Printemps en Normandie

En Normandie, il ne pleut que sur les cons.

A little Breton phrase for you...In Normandy, it only rains on the idiots. Now exchange that with 'snows', and you get the idea. In case you hadn't realised, Normandy and Brittany have this little rivalry going on...and have done for what seems like forever! All is fair in love and war I guess!

So as you can see, it is snowing in Normandy (you can even see little icicles forming on the bike handlebars!). Really strange after coming back from sunny Bordeaux, and I was not happy about getting into work...especially since comme l'habitude, the trams were not working. Nevertheless, I hopped on a bus and off I went for my two hours of school, wondering whether to head home after them, or stay for the three hours at school waiting for my final lesson of the day. After the nightmare of getting in, I decided my best bet would be to stay in school and finally write the essay that has been haunting me these past two weeks.

So my first class was the sixième INTER, and they have just finished writing their e-books and have had them printed (in rough) so that the other students in the class can see them and correct them. There were some interesting mistakes, ranging from forgotten capital letters to someone saying that their main character was in another character rather than next to. However, all in all, I was very impressed...especially since these students are ten years old and writing in their second language!

The second hour was with the normal troisième, who I found out were actually really awful in most classes from another teacher. I don't understand why, but they are fine with me! Today we were trying to explain why the English speak in such a singsongy manner...and which words were needed to be emphasized. I didn't actually realise I did it until I had to recite sentences slower than usual...and we genuinely do do it! For example:-

SELL CAR GONE FRANCE
Now we already know what the topic of the sentence is, even without the "linking words". Now if you add in the rest of the letters...

Can you SELL the CAR because I've GONE to FRANCE?
...and now say it. The words that are the important ones are the ones that we emphasize as we speak, without even realising it. Clever ey?

The second part of the lesson was spent talking about the schwa, or ?, the toneless neutral vowel. Again, pretty hard to explain to a class of French students...especially when you just do those things naturally!

For the next three hours I settled down to write my essay, and when I had nearly given up hope of ever finishing, I hit the minimum word count. Job done! The snow at this point has really decided to start gunning it, and I was more than worried that I wasn't going to be able to get any sort of public transport home, so with a degree of trepidation I headed up to the classroom to meet my student for her lesson. Now being a typical fourteen year old she had decided to go home, without telling me. Now to say I was a little peeved may be an understatement! I guess the way I have to look at it is that I was productive with my time, and I did get something else done. All public transport had indeed shut down, but my responsable was kind enough to offer me a lift home which took a lot of worry off my shoulders!

On getting home I decided I really needed to stock up for winter, as the snow is meant to worsen over the next few days...eek. I guess snow days are always productive, and lie-ins are also fun! Not to mention any photographs you can take when there isn't a blizzard.