C'est ma vie.

Now that the vacation is over along with the strikes and protests, my life has gained some sense of normalcy. I say some because tomorrow is a bank holiday so there is no school, and Friday I get to go in late because they are taking an exam and I'm not needed in the morning. We'll see if I ever work my full 12 hours a week, but I'm pretty okay with that.

If anyone is reading this as a guide to what your experience will be in this program, you should probably stop now. From what I have heard from my other assistant friends, everyone's experience is drastically different. I work with seven different teachers, so what I do depends on them. For some, they send me four to six students, and I can literally teach them whatever I want and my only real goal is to get them speaking English as much as possible. For others I get fifteen students at a time, and still others I get one at a time. At orientation we are not supposed to have more than eight at a time, but I don't mind because my big groups are really great kids. For the terminale (which sounds like they are dying but is actually the equivalent of our high school seniors), I take them one by one and show them a "document" (either a photo or a phrase). They get ten minutes to study it and take notes to prepare, and then ten minutes to talk to me about the photo. This is really easy, but I prefer teaching bigger groups. It's nice too because I can reuse my lesson plans because the groups change every week. The kids have all been really good save for that some of them seem to be terrified of speaking English with me (because I'm soooo intimidating, clearly). Until yesterday that is. For some reason one of the teachers gave me four boys at a time who clearly should not have been put together. They were obnoxious as hell and kept egging each other on. During introductions they told me that they "like women." Later when I was trying to talk about differences between the US and France one said "I like ze US because it's easy to get ze women in your bed." Le sigh. I was pretty happy when that class was over. My other classes were great though. When I told one class of fifteen that I live in LA (I still show them Michigan on the map, I haven't forgotten where I came from :), and that my boyfriend works in Hollywood, they all gasped like I'm the coolest thing since sliced bread. This of course leads to ridiculous questions like "Do you know Beyonce?"

After introducing myself, I asked my kids if they had any questions for me. One kid said really quietly "Oui, es tu celebataire?" which means "Yes, are you single?" I said, "Oh, and in case you were wondering, I DO understand some French even though I won't speak it with you." All the kids laughed including the one who said it even though his face turned bright red.

I talked a lot about stereotypes of the US and French kids seem obsessed with the idea of cheerleaders. They call them "pom pom girls" and several kids have asked me if I was one while in school. I was also a little surprised to find out that they didn't know the phrase "trick-or-treat." France has a lot of holidays, but I just can't imagine my life without having gone door to door and asking for candy dressed up as Xena Warrior Princess.

When asked about the differences between the US and France, one kid said that in the US people would think French men are gay for dressing nicely. He is probably right. In a country where homosexuality is already more (although not completely) accepted than the US, a man wearing a scarf or a murse (man purse if you're unfamiliar with the term) is not assumed to be gay. Men are almost always dressed impeccably and it's normal here. Really though, much like my cell phone, my gaydar is just not functional in Europe. I thought that was an interesting cultural difference to note.

I had my students make me a list of French music to check out. I'm excited to give them a whirl.

Aside from school and babysitting, it looks like I won't be able to come home for Christmas this year. My Sicilian family that I have never met invited me to join them for the holiday, and my host mom from last summer invited me back to Nice. No white Christmas for me, but it should be a memorable one either way.