N'importe quoi

"But what for?" "So we don't have class today?" A few of the remarks I hear after informing my class that Madame Champigny, their english teacher, would not be in class today because she is on strike. In reality, Madame had phoned me about 30 minutes earlier to notify  me that she would be late to class and needed me to take the reigns for a bit until she arrived. So i figured, what better time than to mess with a group of fiery secretaries on an early Thursday morning? "No actually, Madame had a big party last night at her house, she was dancing on the tables and everything, had a bit too much to drink, and thus decided to strike for better working conditions and less hours going forward." To say the least, they were amused by the idea, forgot to argue that they shouldn't be in class, and permitted me to carry on with our discussion on fair trade. 

Over on the other side of the hill, at the chateau, America club is in full swing. At such biweekly reunions, I do my best to appease the interest of middle schoolers who are so interested in America that they have chosen to attend a club in addition to class and instead of playing pétanque outside in the grand courtyard. Thus, I do my best to execute a well thought-out, carefully designed regimen to teach about America while speaking just enough french to where they have an idea as to what I'm saying. 16 seemed the magic number of students as my English teacher informed that it would fill up in 2 seconds. Surely enough, the first America club rolls around, I have an exercise prepared for a group of 16 and 2 students show up. Uhhhhhh, what to do with a couple 11 year olds for an hour who barely speak a word of English? Improvise and hope that others arrive, eventually a few more came, allowing me to carry out a small-scale version of what I originally planned. Week two was not much different, at least this time I was more prepared and had planned to drag a discussion before commencing the fun game I had in mind. Surely enough, 2 students show up, I pull another audible to cater towards the unexpected, a few others arrive but when things progress to the topic of American country music, I show them a video of Luke Bryan's "rain is a good thing", they ask me to sing, I say ok here's Peach State of Mind and we enjoyed the sights of the city of Atlanta for the remainder of the period. 

As you might imagine, teaching has turned into a bit more of a "whatever happens" game than i originally anticipated. Luckily, its not the least of my responsibility to stick to a script so I'm about as free as I'd like to be as long as I'm speaking the english language and they're learning to do the same. With one week to go until Christmas vacation, it's about that time of year when  everyone has started counting down the days. Anyways, thechocolate, foie gras, and champagne are on sale in the super market and I think it's about time to take advantage of these ~12 hour work weeks