la fin

it has just stricken me that am leaving france, officially, tomorrow.

and this is for the first time when i fly out of france.

i'm not returning after a 2-week break.

borrowing a line from the spanish tourism ad, "i need this trip to last forever. i need france."

there's so much i haven't seen, so much i haven't done.

i know that i will come back.

i just hope that this day comes rather soon.

gros gros bisous.

tu vas bcp me manquer.

this is it - la fin de toutes les bonnes choses.

i've had lots of kisses, hugs, tears, laughters, sweets and love today.

thanks my kids.

you'll always have a very special place in my heart.

i love you all.

xxx

je t'aime

trés fort.

spelt wrong, but well received.

thanks master L.

je t'aime, moi aussi.

genius programme design

the genius assistant programme design involves 2 types of contracts.

a 7-month one and a 9-month one.

the former starts officially from the 1 oct, ends 30 apr.

the latter finishes on the 30 jun.

now that things are coming to an end, you'd be getting ready to wrap things up and leave.

so i was trying to be very organised and started packing up and sorting my stuff out.

but then it came the 2-week spring holidays.

you see, the absurdity here is having a 2-week break in the middle of the calendar month.

this means that you'll work for 4 days or for some lucky people 2.

and then off you go on holidays, after spending 2 happy weeks getting tanned, you'll be back for 3 more days at work.

then that's it, the programme officially finishes.

i don't mind getting paid while i'm lying on the grass enjoying the great weather.

but wouldn't it make more sense to have one single form of a 9-month contract?

then people don't have to worry about sorting stuff out right after their return from holiday yet right before their departure for home.

you won't be able to close your bank account until you've got your very last payment, which, as you've now guessed correctly, is done at the end of every month.

for most people their contracts with the landlords finishes on the very last day of the calendar month, too.

if you're lucky enough to have made some local friends, you could just sleep on their floors for a couple of more days till you get things sorted out.

unfortunately i haven't made one single local friend here in france during my stay.

things have to be done before my departure.

the woman at my bank who always treated me like i was retarded told me that i should try not use my card to make any payments 2 weeks prior to closing my account.

i didn't listen, i mean hello, how is it possible to pay for everything in cash anyway.

especially when you need to make some payments online and didn't have another credit card?

i don't know how things would turn out to be, yet.

as much as i love france in general, i hate all the paperwork involved you could ever imagine and their seemingly "flexible" but rather rigid systems.

i know that i complain a lot about sheepland, but at this moment, i miss it.

my entire life.

last week, i had a new pupil in one of my classes.

the class teacher told me that she was living in the states before.

i thought that doing english would be extremely boring for her.

and yes, i did check if understand what i asked her in english, the answer is NO.

what i asked her was "so, where about did you live in the states?"

she gave me a blank face.

then i went on "do you understand me if i talk with you in english?"

she shook her head and started blabbing away in french.

exactly what i was expecting - i had a french lecturer back home, he had 2 children, both born in sheepland.

when i was playing with the kids, they spoke only french with me...

that was in sheepland, so you would imagine now being HOME in france.

they would do nothing but speak french again.

when other kids teased her for being american.

she said "i spent nearly my entire life living in the states", adding "but i am FRENCH."

what i didn't tell my kids was - worry not, she's full french, only started learning english earlier than you guys and isn't capable of having conversations with english speakers fluently (or in fact, at all).

she made such a proud face emphasising "toute ma vie aux etats-unis".

she's in CE1 - the entire life means 6 years (and a half)...

too cute.

toutes les bonnes choses ont,

une fin.

voila, c'est presque la fin de ce programme.

je suis un peu triste car je dois quitter la france et mes eleves.

(swtiching back to english speaking mode, just finished my class...)

all the good things have an end.

here it is, the beginning of an end.

i'm starting to feel a bit down as i will have to leave this lovely country and my cute kids.

now, it's time to wrap things up, here my milestones:

1. national strikes, or as they call it "mouvements sociaux", experienced: 3 times (or 100kms of rail tracks?).

2. amount of time spent on waiting for my carte vitale to get ready: 6 months.

3. improvements made i.t.o. the french languge: -5 points (totally back to B1 level again).

4. commands learned to train dogs (and/or small children): plenty. e.g. sit, run, stop running, don't scream, go play, go play farther away, shut up, listen, look, jump (i might need to learn "fetch" as well)...

5. friends made: 0.

6. bottles of decent wine consumed: 0.

7. number of stays in paris: plenty.

8. number of train rides: countless. (in fact, i think i've almost used up all the quota of train rides for my entire life during this 7 months in europe... well, come to this, i'm hopping on the train soon again.)

9. number of pre-packed lunch consumed: countless. (if i had to eat more of them in the coming months, i would have to kill myself.)

10. number of kids that i've bonded with: 300.

how many fish (or sharks) did you have on your back today?

it's the 'poisson d'avril' today, literally, the fish of april.

kids will follow you around sneakily and try to stick a poisson on your back today.

i noticed that some teachers didn't take the poissons off.

it was hilarious, seeing paper fish flying in wind on the back of a very serious teacher.

then there were these 2 interns who had like 10 fish (sharks) on the back!!!

it was like a competition.

i had 3, only.

la chorale

one rainy morning, my kids were lining up as usual.

someone ran to me, "maîtresse, il y a clara qui pleure."

i went up to clara and asked what was going on.

"je veux pas aller a l'ecole." poor clara couldn't finish her sentence without swallowing every second word. (i don't wanna go to school.)

"pourquoi pas?" (why not?)

"parce qu'il y a la chorale aujourd'hui." (cos there's music class today.)

"mais oui, c'est bien, la chorale, non?" (but it's cool, no?)

"non, j'ai peur de la maîtresse a la maternelle." (no, cos i'm scared of the teacher from kindie. - NB: it's the kindergarten teacher from right next door who does music. most primary schools have a kindergarten right next door. it's called "le groupe scolaire". sometimes they share the same playground, but with a fence that divides the two. some kids will show you who their siblings are.)

"pourquoi t'a peur de maîtresse?" (why are you scared of her?)

silence... well, her facial expression said everything.

"c'est pas grave clara, on va faire anglais tout de suite, tout va mieux, d'accord?" (it's alright, we're gonna have english later and everything's gonna be fine, ok?)

i patted her on head, she continued on sobbing a bit more before running and screaming again during the break.

later, she came in to have english with a big big smile jumping up and down.

enjoy while you still can

my 6-y-o's were really worried.

they can't wait to grow up.

then their class teacher told them, "well, you don't have to rush through the process. just relax and enjoy while you still can. these are the best years that you're having - while you're still in primary school."

"how do you know?" a girl asked.

"just cos."

"but how do you know, why do you know that we're having our best years?"

it was such a funny moment but i felt like crying at the same time.

"becos you're carefree, you don't need to worry about anything while you're still a kid."

i know that i had a rather wonderful childhood - i mean look at me, i'm living in the middle of nowhere and doing n'importe quoi, if i did any work at all during my primary years, i'd be working my a** off right now sitting in my cubic on a friday night and earning big bucks.

that's why i didn't want to be harsh on my kids.

life is definitely gonna get hard when they grow up.

the last thing i want them to remember about learning english back in CP is having a bitchy foreigner forcing them to memorise all sorts of useless and difficult stuff.

let kids be kids while they are still simple and naive.

name the images game

my CP's are such little geniuses.

they always crack me up with the most random things.

the maitresse stuck some pictures on the blackboard and asked them what they were.

they all jumped up and down sticking hands up in the air.

"sheesh!"

"ping!" (as in ping-pong.)

"trois-bit!"

"non, c'est roi-bit."

"beurk!"

"quatre!"

you've got to try and listen to how these sound in french.

click the little speaker underneath the french input tab.

well, now it's your turn to tell me what the imges were.

allez! dites-moi!

when in rome... but what happens when one leaves rome?

so in fact, deep down, am a pessimistic person.

we aren't even half way through march, am already worrying about how life would be after april.

it'll be so hard to get back to the "normal" world, where everything works and is efficiently done without having to cross words with the bureaucrats.

let's face it, at the very beginning, i was really worried about this whole system:

schools are closed on wednesdays, kids are off school for at least 2 weeks every 6 weeks.

what are they able to learn?

how on earth do they have enough time to learn anything?

after being "in the system" for some 6 months now (nearly a quarter of which was holidays), you'd think i've changed my mind a bit?

well, to be frank, i am still very worried.

but hey, that's the way it is.

if it has been working for the french for decades, it must be working in some ways.

mysterious? yes. but it works, even if it appears otherwise.

i love having wednesdays off - meaning, you start a new week with monday syndrome.

after a whole day of adjusting, you're slowly getting back to reality and are ready to switch back to "work" mode.

but then it's wednesday again!

knowing that, tuesday afternoon gets just as bad as monday morning if not worse.

you can't use a bell-shaped curve to explain productivity here.

first, the word "productivity" simply does not exist in their dictionary here.

second, a bell-shaped curve is called a "normal distribution" curve.

anything but "normal"!? nah, i thought not either.

then you'll experience the exact same thing, once again, till friday afternoon.

i don't know what primary kids should be doing.

but life does get really hard later on, so let them just have wednesdays off and be nuts while they still can i say!

who cares what you've learnt in primary school, let's just have more holidays and enjoy being a primary pupil (or primary teacher come to that).

but then it's much harder for me when i do leave this wonderful "system".

i will have to go to work on wednesdays, or even saturdays and sundays like how i used to.

and i won't be having 2 weeks off work every 6 weeks and still get paid.

i won't have to pay half of my salary as tax and receive some super detailed payslip only rocket scientists could figure out...

or to expect to pay only $12 if my medical bill was something like $500.

i guess it is true then - the only way to enjoy france is to live outside it.

sheeps, ships and chips.

remember how i told my kids that the word "sheeps" does not exist in the english language?

well, i think i succeeded.

we learned about lunch box contents today, and somehow, there's a pack of chips in it.

i was being lazy and didn't do my own drawings, and then the book screwed things up for me, once again, successfully, thanks.

so in this book, valerian has the following items in his lunch box:

1. chips

2. a bottle of water

3. a box of orange juice

4. an apple

5. a banana

6. a sandwich

7. a yoghurt

8. cookies

okay, let's leave valerian's parents out of this whole issue of inappropriate diet.

chips, is somehow very difficult for my kids to pronounce.

they kept giving me "ships".

"no, you can't eat ships." i told my only blond, E.

"sheeps?" he looked at me with puppy eyes.

"non non non, sheeps, ca n'existe pas en anglais!" little P told him off straight away.

"voila, tres tres bien P, et que veux dire 'sheep'?" (bingo, very good, what does sheep mean in french?)

"les moutons!"

"on mange les sheep, et ships." E turned to me with more confidence this time.

"no, tchips, not ships."

"ships, sheeps, chips, sheep..." he was so confused.

after correcting pronunciations one by one, i came back to E.

"so, what would like to put in your own lunch box?"

"euh, apple, water, yoghurt, banana, et, sheep."

"pourquoi les sheep?"

"parce que 'sheeps', ca existe pas en anglais."

excellent! re-learned something we've done ages ago and didn't really get what was meant to be taught today.

but who cares, at least he now knows 1 sheep, 2 sheep, 3 sheep...

might help later in his life when he couldn't fall asleep and had to count sheep in english aloud.

ne quitte pas la france!

before the break, (oh the generous system of school holidays in france i shall miss you so when i do leave), i was being lazy and sitting on the bench sunbathing with my kids during lunch break.

this girl F, she crawled up the bench and sat next to me and clang to me like a koala.

it was so cute when i said that i was cold, she put some other kids' down jackets on me to keep me warm.

"so where do you live?"

"you mean here in france?"

"yes, where do you live?"

"___, you know it?"

"bah, no."

"okay..."

"and before that, where did you live?"

"well, you know, sheepland."

"wow, so you actually live somewhere else before coming to france?"

"yes? that's the whole point?"

"then how long are you gonna stay in france for?"

"i haven't a clue, as soon as this thing finishes, i shall leave france."

"oooooh, ne quitte pas la france, stp." she said that while holding my hand tighter.

i felt something, i knew that moment, it would be really hard to leave my cute kids.

well, i shall not play "every time we say goodbye" too often then i guess?

kids are easy to please, ou pas? (cont'd)

(little i thought english classes are such a blah, she didn't want to learn.)

the upward turning point was in the class where we learnt "days of the week".
kids learn things easier through songs.
so i found a version of "days of the week" song.
it was sung to the music of "twinkle twinkle little star", which also happens to be the same tune as the alphabet song.

thanks Mozart!
it was quite easy, the music, not the lyrics, of course not.

as i asked who would like to sing for the whole class, little I was the only one who raised hand.
although off tune and blahed most of the words out.
i gave her a flower as a reward for having the courage to sing in front of the entire class.
she was super content and was smiling so big till the end of the class.

then it was one day during break time, she kicked her ball up high and it got stuck on the beam.
she came to ask her class teacher for help.
as any normal french teacher would say, "well, pity that you lost it, i can't do anything to help. don't do it again next time."
i saw the whole thing happening, so i decided to help her out.
it was really easy, only would take 2 mins if you really wanted to help.
all it takes is hitting it with another ball.
i told her not to worry, i could help her to get it after english.

so she remembered, and waited for me after class to rescue her.
it was lucky that i saw one of my bigger kids holding a ball in his hand walking pass.
so i borrowed it and off i went.
it wasn't successful at the first attemp, i'm no basketball player, so...
seeing me trying to get the ball off for little i, my bigger kids offered to help.
couple of tries later, little i got her favourite hello kitty ball back.

after that, whenever she sees me in the playground, she'll run to me and give me big big hugs.
so you think kids are hard to please?
just observe and be patient, you shall find what they really need.

kids are easy to please, ou pas?

i used to dislike kids for one reason: they're so screamy.
there are of course, exceptions.
some kids are incredibly well behaved and quiet, but it's often the noisy ones that get all the attention.
it was only natural to think that kids are hard to please.
cos why else the parents have absolutely no skills or whatsoever to control their own kids?

so there's this girl little "I" in my ce1 class.
she plays with other boys, kicks balls, runs wildly in the playground and you will never find one minute during break time that she's standing still.
when i first started "socialising" with the kids, she was with other girls.
and she was the only one who thought doing english was such a blah.
it wasn't particularly encouraging at the very beginning for an english-speaking person to teach english in french, who also had no experience dealing with kids at all.
i won't take this personal, it must have been the previous teacher who made it miserable for her.
but one thing i promised her: i will make english interesting, you will see.

well, did i make english interesting?
i don't know.
we sang, we read stories, we coloured images, we had competitions of guessing words between girls and boys...
she was getting interested gradually.
things were going the right direction.

after one class while watching them getting their coats on, i told her that she's made great progress over the past few weeks, and that brought a big smile to her face.
she was participating more in classes, too.
the upward turning point was in one particular class...

being blunt

"so why do you have so many pimples on your face?" my 6-y-o CP asked.

"well, i haven't a clue either."

"my mum has pimples too!" another one commented.

"yeah, and it's not very pleasant, having pimples. sometimes, it hurts."

"awww, it's okay, you still look pretty anyway." another kid hugged me and kissed me on my cheek.

"yes, you look pretty!" another one came to hug me too.

"thanks girls, you are pretty yourselves too!"

we were sitting on the bench in the playground.

they kept wanting to climb up and sit on my laps.

it was overwhelming, having something that's not dogs sitting on my laps.

i love my kids when they're not being nuts and/or screamy.

biRRRo, borg, bark, beh, etc

what is hidden underneath "borg" is a "HHHHose".

it looks so not like a horse, i don't want to present it.

they call my hand drawn oiseau biRRRo, yeah, whatever.

better than calling the duck, a "bark" i guess?

how about their green friend fog/hog, and the fish a "sheeps"?

yes, a "sheeps" for sure, since there are so many of them in sheepland it must come in a plural form with an s.

it-s-a-jumper syndrome

well, i'm naming it a syndrome here only because half of my class had this.

we're still learning about clothes (big sigh), with my handmade flashcards (duh!).

"okay, what's this?" holding a pair of trousers.

"pantalon!"

"yes, english?"

"pantaloon?"

"E!" i yelled at the blond kid who sat facing a telly (i dunno why and how) and was having loads of fun posing while seeing his reflection.

"quoi?"

i waved my flashcard, "what's this?"

"it's a jumper!"

...

"come, sit here, by the blackboard!" i wasn't impressed.

he kept doing n'importe quoi while i was asking my brighter girls.

"what's this, E?" holding up a skirt.

"it's a jumper!"

"time for lunch now!" their class teacher came knocking.

i always go with them into the corridor to help them put on their coats and wait till they're all lined up to go down for lunch.

"it's a jumper!" he told me, pointing at L's windbreaker.

"whatever, am not talking to you!"

"it's a jumper!" he was pointing at F's pretty woolly dress.

"E, arrete de dire 'it's a jumper!', c'est plus rigolo!" (stop saying that, it's not funny anymore!)

"mais si!" (yes it is!)

i didn't punish him...

i dunno why, maybe he's too pretty.

the pretty always get away with anything.

l'écriture cursive

it's not the first time that my kids would yell "no, it's not written like that!" while i'm trying my best to spell something for them on the board.

well, if you can tell it's a letter "L", then it's not that bad!

sometimes that happens too often, i'd lose my patience and just write in print.

during lunch ms k was marking her kids' handwriting homework.

it's such a big deal here in france, to have perfect cursive handwriting.

i was already shocked when i first came.

my 6-year-olds have perfect handwriting while i write like a kid.

well, i was taught how to do cursives once upon a time, too. but but but...

come to handwriting, i've got to mention that at my school, there are desks designed for fountain pen users - there is a hole on the RHS corner of the desk to place your ink bottle.

and all of my kids still have a fountain pen, they use them quite often too.

where was i?

oh yes, ms k marking handwriting.

so seeing how she marked all those beautiful "B"s wrong made me ask the obvious question, "so why do you mark it wrong? they look perfectly fine to me."

"well, just cos."

"why do they have to have perfect handwriting? learning to write letters is hard enough?"

"just cos." ms s echoed in matter-of-factly.

no wonder her son would leave his seat and come to the board to tell me "you have to put an extra half circle as the beginning of L" every time i write his name.

so, what next?

i'll try practicing till i re-master it again.

another thing to do in the evenings to kill time.

thanks.

chchchchanges~

we've moved onto doing clothes now.
it's hard to tell them how to distinguish singulars and plurals.
because whenever i tell them "this is a shirt", "these are gloves".
they'll repeat, "this is a shirt", "this is glahbes".
and after a good 3 months, they've already forgotten what 'how are you' means and are starting to throw me back my questions when asked.
so we're pretty much moving backwards, though they remember what colour pink means, which seems to be a relief (ou pas?).

now, besides all above, the forever 'H' topic arises, again.
we got stuck on the word, hat.
"repeat after me, hat."
"AT."
"no, HHHHHat."
"AAAAYYYT."
where the heck did you hear the "i" sound?
"hat."
"height."
"can you do this? hahahahaha."
"hahahaha."
"very good, now, hat."
"hahahahahat."

maybe we need some chchchchanges.

caffeine addict

"can you please help me to zip up my jacket?"
"sure, come here, my petit."
"you know, you should stop drinking so much coffee."
"excuse me?" i had to make sure that i didn't hear it wrong, my kids talk way too fast.
"you should stop drinking so much coffee."
"hello, mum! stop hiding behind little kids, it must be you!" i thought to myself, "okay, but why?"
"well, you know, you smell like coffee."

i'm not sure if i want to get a coffee-scented perfume if it ever gets invented.
cos i could still walk around carrying a cup of coffee and smell pretty much the same.
though i probably should cut back my coffee consumption and go to bed earlier.
thanks to my blunt kids.

la punition

some of my kids got excited (again?!) by the squirrels outside our window who live in the tree that's in the unaccessible back garden.

they went all nuts talking loudly with each other and got walked in on by their class teacher.

uh-oh.

"vous etes tous punis pendant la recree jusqu'au lundi!" (all of you are punished during break till next monday!)

then when i got back to school, i received verbal apologies, and those as shown above in the picture.

they read:

1. je respecte les adultes.

2. je ne fais pas le pitre en anglais. (i will not be a fool in english classes.)

they were read and signed by parents and the headmaster.

while just copying lines, they still made mistakes. after all, they're only 6. what would i expect?

instead of je ne fais pas, one wrote, je me fais pas...

instead of en anglais, someone skipped "en". so playing a fool the english way?

kids are kids, i understand thoroughly why they'd rather be watching squirrels jumping from branch to branch than learning how to say some bizarre word like 'strawberries' in english.

i was that kid, too.

geRaaaasps

"what are these in the picture?" i asked my kids while showing them my perfect colour-in picture.

"raisins."

"very good, raisins, and in english, we call it 'grape' or 'grapes'."

"gray-sp."

"no, gray-ps."

"gray-sp."

"can you say 'psssss'?"

"pppppppppsssssssssssssssssss."

"really good, now, gray-ppps."

"gray-sssppppsssss."

to show that he can read, lucas told me that raisins are called "gRah-sps" in english while staring at the word on the blackboard.

are you kidding me? of course he said that in french.

gRah-sps, though i haven't the faintest clue where the "s" came from before the "pes".

and of course, according to my kids, strawberries are called "flays" in english.

cherries, naturally, are called "sayless".

i'm hesitating whether to introduce more fruits to them.

i might end up confusing them about pineapples and apples, and many more things you would never imagine.

cos one of my kid told me that the colour pink is obviously called "peugeot".

brilliant!

post-holiday depression

can be cured in two ways.

1. have another 2-week break in one month's time.

2. have some of the shops go on sale in two weeks' time.

there is a major flaw in this cure though.

while you were away on holiday, you've already spent so much.

having a 2-week break in between shopping sprees is just not enough unless you live off eating grasses and/or barks.

let's assume you would still have a tiny bit of money left.

how are you gonna be able to afford to go on for yet another trip in another 2 weeks after your 2nd shopping spree?

i miss boxing day sales.

i also envy those people who are entitled to have a tax refund.

even though i'm now officially "one of them", i still want my money back...

oh well, at least it's called value added tax here not goods and services tax.

cos while i was making a purchase, i didn't feel like there was any 'service'.

maybe they should change goods and services to 'good services' tax.

if you don't get good services, you should get a refund for tax?