It's 5:00 somewhere

Although in France, I guess you'd say it's 17:00 somewhere.  But I digress.

I had two surprises today.

#1.  The teachers drink wine at lunch at school!  France is an amazing country.  It's barely noon, we're technically working (at a school, no less), and we're drinking alcohol.  France is fabulous. 

#2.  I'm teaching CP, which is basically like first grade.  Most assistants don't have kids this young, and therefore I have no idea what to do with them.  They have the attention spans of goldfish and are just beginning to learn how to read and write, but they are super adorable.  I just don't know how to fill up 45 minutes for them - all the materials I have are too advanced. 

One thing's for sure, if you want to improve your French, teach primary school.  There are one or two classes to whom (to which? seriously, I'm forgetting English) I can speak English mostly, but they often will respond or ask questions in French.  In other classes I speak quite a bit of French.  I'd like to use the immersion method but I'm not sure that's how things are done here and I don't want to terrify the children. 

I think I'm catching a cold.  This is the downside of working with hundreds of children who always want to hold your hand and faire la bise with you.  On the way home, I wandered into a pharmacy to buy some cough drops, realizing far too late that I had forgotten the word for "cough" (which of course I remembered later, long after I needed it.  It's tousser.)  Luckily the cough drops weren't behind the counter.  We'll see how well I do if I have to go back and describe actual symptoms.

The common cold