Réussite

Good day, start to end. Win!

The only way I can get Thibaud in a natural pose is when he is doing something else...in this instant, taking a call from Maman...which I think is more than allowed, phone calls from parents should always be answered in my book!

Started the day at a reasonable hour with the lovely sixième INTER, and the lesson was on the countries of Europe. Now I am more than ashamed to say this, but there were some little ones that I definitely couldn't place on the map! Especially the countries closer to Russia that have had rather a lot of turmoil and name changes in the past ten or twenty years. I had to stop myself from laughing at times when listening to the pronunciation of some of the countries...a strange mélange of French and English pronunciation does not a European country make. Anyway, I had a great time helping the students, and learnt something in the process.

The second class of the day was my first hour with troisième INTER, and we started work on a poem, called 'Tourists' by Yehuda Amichai, known as the most prominent Jewish Israeli poet. And I do really like it, the meaning is so clear and I really like the way it is written. I hope the troisième will take the same thing from it as me.

Tourists
Visits of condolence is all we get from them.
They squat at the Holocaust Memorial,
They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall
And they laugh behind heavy curtains
In their hotels.
They have their pictures taken
Together with our famous dead
At Rachel's Tomb and Herzl's Tomb
And on the top of Ammunition Hill.
They weep over our sweet boys
And lust over our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To dry quickly
In cool, blue bathrooms.
Once I sat on the steps by a gate at David's Tower, I placed my two heavy baskets at my side. A group of tourists was standing around their guide and I became their target marker. "You see that man with the baskets? Just right of his head there's an arch from the Roman period. Just right of his head." "But he's moving, he's moving!" I said to myself: redemption will come only if their guide tells them, "You see that arch from the Roman period? It's not important: but next to it, left and down a bit, there sits a man who's bought fruit and vegetables for his family."

The idea that we should always look to the people, not to the monuments is something that really resonates with me. I had to blip a person today, and luckily I knew I would be seeing Thibaud...somehow a view just wouldn't've worked.

Today was the first day I met my tutee, who contacted me through the ERASMUS society. To tell the truth, I was very nervous about meeting her, and her mother...and I hoped that my French would be enough to impress them. Turns out I had nothing to worry about as they were both really lovely, and for a student to take the initiative and actively find someone to tutor her when she realised she was struggling...well that takes guts! Really hope I can make a difference and start to help her improve her English, maybe improving my French on the way as well! I think I did alright as well, as I got a text afterwards saying how much they both enjoyed meeting me, that I was really nice...and that I was beautiful. Nothing like a compliment to end a meeting!

So after this I was obviously on a high, so meeting Thibaud for drinks just put the icing on the cake! Had a lovely evening chatting about pretty much everything (as per!)...I still somehow find it strange that we can have so much in common. I've been promised the sights of Brittany, so watch this space!