A busy week and tonight's mission

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Tonight I have the church youth group to look forward to (or perhaps I should say dread but I'm trying to be positive about this). I've decided that tonight I WILL step out of my comfort zone and try to get to know people; I WILL go there wearing the BIGGEST smile I can muster and I WILL be as friendly and open as I possibly can without scaring myself and those around me.

The meal part was the hardest thing last time - I didn't have a problem with the food (of course not!!) but socially it was difficult and awkward. I would constantly turn my head from one side to the next, trying to decide which conversation I should attempt to be a part of but I could never understand what was being said. So in the end I decided to just keep my eyes on my plate and concentrate on eating and drinking but tonight I WILL do my very best to be sociable and follow the conversations going on around me.

That will obviously prove to be very difficult due to my dangerously low energy levels - this week has been the busiest week I've had since arriving in France. On Monday I had to work all day with the little kids in La Maternelle - an experience I thought would either leave me half dead or at least seriously traumatised but by the grace of God it did not and I left in the afternoon with still some energy inside me. On Tuesday after my morning English lesson I stayed at the school to mark the work of one of my English classes - there are only ten students but this task still took longer than I was expecting and I understand now why teachers don't like marking and all I was doing was putting ticks/crosses and smiley faces - what must it be like for teachers who have to mark whole essays?!

La Maternelle required my help again that afternoon which I didn't feel too unhappy about after the reasonably pleasant time I spent with them on Monday (even if it involved wiping one little boy's bum - I do have mother material in me after all!) At breaktime I even enjoyed a good conversation with Veronique, the teacher and told her slightly honestly how I was finding things and we spoke about more general things too - she told me my French was good - a comment like this always leaves me on a high. It confirms to me what my French teacher in college never quite did.

On Wednesday I did what I always do and went to Aida's - the most relaxing day I've had all week. On Thursday I spent the day at the new apartment that we'll be moving into in three weeks! I was faced with the mammoth task of taking off all the horrible wallpaper in my future room - my arms and back are feeling the effects of it today. I had rather been hoping that I would have the morning off to get on with work such as lesson planning and writing a small report on each of my primary school kids but when Cedric asked if I could come the whole day I didn't want to say no and besides the idea of spending the whole morning in front of my laptop didn't exactly excite me either.

And today was another busy day - I had an English class in the morning - one of the groups weren't in the mood to learn and I think I will have to make use of my warning cards on one or two students. Afterwards I helped the English teacher give grades on their English oral. As we went through some of the names I couldn't for the life of me think of who the pupils were so I found myself just nodding along to the teacher's suggestions. I then had to continue with the assessments of my other pupils and at lunchtime it was me who had to take Anaice home. In the afternoon I had my La Maternelle duties 'comme l'habitude'. But I got to eat cake which was good.

I'd asked Laetitia to wait for me when she collected Anaice but I kind of wish I hadn't. The kids were all on hyper mode and we couldn't even go straight home because we had to collect Cedric from work. Then when we got there the kids all wanted to get out and have a play in his workshop full of saws, hammers, screwdrivers and other dangerous objects - Cedric and Laetitia didn't seem to mind but this set me off on stress mode and I found myself shouting at the kids to be careful and not touch anything. Did they listen? Nope, not one bit. On top of that there's something wrong with the car and it was making funny smells and letting off lots of smoke whenever we stopped so I kept thinking we were all going to die. This though in itself gave me a headache, not to mention with all the kids shouting, screaming and crying.

But back to the mission ahead of me....I pray that by the grace of God I will be able to be sociable (as sociable as my personality allows because I don't want to come across as false) and that I will have the boldness and courage to step out of my comfort zone. Amen.

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