Minä en ole ulkona!

More pictures of Creteil: the Palais de Justice and the area where Louis Issaurat is

Yay, not a whole week in between posts this time! I'm quite proud of myself, really. I would have posted sooner, but I had to fend off a nasty cold earlier this week. I seem to have beaten it, let's hope I don't speak too soon! I'm pretty sure the entire city of Paris has been sick either this week or last week, so no wonder.

Tuesday I went to Victor Hugo, I swear that school is going to wear me out. They really think they're better than Louis Issaurat but those kids are so bad! I tried to talk about Thornton Wilder for a 3e, because they're learning about Shakespeare, but they didn't understand and would not listen at all, I was so frustrated. Later I had to yell at kids, like really kind of yell, in French, because they wouldn't listen and they don't think I'm serious or that I can do anything. In every class there are some kids who really stand out or at least who make the effort, but the other ones really hinder everyone else. I guess it's like that everywhere, but it's very frustrating, especially when you're not quite a teacher and they don't think they owe you the same respect...not that they really respect the teachers either...the day was okay there, I was with 3 6e classes, and I like them, they're still young and not adolescent jerks yet.Oh, and Mme Tejerina got piiiiiissed off because Mme Bluteau took me for both her 6e classes, even though the week before I was with Mme Tejerina's class (they have a weird Semaine A/Semaine B thing where the schedules change) and in front of her class in French she expressed her severe dislike for Mme Bluteau, it was...well, it seemed very inappropriate to me to say that in front of a class. But hey, I'm just the assistant, who am I to comment on in-school politics.

Wednesday was great, except for the sick thing, I had three classes and they all went well. I finally understand the grammar stuff Mme Le Coadic was explaining to us (thank goodness, I can't handle not understand grammar, no matter what language it is), and then I had falafel for lunch in the Sorbonne neighborhood. It was cheap and they gave me tea while I waited! Then I had my Euro classes, and they were both good, I talked in the identities one! We had to research Flemish authors, and she was randomly calling on people (though almost no one did it) and she called on me, and I had answers, she was pleased. It was kind of exciting. :-) The other Euro class was also fun, the professor's kind of wacky but I like him. He makes fun of the US a lot, I mean like the Bush administration, normal stuff you make fun of about the US.

Thursday I went to Louis Issaurat in the morning, I had four classes, and they were generally good. One was a 3e with Mme Ruze, they were great and almost everyone talked. Then I had Mme Kerkouri's class (she's the one who also works at Victor Hugo) and they were kind of bad. I don't think they're as bad as the kids at Victor Hugo but she thinks they are worse...weird, I thought generally they weren't too bad, or at least not worse. Anyway then I had Mme Michel's two 4e classes, and they were fine. One was better than the other, but they were generally okay kids. I'm going to just take groups of kids, like the better halves of classes for the higher forms, and work with them. There are some kids in Mme Michel's classes that can express themselves decently in English, one girl was telling me how she has played the violin for ten years and was asking me about playing clarinet, it was really impressive. I'm looking forward to working with smaller groups of kids there and really getting to know them better. Thursday night was histoire du rock, it's such a funny class for me. There was a French Canadian girl sitting behind me talking to a French girl, and her accent was SO funny, I was really excited. I still didn't introduce myself to the professor, I think it might be too late now...

Today has been great so far, I think I'll like Fridays a lot even if they start at 6 a.m. I was so excited to wake up and feel well that I didn't even mind this morning! (Though I did go to bed around 10 last night...) I had Mme Schaller's 6e in the morning, I took half the class for 30 minutes and the other half for the other 30. I really like them, they're a bit rowdy, but they want to learn and generally pay attention. They are excited to choose American names, one kid already wants to be Kobe Bryant and I'm sure the others are going to choose names like that too. Actually, they are learning nationalities, it's really interesting because they have lots of questions about it because they were all born in French, so their nationality is French, but their parents aren't French, so they have a different origin. So I got to teach them 'my nationality is French, but my origin is whatever,' which isn't really a good way to say that but it was the simplest thing I could think of. I've got kids whose origins are Moroccan, Algerian, Congolese, Guadeloupean, Martiniquean (are those the proper adjectives, does anyone know?), Portuguese, Sri Lankan...I think that was all. But for me it was so cool to see how they expressed that and that it was important to know exactly how to say it in English (considering that they're from 10 and a half to 13 - and yes, I did have to teach them 10 and a half). Anyway the other class I had today was really good again, we talked about the United States and this one guy knew all the cities and where everything was and I was impressed, because most of the kids didn't even know there were 50 states, or what a state was. It's apparently really confusing to have states and cities that aren't the same thing.

This afternoon I tried to eat grape leaves from the Greek place for lunch but they were frozen, it was so disappointing, I had to wait until after Finnish. Finnish was awesome (how can an hour and a half of Finnish not be awesome?) and we learned all about introducing ourselves and how to say 'I am not outside' (hense the subject line). I think I'm going to hang out with Verena (the nice German girl in my Finnish class) on Sunday, that should be fun. I think that even if I don't learn that much grammatically in this class I'm definitely going to be able to speak better...or at all. I will really have the chance to (finally) remember these things and maybe be comfortable speaking a little in real life. We'll see, I still love having the class.

Tomorrow France plays England in the rugby semi-final, I'm probably going to watch it on a big screen at the Hotel de Ville with Elly. I hope France wins, just so the city will go totally crazy again! As for tonight, I haven't decided if I should have one more night in to make sure I'm well or if I should try to do something more interesting, we'll see. Bon, a tout a l'heure - nakemiin!