Making use of my time

Hello one and all!

This past week or so has been mostly good. I’ve done so much I can’t remember it all!

I made two batches of muffins which were both a success much to my delight as it’s not always easy to get foreign recipes right in France. The first lot were carrot in honour of using up a few spare carrots and the second were choc chip and caramel in honour of my colleague/friend Martin’s birthday.

I’ve done a bit of babysitting for a family at church who have three little ones, two girls aged 8 and 5 and a Down’s syndrome boy who is 18 months old (I think). I’ve also been back to the ludothèque and have been playing games in the dining room a number of times with various members of the household.

Last Friday night, I watched a film called ‘Finger of God’ with friends from church and it was a very powerful film showing footage and sharing stories of miracles that God is doing in America and other parts of the world. It challenges your faith to see people who pray boldly for healing and other things, and are willing to go to great lengths to make Jesus known.

We had snow at the weekend, like most of you, and a few of my friends went out to play in it at 11.30pm at night whilst I contented myself with taking pictures from my bedroom window and closing it before I got pelted with snowballs! Earlier that evening I had tried a traditional French meal from the Alsace region of France called ‘choucroûte’. I’m afraid it will definitely not be taking a spot amongst my favourite French dishes, but I was glad to try it! If the cabbage hadn’t been marinated in some sort of vinegary concoction then it might’ve gone down better, although the beer it’s traditionally accompanied by wasn’t to my taste either (though I could see how the two went together).

I suppose I should tell you how the second semester lessons are going as I’ve neglected the topic so far and we’re in week 5 of teaching. I’m currently teaching 3 kinds of lesson; ‘listening comprehension’ as before, then one called ‘compte rendu’ in which the students read texts and do summaries of them, and a third kind which is entitled ‘writing’ for which we were given an old grammar booklet to work with. I was not thrilled by the idea of teaching the latter, and that remains the case. I just haven’t really got the knowledge to teach it properly. Imagine teaching the nitty gritty of the English grammar to non-natives with no training…I know X is X and Y is Y but I don’t really know why or how. Apparently it was never really meant to fall to Martin and me to teach this kind of lesson, and having asked around the teachers, it seems they all teach it in different ways…!

Anyway, in general things are going ok from a teaching point of view except the classes are bigger than before so I can’t give the students the support and help I’d like to give and it’s slower to learn names. There are some groups with a bit of a lazy attitude and others with a good one and I just do the best I can.

Bye for now,

Fiona x