Nouvel Ami

One class today, sixième normale. I always like having one class that isn't a bilingual one or a EURO one as it lets me know the level of an average French child...because I think my viewpoint of language levels of French children is rather skewed! The class are so cute, and listening to their beginning ritual is so cute...it goes like this:-
- Teacher: "How are you today?"
- Student: "I am fine but I am cold and hungry, and you?"
...this then gets passed on to another pupil, creating a chain of questions. My favourite thing is when they forget to use "but", and instead use "and"...creating sentences such as "I am happy and hungry" - or in French style "I am -appy and -ungry"
- Student: "Can I check absences?"
...one pupil then stands up and counts the number of students aloud.
- Student: "Can I double-check?"
- Student: "Can I triple-check?"
- Teacher: "What is the weather like today?"
- Student: "It is sunny, but very very cold and cloudy" - well, you should use all the words you know!
- Teacher: "What day is it today?"
- Students answer with whatever is on the board!

So there were some, more...lively pupils in the class today. Sometimes they behave, and sometimes they can be absolutely awful! So with a sinking heart I ended up taking the disruptive kids out of class to work with them on my own. Luckily, all boys so I kept them entertained with a competition between them all as to who could get the most questions right in a quiz on telling the time. It was actually really enjoyable, and although I had to keep stopping to keep them on task they behaved a hundred times better than I was expecting. I'm definitely going to call that a success!

In other news, blue sky in Normandy!

The rest of my day was spent getting to know the new language assistant, Kadin, who has just started working through a different scheme to mine. Absolutely lovely guy, and the hour I was expecting to spend with him going back up on the castle walls turned into an entire afternoon until late evening. The sculptures facing the city are just stunning, if a bit strange looking, and I'm glad I managed to finally get a photograph of them. Nice to find people who you can get on so easily with...but I guess at the same time it is a certain type of person who decides to up sticks and move to a foreign country for a year! Kadin I admire more than most...he came to France, not speaking any French, to learn it at the university. Kudos to him!

After a quick rest at home I went back out for the Soirée de rentrée with EIC (Erasmus In Caen). I'm definitely starting to recognise more and more people , and feeling a lot more confident having conversations with strangers! I still find it hard to understand though where there is more than one conversation going on at one time...and it is even worse when there is English music playing loudly. Explaining jelly, and pub golf to people who have never even seen these quirks of English culture!