Day 113 (!!!)

Good day today. Incredibly tranquil weekend (re: grocery shopping and lesson planning) but good day today. Well, my tutoring lesson on Saturday went awesome. My student isn't kidding when she says she's interested in economics. We did an article on the subprime mortgage crisis in the US and she blew me away. All righty then. More economic news it is then.

Saturday Ben made us - me, Rocio, her mom, her brother David, and Ben himself - a real American breakfast. He found real Canadian (whaaat no) maple syrup, so he made French toast and bacon. It was delicious. Go Ben. I'm going to miss him a lot when he leaves for his other city in February.

My fourth graders' homework assignment today was to either draw or cut out five pictures of peoples' heads and paste them in their notebooks. If you don't have magazines, if you don't have a computer, if you don't have catalogs, you draw pictures. We need to see eyes and hair. L* asked, "Can we find the pictures from porn magazines?" I told him in English that he was inappropriate and that I'm telling the teacher. But their teacher, Catherine, spends their English lesson time in maternelle and doesn't always get back immediately. So I go next door to Katell who is super fun to tell her in case I can't find Catherine immediately. Katell's eyes get huge. I leave the building (the school here is housed in four different buildings around a paved courtyard) and there's Catherine. I tell her. Her eyes get huge, and says "Well, he didn't even know that babies drink their mothers' breastmilk. And his mother will make up some ridiculous excuse when I tell her." Sucks for L*, but he's apparently not like this in regular class. He totally takes advantage of me, and it's going to stop. Eesh.

Ben and I are apparently going to Pascal's premiere history/geography class on Wednesday. Pascal is a tiny little teacher here at the high school, super friendly, and a great conversationalist. So we're going to his junior year history class to talk about "American institutions" like racism, immigrants, foreign trade policy, etc. Um. Do I look like I know anything about this?

I finished a book today! L'Amant de la Chine du Nord by Marguerite Duras. It was really abstract but neat for the role reversals in terms of sexuality, race, and socioeconomic status. I was very proud of myself. So I decided that I had to continue. I borrowed L'Oeuvre au Noir by Marguerite Yourcenar which is set in the 16th century and about an alchemist. The first forty pages are pretty sweet. I'm psyched! Look Ma, I'm reading! Finally. Eesh, I'm virtually illiterate.

Tomorrow will be a GOOD day. Hot chocolate and Nutella toast for breakfast. Yummy yummy.