Culture and sheep killing.

Herro, here's the latest:

Last week was the funniest week I've had since beginning teaching! Monday was BRILLIANT as il n'y avait pas de secondes! Excellent! So I didn't have my first lesson at 8am or my last one at 3pm! Still had to come in quite early because of trains, but only taught from 11am-1pm. Bliss. And it was sunny! Got back to Clermont Shore really early so went on bank and laundrette dates with Mike and Wales.

Tuesday was a similar affair: first year BTS (the pooheads) are on stage for 2 weeks, so I finished at 12pm. Did lots of 'have you ever/would you ever..?' and advertising exercises with the other classes, which went down well. I finally cracked the boring know-it-all class. Scoooore. Hopefully I will remain in their good books! Also that class cracked me up this morning (would never have seen that coming). I asked the annoying swearing boys very nicely, before they started, if they could (for once) not use any bad words in their dialogue. "Ahhh ptaiiiiin". So that was their entire dialogue down the drain, then. But they coped! And they didn't try to push their luck either, so this made me a bit more willing to compromise. I just thought, if it makes them THAT happy so say 'fuck you', 'mother fucker', 'prick' (quite impressed they know little ones like that, actually) and 'wanker', and no one else is around to hear... Ahhhh why notttt? Don't be tight, Murdoch! "Boys, this time you may use one swear word. Once. If you absolutely must. Use it wisely..." This made them incredulously happy and now they smile at me rather than giving me evils. What made me laugh, though, was that all of the girls, who are very lady-like and polite and would never think to add in an unneccesary grand mot, took this as their cue to slip in "ahh FEUCK" somewhere irrelevant in their's as well haha. They were also really going for it! I really feel like they learnt something today.

On Wednesday, I literally rolled around in my pyjamas all day, generally just being happy with my day off. Yeah, thought I'd share that image with you. Deji came over in the evening for some romantic vegetarian burritos. If you and I are connected on Spotify, check out my playlist entitled 'Dej <3'.

Thursday was entertaining, as usual. Had the lovely class of dreams at 8am and we decided to sod the lesson half way through to talk about different English/French accents and French TV. I have a nifty list. 'Plus belle la vie' sounds like a mixture between 'Eastenders' and 'Desperate Housewives', so il faut que je get on that. Ahhhww and they invited me for coffee in the student foyer. Dey so naize :)

My second lesson was just ridiculous! There were only 4 girls and Fayssal : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUgg4wd1ke4. If you've just watched that video then, err, yeah...

Have you ever/Would you ever..?

"Would you ever steal?" "Yez, I would steal the eyes of Lauryn *creepy stare*". Nervous laughter from me and the girls. I'm thinking that, to be fair to the guy, even though it was cringe it was really quick, so I'll give him that one. "Genius, aaaaanyway..." More laughter from the girls. "Mais NON je suis sérieux, quoi." Sulk. Riiiiiiiight. At least he grasped the use of the word 'would'. Moving swiftly on. "So, has anyone ever-" "Lauryn! Lauryn! I forget something!" (Oh Jesus) "Yes?" "Does you 'ave a cléf?" He asks, brandishing his USB stick. "... No... Why?" "Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh......... I 'as a film for you. Iz called 'The Prophet'". Don't even want to know what that's all about, franchement. Carrying on. "What's the silliest thing you have ever done?" Blank faces (not a lot goes down in Thiers). "Oh! Oh! OH!" "Yes, Fays?" "I killed a sheep in Algeria!!". Bloody fantastic. He then proceeded to stand up and demonstrate, very graphically and with sound effects, exactly how he had kicked this 'medium', 'shit' sheep to death (when he was 11... The actual fuck?) and how his uncle had gone mental and slapped him. He ended this spectacle by revealing "I don't like this sheeps, quoi" with a big frown on his face. Bit worrying. After that, every 5 minutes until the end of the class he would start going "MEEEEHHHRRRR" and mime his sheep slaughter with a slightly manical grin on his face.

I have to say, from a teaching perspective, I was thrown.

Before the last lesson, I found a note from this English teacher saying 'Lauryn you have whole class today as normally I am not there'. Okay 1) What are you talking about, woman? and 2) No, because every other week I have a different class all together, so how does that one work? To be fair, her English is about as good as my French and if I ever see her, she just speaks English. I never understand that the feck this woman's chat is. JustdoitinFrench! The pupils turned out to be half brilliant and half little... Anyway but it went well!

On Friday we went for coffee and then a small group of us, English and French, went to Le Court Métrange, the international short film festival in Clermont-Ferrand. Didn't think I was that into films, but it was really good! We did four solid hours (truely heroic), 2 hours of the French nationals and 2 hours of the internationals. I'm now so cultured I want to cry.

Yesterday morning (Montag) I was bloody late for bloody school bloody again! Second time in like 5 weeks. Naat goooood. Not my fault! This teacher never showed up but the MAIN thing is I'm not in trouble lol pheeew. I think what I have going for me is that it would be impossible for me to have an attendance record worse than the Spanish assistant. Thank you, Spanish assistant.

Did a lesson with this first class yesterday where I gave them scenarios to do with bullying, stealing etc. and they had to create role plays to show what they would do in these situations. I found it interesting that in each bullying role play, the victim was being picked on for having lots of money. I guess this further explains why the rich people in Thiers (so basically all the people in Thiers) leave the fronts of their houses looking scabby and old. Or maybe their making a big deal of hiding their wealth has fuelled this attitude? Who knows? I feel like I have discovered another piece to mine and Erin's puzzle, we just can't work out where it fits! They're mostly all quite strange people in Thiers anyway. Who will ever know why they do what they do?

Also did one with 2nd year BTS today (have to keep things simple as with the pupils in their 20s haha ahh bless their lives!) and the boys gave a dramatic account of me being 'encircled' (how/why they know the word 'encircled' yet couldn't tell you they went shopping or to the park in English is beyond me) outside the school and them STOPPING THE BUS haha and scaring away the bullies and me crying but then 'no cry after because of we'! I had wondered why they'd been so insistant on being the last to share their work! I really like that whole class, actually. I was scared before I started teaching them because every single one is older than me! I thought I'd have some trouble with this one girl who was being a dick in the first lesson but I tried the old being overly nice to her about her and her rubbish English in the first lesson and I think she realised quite quickly that I'm not a douche so now I'd say in her group she probably tries the hardest!

In other news...

The sun has gone, owww :( It's raining in Poomont-Ferrand and Thiers is stuck in a cloud once more! But I'm glad we had that nice, sunny week as we desperately needed it! AND today I get to leave early again yissss :D AND it's 8 days until my birthday yissss :D AND it's 10 days until the Second Coming (back) of the Murdoch yissss :D AND I might be shopping in Lyon with Wales tomorrow yisssss :D ..... Yiiiissssss!!!