I’ve Always Wanted To Say That…

Tags

Corona, Covid, France, French, fun, funny, Humor, Learning, school

I said something today that I never thought I ever would. Something that you may have read in books, or heard characters say in films and TV shows. It’s such a tricky sentence to say, because the context has to be just right, or you might just find yourself in trouble.

Well I managed to say it.

I even managed to say it in French too.

I work at a local school and – due to Covid 19 – we’ve had a lot of people that work in local government departments and businesses working with us, due to their workplaces being closed down for health reasons.

I recognised one of these ‘redeployees’ today while I was in the playground. She was stood off to one side watching the kids play, all wrapped up against the cold in her thick coat and scarf (and obligatory mask). Her name’s Stephanie, a lovely lady in her fifties who works locally and who myself and my kids have got to know quite well as we see her frequently – under normal circumstances anyway.

I headed over to her, weaving through masses of running kids as I did so, nodded my head at her and said: ‘Hello Stephanie, I didn’t recognise you with your clothes on’.

Stephanie – a lifeguard at our local swimming pool – saw the funny side and, thankfully, laughed at this.

I say thankfully because Stephanie also teaches self-defence and judo.

Making Toast For My Daughter Interesting…

Tags

Cooking, Eating, food, fun, kids, love, Parenting, school

I make my daughter her ‘quatre heure’ – or after-school snack – each day. This involves fruit, a drink and two small slices of toast, one with butter one with organic chocolate spread. I got bored one day and, with the aid of a pair of scissors, cut the pieces into heart shapes for her. She liked that. She liked that so much that she then refused to eat it unless I cut it into heart shapes for her each time.

Then I got bored of cutting heart shapes and tried my hand at other ‘designs’. They won’t win any art prizes, but she likes them and it’s quite fun for both of us. These are all first time efforts as I’m still ‘honing my craft’ but I will upload more photos one day when I think they are worth sharing. So here we have: Heart and the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile, Pacman chasing a ghost (I realise for accuracy the ghost should really be blue, but I try not to feed my daughter blue things) and Jaws chasing a school of fish.

Trying To Explain The Outback To French Kids…

Tags

Australia, Culture, English, France, French, fun, funny, Humor, Learning, Outback, school, Teaching

Today with the aid of a cartoon I tried to explain what The Outback was to the French kids in my English class.

Me (In English and French): ‘So all the people mostly live around the edges of Australia’

Them: ‘D’accord’

Me (In English and French): ‘They live around the edges because the centre – The Outback – is very, very hot’

Them: ‘D’accord’

Me (In English and French):’ As you can see on the cartoon, Velma, Daphne and Fred are wearing jumpers and thick clothing, that’s not realistic, you couldn’t do that in real life there as it’s too hot’

Them: ‘D’accord’

Me (in English and French): ‘You’re just saying ‘d’accord’ so I’ll stop talking to you and let you finish watching the film, aren’t you?’

Them: ‘D’accord’

French Kids Say The Funniest Things…

Tags

Corona Virus, Culture, English, France, French, funny, Humor, kids, Language, Learning, school, Teaching

I teach English at a local school. I’ve mentioned it before, in fact it was in my last post :-).

The kids say some priceless things to me.

Here’s a selection from this week.

French kid #1: (in French) ‘Why don’t you speak English to us all the time?’

Me: (In English) ‘If I spoke English to you all the time would you understand me?’

French kid #1: (In French) ‘What?’

French kid #2 (After 45 minutes spent colouring by numbers in English while watching a cartoon in English and having questions asked by me – in English): ‘When are we going to start the English?’

French kid #3: ‘You speak French with an English accent’

Me: ‘Because I’m English’

French kid #3: ‘You’re English?’

Me: ‘Yes’

French kid #3: ‘Oh, I thought you were from Paris’

Sarcasm In France Is Music To My Ears…

Tags

France, French, Humor, Humour, Learning, Life, school, singing

 

Many times have I tried to use sarcasm in France. Many times have I failed.

‘Why do you keep doing it?’ my (French) partner has asked me, again and again ‘Just stop. They don’t get it!’ she always adds.

But I still try.

And fail.

So imagine my delight today, upon finishing singing a traditional English carol to the 8-year-old kids in my English class, to receive what was undoubtedly my second* round of sarcastic applause.

This really has reaffirmed my faith that sarcasm is alive and well in France, and is just waiting to be uncovered with the correct prompt.

Oh and if you doubt the veracity of my claim, please feel free to drop round – any time -and I will ‘treat’ you to ‘Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer’ in its entirety.

You will then agree that anyone applauding this godawful noise must be doing so sarcastically.

(*First time was for singing ‘What’s New Pussycat?’, Hotel San Eloy 1999, Costa Brava)

The Honesty Of Kids…

Tags

children, English, French, fun, funny, Humor, kids, languages, school, Teaching

 

Teaching English today.

Little girl looks at me quizzically.

‘You talk English?’ she says, sat in my English class, blinking her eyes in confusion.

‘Yes, because I am English’ I reply.

‘But you talk French too’ she continues (blink, blink).

‘Yes, but I speak better English than I do French’ I counter.

(Blink, blink) ‘But you speak French well’ she says, making my day.

‘Thanks, I try my best’ I reply, feeling quite pleased with myself.

‘But not too well’ she adds (blink, blink).

I don’t think there’s anything quite as honest as a 7 year-old child.

Excerpts From The Front Line…

Tags

education, France, French, funny, Humor, Language, Learning, school, Teaching

 

I’ve started teaching* English in my village to a group of French retirees. The lady who usually does it is the town-planner, so she’s often called into meetings, and for this reason my services were offered – not by me, but by one of her students – so I now take on her duties once every three weeks. Tuesday night was my first time in charge, here are a few excerpts from that evening.

 

I asked the group to tell me something they had done that week that they didn’t like. Three people said the same thing:

Denis: ‘I had to make some jam, but I didn’t like it’

Michelle: ‘I made jam, but I didn’t like doing it’

Francoise: ‘I made jam, 50 pots, but I didn’t like it’

Me: ‘Do you sell this jam?’

All: ‘No’

Me: ‘If you don’t like doing it, why don’t you just stop?’

All: ‘But the fruit will go bad’

Me: ‘So give the fruit to the animals, or people’

All: *blank stares*

 

On my teaching methods

‘Can you talk slower’

‘I can’t understand you, can you talk slower’

After saying a lengthy passage of text out loud

‘Can you write that on the board?’ (I do)

‘What is that? Is that a Russian character?’ (I’ve written my ‘h’s with a sloping bridge)

‘You keep dropping your ‘t’s, pronounce your ‘t’s’

‘Has he started talking slower?’

 

On my accent

Francoise: ‘Is he American? Are you American?’

Me: ‘No I’m from Yorkshire’

Francoise (frowning, turning to her friend Martine): ‘Is he American?’

Martine: ‘No, he’s from Yorkshire’

Francoise: ‘Oh yes, like the dogs, Yorkshire Terriers’

 

Apropos of nothing

Christine: ‘We had to get a new ram. It was having too much sex with the other sheep and would have messed up the gene pool. We bought another one’

On being asked what she did with the old one

Christine: ‘We killed it and ate it. Well, not all of it, most of it is in the freezer’

 

That’s just a snippet of the many things that were said that night. I loved doing it. Hopefully they did too. Can’t wait for the next class.

 

*The term teaching is used here in its loosest possible sense

Some Humour Translates Easily…

Tags

education, France, French, fun, funny, Humour, Language, school

 

New kid in my English class today.

 

He was colouring in a work sheet with the rest of the group, when he started laughing at the title. The title was ‘Can I have a pet’.

 

I thought he was confused about what it meant, and gave him a detailed explanation as to how he would put this question to his parents in French if, for example, he wanted a cat or a dog.

 

He waited patiently for me to finish and then told me that he was laughing because he thought ‘pet’ sounded just like the word for ‘fart’ in French (which it does, especially when you add the sound-effects, like he did.)

 

I like this kid.

Doing Your Bit To Help Out With The Local School 2. The Museum Visit…

Tags

children, education, Farming, France, French, History, Humor, Humour, kids, Learning, Museums, school

 

I get asked to help the school chaperone the kids on a visit to the museum in a local town. ‘This will be a doddle’ I think ‘Just walking around with the teacher making sure we don’t lose anyone’. I am of course wrong in thinking this.

The day of the visit arrives. It is beautiful, it is sunny.

Let’s all go inside a stuffy building full of agricultural tools then. So we do.

There are another couple of parents there. ‘Oh good’ I think ‘Safety in numbers and all that’. The other parents start taking the kids off in groups. I realise that the teacher is dividing the kids up into groups of seven and eight. The implications of this are hammered home as I see eight children – my son amongst them – being herded my way.

‘Oh well’ I think ‘It won’t be that hard will it? walking round an old museum full of tools’. The teacher then starts giving out quiz sheets to myself and each child.

I look at the sheet. It is full of strange words – which is nothing new for me as all words at the moment are a bit strange (it is French after all) but these are really strange –  as well as room numbers that correspond to the confusing words.

We head off into the first room. There are tools here that I have never seen before, and whose names I do not know in English. Apparently I am supposed to search in this room for the correct implement as listed by its bizarre name on the quiz sheet, and then take one of the letters from that name, and then do this in every room till we have a full set of letters which we will then have to rearrange to form the name of something else.

‘This is going to be a long morning’ I think to myself.

Coupled with this headache-inducing quiz is the fact that children – funnily enough – do not seem all that interested in looking at 200-year-old farming tools, and so have started acting up.

Have you ever shouted at a child in a museum? How about eight children? I have. I would prefer not to have to do it again. I would have preferred to not have had to do it 36 times, but that’s agricultural museums for you – they bring out the worst in kids.

Realising that this quiz is a non-starter for me and my limited grasp of ancient-agricultural-implements-French, I corner the teacher. ‘I don’t get this’ I tell her ‘I’ve never seen these things in England, let alone France – how do you win this game?’. Evidently you win this game by cheating, because she whispers the answer in my ear.

Then she looks at the expression on my face and writes it down on a piece of paper and hands it to me.

The seven kids (one of them has been removed for constantly disrupting the group, not my son by the way, he’s still stuck to me like glue) and I continue on our way, now mysteriously being able to identify each clue in each room with alarming rapidity.

We do it so quickly that we arrive in the reception room on the ground floor of the museum, where we are met by another parent and her seven wards (‘Why did I get eight?’ I think to myself ‘Teacher mustn’t like me’ I answer myself, pondering if this is the first sign of madness). She looks at me, resignation written large on her face, and then pulls out the timetable. We have finished the quiz with plenty of time to spare. In fact looking at the timetable it appears that we have another hour to wait before we have anything else to do.

I look at the 14 kids milling around a room full of glass cases with farming books inside them, thinking this is going to be a long hour. I look at the other parent, inquiring as to how she got down here so quickly. She pulls out a piece of paper, the teacher’s scrawled answer unmistakable.  ‘Oh well’ I think to myself ‘At least I’m not the only one who isn’t au fait with ancient French agricultural tools’.

Doing Your Bit To Help Out With The Local School 1. The Cycling Safety Course

Tags

cycling, education, France, French, fun, funny, Humor, kids, Nursery, Parenting, school, stay-at-home Dad, training

 

I’m trying to integrate into my new community here in la belle France. It’s easier when you’ve got kids as you can talk to the other parents and offer your services at their school. If you don’t have kids and you do that you just seem strange.

 

And when I’m not offering my services my partner is offering my services. Which is why today I found myself escorting a group of four and five-year-olds to the local park, so they could learn about the rules of the road. Except not actually on the road, because that would be madness, no we just set up a few obstacle courses that effectively mimicked things they would need to look out for when they did eventually ‘hit the road’.

 

As an example of what these obstacle courses amounted to I will tell you about the section I was in charge of. I was in charge of the roundabout, or ‘rond point’ as it’s called over here. This meant I had to stand there and make sure they went around it the right way. Which, depending on where you hail from as you read this, may actually be the wrong way for you. It used to be for me, coming from the UK where I went round it the other way. But I’ve adapted and now only occasionally go round it the wrong way. Which is the right way for the UK but the wrong way here. What was I talking about? I’ve forgotten…oh yes, the safety course.

 

So the teachers laid down the rules to the kids before we began, and ensured they knew exactly what they had to do. It boiled down to this:

 

The teachers said: ‘Children, this will help you understand the rules of the road and be better riders. The skills you learn today will set you up for now, and also for later in your life‘.

 

That seems pretty standard and straightforward to me, as it must do to you too. However judging by what I then spent two hours (they asked me to cover two classes, what can I say? I’m stupid) watching I don’t think that’s what the kids heard because…

 

The kids said: ‘This is our chance to get even with the other kids we don’t like! Smash into everybody! Run them off the road! THIS IS NOT SAFETY TRAINING THIS IS A RACE – AND ONE WE ARE GOING TO WIN AT ALL COSTS!!!!’

 

It was like Ben-Hur crossed with Death Race 2000 with a dash of Battle Royale. I felt particularly bad for the kids whose parents had forgotten to bring a bike, and so were relegated to using the school’s tricycles instead. They were slowly squeaking round that park like Danny in ‘The Shining‘. They did not fare well against the rest, and were picked off with ease by the larger predators.

 

My daughter was a keen participant in the ‘race’, I saw her take down two other competitors that weren’t actually competing but were just trying to navigate some bollards. She then discarded her jacket, ostensibly because she was too hot, but I think it was because it made her less efficient, as after that her hit ratio went through the roof. It’s very odd to see such a mad gleam in the eye of someone who is only four-year’s old, and is wearing  a pink Disney’s Frozen safety helmet. I won’t say no next time she asks me for a second story at bedtime, I’ll be too scared to.

 

I got away relatively unscathed in my position at the roundabout. There were only four collisions, and one child who needed to have plasters and cuddles applied. I did have to move out of the way a few times though as some of the kids seemed intent on hurtling into me, as well as their ‘friends’.

 

I’m going on a museum trip next. It’s a museum full of old agricultural implements, you know: scythes and things with points.

 

I need to stop offering my services….