Fête de Surprise

Above us only sky.

Today the sixième INTER took it upon themselves to throw me a "surprise" party...which is possibly one of the cutest things ever! Each of them had brought in home-made cakes and sweets and we had an hour of playing party games and eating food. Needless to say both them, and I, were on a bit of a sugar high at the end of the hour...poor teacher who had them after! I am trying my best at the moment not to cry every time something nice happens to me, but it is getting harder and harder!

The following class was my final class with the troisième INTER altogether...and we worked some more on the idea of "The White Man's Burden" in India, and how the story of 'Rikki-Tikki-Tavi' shows the views held by the British Imperialists of the time. Altogether very interesting, especially since one of the class originates from Pakistan, so was great to hear his point of view of how English rule has left India and Pakistan.

I've started taking photographs of all the classes I teach...I really wish I could show them on here, but I'm not going to play with the school's policy on photographs of students! Their separate class photographs with me really do show their character as a class...the sixième INTER are all really bouncy, and posing for the photograph with arms waving etc. whereas the troisième INTER are that bit older, so are more calm a little more shy...yet all of them still had a little grin on their faces, the way teenagers do when they're not sure whether it is okay to smile or not. I'm really going to miss these kids.

My final lesson was with the sole quatrième INTER student, and I am so happy at how much she has improved, especially in her ability to figure out what words could be when she doesn't hear them the first time. This has been something I have always tried to encourage when doing gap-fill exercises with song lyrics, and I am so glad that she has picked up on it...because it seriously is one of the things that will help her comprehension: if you don't catch a word, guess what it might be.

Straight after school I headed to ESAM (École Supérieure d'Art et Médias) to find Baptiste in his atelier to continue with the translation started on Saturday night. After re-writing a lot of it we cracked on with the work ahead. Now translating with internet and a dictionary is hard...translating without either, well, you start to get inventive! I think I translated what Baptiste had written, and Englishified it a lot, but it would have been nice to have known what some words meant, especially dès lors (therefore, following on from [reason before]) as Baptiste kept using it! This picture was taken during a break in work, I really like the angle and the blueness of the sky...let me know what you think!