Hodge Podge

A couple of random notes.

1. The kids at my school in Herimoncourt wear slippers inside the school. I find this very odd. When I asked why, the kids didn’t seem to have an explanation, nor did they find it to be a bizarre habit. I know I would have felt a lot more comfortable in class wearing slippers, maybe that’s the reason why they act out more than my other schools do. Who knows.

2. I’ve taken up listening to audio books, while riding the bus since I’m on it at least 6 hours a week. So far I’m working my way through Don Quixote. I use the website librivox.org to download free podcasts of the books. pas mal (not bad).

3. French commercials rock. First and foremost, here you don’t have your tv shows interrupted every 5 minutes resulting in ADD-like effects. Instead, there’s about a 15 minute block of commercials every half hour or so. Plus the commercials are really cute and creative, some a bit odd, but for the most part just as good if not better than the tv shows.

4. I saw a commercial for McDonalds the other day. At first, I had no idea what the commercial was advertising. It was this montage of the American west and then a cowboy, etc. At the bottom it read in small lettering “avoid eating overly fatty and salty foods.” Finally, a huge hamburger appeared topped with bacon and with a voiceover explaining that this was a typical American sandwich. So funny, selling American culture through our most famous/popular icons, McyD’s and the wild west.

5. I gave my kids a test this week and they were ridiculous. I’m not sure what it’s normally like when they take a test, but let’s just say they don’t seem to get the idea of keeping your eyes on your own paper. There was blatant cheating everywhere. It’s funny while they take certain things seriously like underlining the date in red and correcting papers in green, other things a bit more pertinent to me seem to have less importance to them.

6. I had my first taste of foie gras tonight and not too bad. At my favorite store in the world, the produce market by my house, the owner as usual greeted me with a big Hello, la jeune fille américaine! After paying for my lettuce, she gave me my first taste of foie gras explaining “remember this is not pâté, this is the good stuff!”

7. At first I thought that there were some funky trees growing here in France. I then realized that most of the branches had been cut off, leaving just the largest branches with nubs where others should sprout. It results in a very weird effect and eventually, I’ll put up a picture. The only reasoning I’ve cooked up for this is to make putting up Christmas lights easier, but all in all it seems a little extreme. Pauvre arbres (poor trees).

8. Last, but not least. For one of my extra credit questions, I asked the kids the title to the Beatles song I taught them. A lot of kids had trouble figuring out how to spell “goodbye.” In one attempt I got a “goodball.” Thought that was cute.