Basically on Monday I did what I usually did. You should have my Monday-Tuesday schedule down to the button by this point. Say it with me now! Monday I worked with the chilluns, and afterwards I had a volleyball match. That night sucked. We played like garbage! The good news is that after every match we always eat super well. The bad news is that 7 hours later I had to wake up and go back to work.
Which I did, with flying colors. I had been reading the kids "Twas the Night Before Christmas" for the last two weeks or so in preparation for the holidays, so that made lessons pretty easy. They don't understand 95% of what I'm saying but we always talk about it after I'm done and I teach them some Christmas vocabulary and the kids think it's so funny. Most of them are loving it!
I took some time out of my Christmas lesson to explain to the older kids something I've come across about a zillion times since I've been here. I've come up with the four biggest pronunciation problems with the French speaking English - 1) pronouncing H's. 2) pronouncing TH's 3) pronouncing R's 4) pronouncing letters at the end of words.
The problem with pronouncing the H isn't that they can't do it, but rather once they learn how to do it they put an H in front of almost every vowel, especially 'I'. I can't tell you how many times I've heard "Hi ham happy!" instead of "I am happy!" I used that example to explain to the kids that they only have to pronounce the H when they see one at the beginning of a word, except for a couple words like hour. When I tell them that when they say "hi ham happy" they're saying "bonjour jambon content" they crack up, but I think that really gets them to understand.
The TH is a lot more difficult to explain, because they never use that sound here. Not ever. I just do my best to explain that you have to put your tongue between your teeth and blow through it. They can usually do that just fine, but when it comes to a THR or even THER word they struggle to go straight from the TH to putting their tongue back in their mouth to get the R.
If I thought explaining the TH was difficult, explaining an English R to the French is like trying to count your licks to the center of a lollypop. It requires extreme concentration, dedication, and patience. Basically, it's nearly impossible. I just stand there and repeat myself about a hundred times until I decide we should probably move on to the next subject.
Anyway, I just wanted to include a little bit about what I've been doing at work because I know most of the time I just say I went to work and then went home without much detail! I'm still working on getting a picture of the kids, but honestly I probably won't have one until the end of the year.
On Tuesday my last day before vacation, we made chocolate covered corn flakes most of the day, and it was really easy. I explained some of the directions in English, but it was hard enough to explain how to make it in French so pretty much I just acted as assistant teacher that day. Which, honestly, I prefer! In Jean Luc's class we sang "We Wish You An Aussi Christmas" together with his guitar that he let me play and it was really fun. I don't particularly like the song, and would have rather sang the real version, but it was still kinda funny.
Quick culture note! Chords in French aren't based on the letter notes like we do (C, D, E, F, G, A, and B) but rather the sounds of Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, and Ti! That made it a lot harder to learn the song, but luckily I have a decent enough ear and have playing guitar for long enough to be able to figure it out.
Finally I was done! It's not like I work really hard throughout the week and needed a vacation, I've been on one since I've been here…I just couldn't wait to go to Paris and to see Tiste! I had the rest of the week to go through first, however, and I already also had several plans.
Plan number one: hang out with Ashley! I hadn't seen her since the week before, and she was taking off for home on Thursday, so we decided to hang out before vacation. I went over to her place after work to watch Run, Fat Boy, Run. I love that movie! Mostly I love Simon Pegg, but so far I haven't disliked anything he's been in.
One ginormous hug later and I was biking back home to meet up with Thibaut and some of his friends to get some Chinese food at the buffet in Davézieux that I've wanted to go to for a long time. I hadn't met the two other guys before, Darion and Jeremy, but they were pretty funny. They ate enough to make any American impressed; I couldn't even keep up. The food was way good though, and for 18€ I think I got my money's worth.
On Wednesday, like usual I went to Thomas's for an English lesson, which can be difficult if he doesn't have homework from school to show me, which was the case that day. I decided to just give him the same lesson I'd been giving the kids on "Twas The Night Before Christmas," but we did the lesson a little differently. I would read a paragraph and he would dictate it, I would edit it, and then he would tell me what he thought it meant. It went really well I thought, I could see progression in his work, which is the goal, right?
All I have written after Thomas's house is Skyrim, so I'm guessing that's what I did for the rest of the day Wednesday, sorry to disappoint :P
Apparently I didn't get enough rest Wednesday, because all I did Thursday was play Skyrim and watch Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain before I went to an awesome volleyball practice. Nothing like breaking the dull of a day by throwing yourself around a gym floor in order to push a synthetic rubber ball over the other side of a 274 cm high net.
I was walking down the road in front of my house about to check in for the night when Françoise, my host mom's friend who I play pétanque with sometimes, rolled up next to me to drop of some champagne for Isabelle. She had just finished with a korfball match (weird basketball, remember? If not, look it up) and since I was there she invited me to have a drink and bite to eat with them in the lobby of the gym where they were playing. I was starving. Plus, like I've said before, I'm trying to be Yes Man over here in France, so I tagged along to meet back up with her teammates, who happen to be everybody else I play pétanque with (Gislenne, Alex, Jean Paul, Béa, Jérome, Anthony, etc.) for some fruit juice and cake and bread and cheese and paté and it was great. I was home an hour and half so later and ready to hit the sack. But I just went to bed instead.
Big plans for the weekend! At least for Friday and Saturday. I was up and eating lunch with Alex and his mom at the mall-like grocery store by Alex's work by noon on Friday, which his mom paid for. She's so nice! I love the French haha. After lunch Alex and I headed up to St. Étienne for another party at Romain's that night, but we went early so we could go to the mall and check some things out there.
We stopped by the SFR phone store so Alex could ask them for a replacement since his as bugging out. They took his phone to send in to HQ and gave him a brick as a replacement until he got his phone back in the mail, and made him write a 60€ cautionary check. I wouldn't have paid four cents for the phone he was given as a replacement, but luckily it was only for 15 days or so. Unluckily, that meant he wouldn't have it for his trip to Nantes to visit his family for Christmas and New Year's. I felt bad because he's always taking pictures with his phone (it's a really nice camera) of his adventures too, and I couldn't imagine going to Tiste's without my camera!
We left the mall for Romain's apartment, where we waited a while for people to show up. I just realized we're always the first ones to the party haha. Romain showed us some pictures of his new motorcycle which is really really nice, but locked up in a garage at his mom's place, so we couldn't see it. When people eventually did show up, we played this fun counting game with them where someone starts with one and points to the next person, then that person says two with the objective of eventually reaching 20, but there are little twists in between like at 4 you have to point the other direction, and at then at 5 you point with both hands but the one on bottom is the direction you go next, and there were different rules but if you screwed up you had to drink. I tried not to screw up too often. Two liters of Coke doesn't feel very good in your system when it's taken in one sitting…
Things were pretty chill like that for a while, and we called it a night after a while. Obviously.
The next morning we all got up to it snowingg outside! It was the first snow I had seen here, and for some reason it was mesmerizing haha. We were all hungry, so we left to get lunch at the Casino down the highway, and despite waiting in line for 10 minutes to reheat my food it was really good!
Alex had told Guillemette he would help try to fix her computer that afternoon so we had to leave St. Étienne around 2 or so, and were at Guillemette's around 3:30. Her computer was so bugged that she couldn't even get it to start up, so we went over to her older sister's house to help her figure out a Facebook page for her wedding store. She's the one who made the dresses that my friends modeled for a couple months ago! Holy geeze it's already been 3 months. It's going by WAY too fast! :(
Well after we left Guillemette's sister's we went to Kiabi for a little bit because I wanted to check out the raincoats there. Like the classy, French ones. Two rows of buttons? Peacoat style. Unfortunately they're like 100€ sooo I decided to check back later when maybe there would be a sale or more in stock, because they had the style I wanted but not my size unfortunately. Anyway…
I got back home and probably derped around on the internet and on the xbox until I was ready to sleep.
I have zero notes from Sunday…I have no idea what I did, but I know that it was the day before we left for Paris so I know I spent a good deal of the day packing and stuff. But other than that, I'm blank! It's not the first time that's happened, which scares me. What did I do?!?!
Either way…I'm still alive…and I still ended leaving the next day, so everything worked out! Onto Paris! (French accent Paris, not American. I'm still indecisive on how I will pronounce French words and cities and everything when I get back…do I say them how they're supposed to be said? Do I take it easy on my friends and family and just say them in English? I'll probably just do both. Who knows. Except Paris. I'll always say that with a French accent. And chocolat.)
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