact, I have been asked for my autograph FOUR TIMES.

...All these autographs may have been shyly requested by little 6è girls coming up to me after class with pen and copybook in hand, but still, it's something, right? :D

Fast Forward Almost Seven Weeks (Working in France)

[This is the second part of my long overdue update.]

As much as my time in France is feeling more like a paid vacation, I do technically work here, as well. I’m teaching at two collèges (middle schools), one of which is about a 20min walk from where I’m living (collège D), the other which is about a 10min walk and then a 10min bus ride (collège S). – Just FYI, collège is 4 years long (lycée/high school is only 3 years) and includes what we would call 6th through 9th grade. In France, it’s more like a countdown to finally being out of school, so 6th grade is 6ième, but 9th grade is 3ième. Just for clarity’s sake, 7th grade is 5ième and 8th grade in 4ième. Ok, got it?

Fast Forward Almost Seven Weeks (Living in France)

[In order to make this somewhat massive update more digestible I’ve split it up into two parts. This is the first part.]

So…I’ve been here over a month and half and I have completely neglected this blog. Sorry? In my defense, for three of those weeks I didn’t really have a computer and/or internet access, but for the others…eh, no excuses. I will argue though, that you should be grateful that I didn’t update right away, at least. All the posts would have been stuff like how I opened a French bank account all by myself in a foreign language and how incredibly exciting that is. In fact, it’s not exciting at all. But it seemed super exciting at the time. Anyways, here’s the some-what short version of what I’ve been up to since I got here:

The Forbidden Corridor

Yesterday at collège S. I had just locked up my(!) classroom and was walking down the teachers only corridor on my way to the teachers' lounge. Another teacher stopped me and sharply asked, "Why are you in this hallway?" She thought I was a 3ième student.

*sigh*

I suppose I expected this to happen at some point, but do I really look 15?

Needless to say, it was pretty awkward after another of the teachers walking with her informed her that I was the English assistant.

Good thing I'm used to awkward.

Counting

The most common thing I've been hearing lately has been “How excited are you to be going to France? It's getting close now, right?” Well, yes and no. For awhile, it hardly seemed real. And it's hard to feel excited about something when it doesn't feel like it's actually happening. Opening up the manila envelope from the Académie helped it sink in a little further, but it was still nearly two months away, I hadn't even booked a ticket yet. But now I have plane ticket, my visa will be ready in a couple days, and all this week I've been thinking about how it's only a month away now. If you're counting by the day of the month, the one-month marker was yesterday, but if you're a four-weeks equals a month kind of a person the one-month countdown begins tomorrow. Either way, you can maybe tell I've been obsessing.