l'école

Today was the day. I stood in front of the class instead of sitting in one of those little plastic chairs (okay, I did that for a little while, too). But the really strange part was standing on the playground and watching the kids play and realizing that I am now the boring grownup who doesn't play jumprope games or hang on the monkey bars. Not that there were any monkey bars, because there weren't. The "playground" was really just a big square concrete courtyard, but kids always seem to find a way to amuse themselves. And I find that usually involves loudness, but at least that's cuter in French too. Probably because I can't understand them, but oh well. But still, yikes. 1st grade memories of the "duties" came flooding back and I vowed again to never be as crotchety as those women were.

Despite that glowing preamble, my first day teaching (read: talking about myself in a melange of French and English interspersed with large gestures) was great! I started at 8:30, and helped in four different classrooms for about 50 minutes each. I gave a short presentation about myself, Idaho, and the USA (Texas is bigger than France, fyi) and then opened it up for questions. Each class definitely has its own personality- one was obsessed with what animals we have in the states. Are there pigs in the United States? Sheep? Horses? Rabbits? Dogs? Cats? Sheep? Pigs? While another was obsessed with the fact that I did the presentation with my computer. Is that a laptop? Do you have a laptop? Can you charge your laptop? And another didn't quite understand the concept of a question. I have a brother too. I don't have a brother. I used to know two words in English, but I forgot them. 

But it's understandable that they don't know English yet, because they're mostly all already bilingual or trilingual. At least two thirds of the students speak Arabic at home, a few Turkish, one Laotian, one Creole, and I'm sure there are others. Goodness gracious. So I'm barely bilingual, and I'm supposed to teach them something? Sheesh. They're very humble about it though- as I was leaving, one little girl told me "You speak English sooo well." Aw shucks, thanks. I figured I should at least learn one language, you know.