how is it already february?

It's been awhile since I updated, so here we go! Nothing too exciting to report though.

Monday, I went to the galette de rois thing that my school finally decided to have. It was a good time! I didn't talk to very many people... just those that normally talk to me in the teachers' room. I introduced them to Katie, and she finally got to put some names to faces such as with Claude. They were able to chat about some of the primary schools. One of the teachers also told me about one of her students that needs some help with English, so I may have a tutoring job coming out of this. We'll see.

Tuesday, I only had two classes instead of four. The BTSers are still en stage (so I also didn't have any classes on Monday or Wednesday), and one of the other classes had an exam. On my way to one of the classes I did have, my phone went off. It was Vero, but unfortunately, I had class so I didn't answer. She did leave me a super sweet message though with about a million "bisous". Hopefully, I will get to talk to her soon. After class, Katie and I went to a cafe for a coffee. That seems to be our new favorite pastime. We also went out for a drink later, because none of us had classes on Wednesday. We met some random guy who talked our ears off the entire night. It was a little odd, but he seemed nice (if not a little lonely), but he did teach us some new French phrases. Now, we're all going around doing some stupid movement/saying from the French film Brice de Nice.

Wednesday, I went out to Saint Quentin to do a little shopping. Yay for finally being paid! I met up with Dot, and we checked out a few stores. I bought a swimsuit for Tunisia. Not the best suit ever, but it was cheap (the soldes are still going on!), and it's just for vacation. I also found a cute shirt and a pair of black ankle boots which are all the rage right now. I love les soldes! And I hope that I didn't talk Dot's ear off too much about a certain subject. Oh well, it was nice hanging out with her. I don't see her nearly enough. That night, we also chatted online with one of the gendarmes. We all waved into her webcam like fools! Haha! No, he's a really nice guy and was happy to talk with us all.

Yesterday, my classes were kind of ehh. The first one went well enough, actually, it went very well. The second one, not so much. They weren't mean to me or anything. I only had three students, and the one kid had just had a fight with the teacher. So, great. He decided not to participate. He put in his headphones and put his head down. I was like whatever, I'm not going to bother with you. The others were nice enough, but no one liked the activity (5 other classes adored it), which consisted of listening to a song. They were like "C'est nul ça" (That song sucks). So we ended up speeding through the activity, and I was left with 30 minutes of nothing to do. I was like, "Fine! Vous voulez faire quoi si vous voulez pas faire les choses que j'ai préparé?" (What do you want to do if you don't want to do what I prepared?). The one kid didn't even look up and the others just stared at me. I could have just pulled a Viany and refused to do anything, but that's a long 30 minutes for me as well. I decided to play an American TV show for them. First, I went with an episode of The Office. Only the two attempted to watch it, but they complained that they couldn't understand a single word. I thought for a moment and remembered that I had an episode of Grey's Anatomy with French subtitles, so I had them watch that until the end of class. The one kid got really into it and didn't want to leave.

With the DP6, I only had two students. Thank God! It's always nice to have a small group in that class. And they were two nice students on top of that. I sure lucked out! However, since they were two relatively motivated students who even already knew all the vocab, we sped through the exercise that would normally take more than the entire class period, because I have to go to each student after each question to make sure they did it right. We were left with more than half the class time, and I had nothing for them. The teacher always gives me this classes exercises, because of the special nature of the class. So literally, I had nothing. I told them they could do whatever they wanted as long as they didn't make a lot of noise. In the end, that worked out well, and they asked me a bunch of questions about the US and such.

After class, I went to a cafe for a coffee with Hart. I'm addicted to this place's coffee. It could give the Book & Bean a run for its money. Dinner was good as well. S. brought up the photo that was posted on some site of Katie and Hart at the club they went to. He also wanted to know where I had ended up with that night. It turns out, one of the people I was with is one of his best friends! Cool! Later, we chatted with the people from the pizza place we met the other week. They seem nice.

Today has been filled with classes. Okay, not so much. I've had two, and I have one more. I brought up Groundhog Day in the one, and then, I had to attempt to explain it to the students. That's pretty easy to do, but the day makes no sense whatsoever. I also learned that the BTSers are en stage another week, so I won't see them until after vacation, and then after Easter, I will probably barely see them... if at all. Guess I'm going to have a lot of free time. Tonight, we're having dinner at a friend of Viany's. He's a Spanish teacher. Should be fun.

I also officially got the paperwork from my school about renewing my assistantship. I'm probably going to fill it out. There isn't really any reason why I shouldn't.