Happiness comes to those who work for it.

Really need to follow my own advice. Saturday evening and all day Sunday were really disappointing, but I guess that's to be expected after a fantastic two weeks of galavanting and flagrant credit card abuse.

I followed Marie-Christine's advice on calling the students' attention to the structure of the words and sentences. We did some "word and sentence study" review on Monday and Tuesday: mostly question and answer matching and fill-in-the-blanks. From what I'm seeing on the evaluations they took today, it seems to have significantly improved their utterances both orally and written. I'm pleased. Also the tests were super easy. But the scatterplot (Remember AP Stats with Kincaid? I sure do!) that's coming out seems pretty reliable. A good r-value, if you will. (That was the first math class I got an A in since fifth grade.) I'm very satisfied with the results. Whether the word study idea was successful this time around or not wouldn't have determined if I'd do it again. I definitely will continue to do this for the next unit, and I hope to use this in future foreign language classes.

I am verrry lazy lately. I have to pack up my stuff and move it to Francoise's sometime, bring the magic internet box back to France Orange, block the automatic withdrawal at my bank, and Rocio and I need to majorly clean the apartment and have lunch! I will also need to buy at least breakfast stuff and pay for school meals. And then I have to plan out my lessons for at least the next three weeks. Due to random French holidays, the next three weeks look super screwy. Sylvie also told me that they have to pretty much teach real lessons all the way up to the second-to-last week because if they show the slightest sign of letting up, the kids lose it. This last marking period is going to be a doozy! All this to do and it's already Thursday. I could have done a ton earlier this week, but yeah.

Looking for jobs in New York is very frustrating. I'm very unconfident of my paperwork certifying me to teach, but I'm very confident of my credentials, experience, and ability to teach. Some school should just look at my resume and go "Wow, she can teach and speak French so well she did it in France! And all of her letters of recommendation are in French. We should hire her." Yes. Someone should hire me. I am awesome.

Have I mentioned how much I love my exercise routine? And the NPR Program Stream? Oh NPR, how I love you. I cannot find a bias at all, which is a relief after the NYTimes and Washington Post.

(I cannot wait to go home and see everyone!!)