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.