Monday in my CP class (At the bottom of this post is a chart of roughly our American equivalent for French grades. Now you know why I saw the need to bore you with that school stuff.)
Teacher: How do you say ‘merci’ in English?
(someone says something absurd that I can no longer remember)
Another kid: Yellow!
Another kid: Mais non! That means ‘orange’!
Two weeks ago in my Thursday CM1 class:
Girl in the back: Teacher, why do people fight wars?
Teacher: Well, it’s the best solution we’ve found when people disagree-
Boy in the back: Mais c’est nul! (But that’s dumb!)
This proves even farther that I have the mentality of a child.
Anouk: (about Jean, her 2 year old brother) Just hit him, Rebecca!
Me: … Anouk, I can’t do that.
Learning colours
Me: Show me something brown.
(The only black kid in the class glances at his desk for a brown colored pencil, and not finding one immediately, puts up his arm, points to it, and grins.)
Isabelle: So, I was trying to explain to my (CP) kids what ‘depuis’ (since) means. One kid said he knew, so I asked him to explain it. He said it’s when it rains (la pluie) one day and then it rains the next day it’s deux (2) pluies. So then I gave them an example. ‘I bought some boots last week, depuis I’ve worn them every day.’ Now, what does that mean? And they said, ‘It means you have boots!’
That one isn’t very funny unless you know a tiny bit of French, I guess.
A girl (7 or 8 years old) named Fionna grabbed my shoulders so she could pull me down to good bisou-ing height, and after kissing my cheeks, she gave me one of those fantastic hugs you never expect from tiny people. Never underestimate someone’s strength just because they’re small.
Again, there are tons of things that people say, then I don’t remember them later. I should start writing them in my notebook. Eventually, I’ll post vacation stuff. Grad school essays and Italian scholarship papers to write! Grad school stuff is almost done… I proved I can do a grad school application in 10 days! Wohoo! I wasn’t being irresponsible, I just decided to look up a program on a whim and apply.
We’ll see what happens about Italy. The Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago offers scholarships to study Italian in Italy, and I’m silly and didn’t realize my contract ended in the middle of April vacation, so I have three weeks to do whatever before I get home. My French professor/Italian professor/advisor (J. Carriere) kept talking about the program and that I should do it. So I figured I might as well apply, since I want to go to Italy and I want to eventually learn Italian… Although most of the time I I think I should concentrate on making my French better.
Oh, and if you ‘ve never heard a French kid talk, watch this. Carriere said it was what he thought of when he thought of French children, and it’s pretty accurate. Except they’re much cuter in real life.
lafeedeslivres 