Kids and an organic market

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I met some of the kids at Camille Jullian (high school age, called lycee here) today. I went and observed two English classes. It's so interesting to watch, to see what kinds of things they have problems with, after being frustrated with my own language-learning over the years. In case you are curious, they seem to have a lot of problem with the "th" sounds, especially the voiced one (like in "there"); they say it like a "z". Some of them have such heavy accents I can hardly even understand them (it sounds cool to me, but I bet to the kids that are better at it it's much the same as listening to someone pronounce French badly in one of my classes... very grating). They also have problems with English's ample vocabulary (one of the teachers was trying to explain the difference between "alone" and "lonely" to them; in French it's the same word). The funniest one was the word "excited". Much like in Spanish, the cognate for "excited" in French means (and only means) sexually excited. So when I said I was excited to be in Bordeaux, they all started giggling. The teacher had to explain it to them, but they still feel weird saying it. The biggest road block I think I'm going to run into with them is that, while they do touch on American English a bit, they really learn more British English. Since the vocabulary and especially the accent is so different, it'll probably be a little confusing for them to work with me at first. At least I'm not from the South; apparently Southern accents are REALLY hard for them to decipher.

Both classes were terminale, which is pretty much the same thing as high school seniors (so they're mostly 17 years old). The whole year is dedicated to taking and doing well on the baccalauréat, a big scary exam everyone takes at the end of terminale, the outcome of which can really matter for your future university acceptance and career (think the NEWTS in Harry Potter, kind of). Man, let's just say the boys in terminale are SOOO much cuter than the boys at my high school were! Man! Being 17 in France would have been a lot more interesting. Maybe it's because they actually care about their appearance, and also do not sag their pants. It's weird though, since everyone here can smoke from whatever age (technically it's 15, but no one enforces it) all these high school kids stand around at the breaks smoking. It seems so odd to me, like they're playing grown-up. The kids in the first class were really, really shy. The teacher (a really nice lady named Katie, the one who lived in Danville) warned me that they would be. That's actually why she requested to have me for that class, to get them talking. They're really funny though, I really enjoyed meeting them. Katie just did a regular lesson, but at one point she had me read one of their short texts out loud to them so they could hear it from a native speaker, and then at the end she asked the students to ask me questions about myself. I also asked them some questions. It was basically the same three people that kept responding, but we'll work on that. I really liked that group, I'm looking forward to working with them. Next week I'll have a portion of them to myself, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them yet. Katie is going to give me copies of their text so hopefully we can do something related to that. A few of them have already been to the US and California (the school is in a really wealthy neighborhood). They all liked San Francisco better than LA.

The afternoon class wasn't quite so great. The teacher (named Romain ) is funny but really sarcastic and teases the students A LOT. The kids seem to like him though, they laugh a lot. Romain didn't know that I wasn't going to actually teach today, so he had expected to send some of the kids away with me. Ah yes, lack of communication seems to be a theme here. But it was ok, I just stayed and observed (I can't teach yet; not only did I have nothing prepared, they haven't given me keys or directions to my classroom yet). He had me introduce myself to them. I gave them a 20 second spiel about where I'm from and why I'm there, but then I got a lot of blank looks. Romain said to try again more slowly. I did. More blank looks. The thing is, then Romain talks to them like 3 times faster in English and they DO understand! But his English is very British-sounding, so I guess that's what they're used to. Oh well. I'll just have to be patient with them. The other not so great thing is that he kept talking to me in French in front of them. They're not supposed to know that I can speak French. Oops, I guess he wasn't aware of that. Also, he talks really freaking fast, so it was kind of hard to understand everything he said.

Between my two classes today I went to an organic market by the river with my roommate, Meghan. It was really neat to buy fresh produce, bread, and jam. I'm really excited to eat it. They also had cheese, seafood, and meats (some of them kind of scary, like chicken feet and gizzards), but I didn't buy any of that yet. And, it's not really as expensive as you would think! It's funny though, they list prices by the kilo, so sometimes you'll see something, like garlic, that looks like it's going to cost 20 Euros! But then you realize they mean a kilo of garlic. That's like 2.2 POUNDS of garlic. That would be way too much garlic. Everyone at the market was really nice too (but do remember to bring your own bag! Same thing with the grocery store, although you can purchase bags at the grocery store, where you can't at the market). I bought a zucchini, some fresh parsley, garlic, chives, tomatoes, and artichoke, some whole wheat bread, and apple and cassis jam. MMM.

Speaking of which, I should go make dinner. We have orientation tomorrow at 9am really far away, so I'll have to get up at the crack of dawn. I'm expecting mass confusion and administrative hell, so maybe my next post will be less optimistic. Hopefully not!

Miss you guys, au revoir,

-Lisa

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