Finallement- Le Weekend

Today I did a full day at school and  I enjoyed it more than the other two days, because I felt more integrated. I had time to sit and talk to the other teachers in the staff room and they were very friendly and much more accepting of my 'week of observation'- which has been the bane of my life this week. I started with an hour and a half in one class watching them doing maths and then an hour and a half with another teacher watching them doing French grammar. These children were naughtier and there were more troublemakers but I am amazed at their very keen desire to speak French. They all want to know me and hear about me, which is lovely but made for some interesting moments.

for want of a picture to illustrate my day I took one of the toilet floor

In my first class after lunch the teacher was trying to do science with them but she explained to me, since I had arrived they would not concentrate so could I sing a song with them. What a question! I wasn't going to launch into my high school musical repertoire but I explained cautiously I don't sing that well and she said, no matter, perhaps you can play a game. So we started with school materials- I say the vocabulary in English and they hold up the item. This started reasonably well except for some trouble with waving scissors around, so I quickly stopped that and decided everybody could write a question in french in their book and I would read them out and answer in English. The first thing most children wanted to know, again, was why do you live in Apt when you come from England? And the one that made me really laugh, why did you 'quitter' England? They seemed very concerned about my family back at home.

The final class was with the only male teacher, Gregoire, who was very good at his job, and quite inspiring to watch. Or maybe that's because he was tall, dark and quite handsome and had a very disarming French accent when he spoke English. I might have got the two confused. Here again, I sat at the front and the students asked me their questions, including 'do you have a drivers license?' and 'are you rich?' Interesting. I looked at Gregoire for confirmation that I should answer this and he nodded so I explained that students generally are not very rich and they seemed to understand. When I left it was cooler than it's been all week and the men were once again gathered round playing boules in the fading sunlight. Tomorrow I am making preparations for my birthday weekend in Cannes, and Georgia coming to stay. I found a nice bunch of birthday cards in my postbox this morning. Thank you everyone!