1. I am so happy with my volunteer position! These kids are the best, so funny and sweet, and the teachers are so cheerful and have the greatest rapport with their students. Today, we talked about boys and journal keeping at recess and drew oompa-loompas in class. I think I might request more hours with a class of little kids too, because this has been one of my favorite parts of the program. Mandatory coloring and girltalk? I'm so there.
It's so great watching these kids make discoveries...today I was working with Salomé, whom I adore, and she was having trouble making change in one project that practices money skills. We started counting on fingers aloud, and I explained that it was just subtraction. At first she had to hold her hands up and work her way through it--10, cashier takes 1, 2, 3, 4, I get back 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...but within ten minutes, she was doing it all in her head and beaming from ear to ear...I was so proud! There is also Pierre-Nicolas, who every week writes me a list of all the words he knows in both French and English--all of which he's learned from playing video games. It's pretty impressive, and he knows a lot of words in English that I don't know in French. I could go on and on, but suffice it to say, this class is amazing.
2. Only one more exam!
3. New language partner! Last one is never available, because he's a lawyer and is a real grown up, so Claire (the lovely, incredibly cool secretary at the AUCP) gave me another. Her name is Anne Sophie, and she is adorable and sweet and down to earth, and promises not to hit on me.
and possibly best of all...
4. Today when I went to my travail bénévole at College St. Joseph, there was a group of teenage girls sitting on the steps, looking way more together than I have ever been in my life. The class was still outside, and on my way back out to find them, the girls on the steps stopped me:
"Hi, we LOVE your sunglasses!"
"Oh hi! Thanks so much!"
"You're English!?" (French people can usually tell the difference between Brits and Americans when they speak French...and apparently I have a British accent?)
"Oh no, actually, I'm American. I'm studying here for the semester."
"You are AMERICAN? Mais non! You look like a French girl! We thought you were French because you are dressed like an Aixoise!"
And then I got all dorky and "Omigosh, thanks so much! That is so flattering!" and lost whatever cool points my giant sunglasses (which one of my students says make me look like a fly. Thanks, Pierre-Nicolas!) earned me.
But still...FRENCH TEENAGERS thought I was fashionable. Sweet.
