one-orse open sleigh, ay!

This morning I was a little scared to go out into the snow, and if my bus would be running, but it really wasn't so bad. The streets had been plowed.... the sidewalks had paths walked into them... and my bus was only a few minutes late.

I wish I had brought my camera to school because it was a quite sight to see all the kids in the snow-covered courtyard where they have recess. They were running and throwing snowballs left and right, their cheeks were all rosy red, and they all had huge grins on their faces.

Murielle, on the other hand, didn't look quite as in form.... but she was just as welcoming and nice as usual... asking if Amy had gotten home safely. When we went inside, the kids had a ton of questions for her because they hadn't seen their maitresse in several days.... but when we got on to English, the first thing Murielle wanted me to do was to sing Jingle Bells for the class (just the refrain). So I sang, then we had the kids sing a part of the line, then I sang another part, then they sang.... until we were able to sing all 4 lines. For the end of the second verse, (in a one-horse open sleigh) Murielle wrote the words on the board to help guide students who were kind of mumbling through that part (it's a hard group of words to say). However, when she read the line, she said "one-orse open sleigh," which then lead to all of the students saying "orse" when singing. Oh well.... that darn, non-existent French "h" can get you sometimes. Otherwise, they did quite well and for 9-11 year olds, they actually looked like they were enjoying themselves:) Murielle had them all stand up to practice how they will sing at the winter festival on the last day before winter break. We will need some more practicing:)

I then read a Christmas story to them... that wasn't very complicated, but I guess with all the new Christmas vocab, they were a little lost... so I had to explain a lot in French. They also asked me questions about what I do for Christmas and told me what they do for Christmas. Many of them leave their shoes out for Santa to put goodies in them (I guess in lieu of hanging stocking like we do). For the next time, we will be playing Christmas vocab bingo. This job is so fun sometimes:)

In the second class, we sang "We wish you a Merry Christmas" and the kids LOVED it. I feel like this class is easy to entertain:) I also read the book and went over vocab so that we can play bingo next time as well.

During recess, I talked with Salima, the special education teacher who has a child in the crazy class at the Marendiers school. I told her how things were going and she was shocked to hear that they were giving me (and the sub) a horrible time. After we got talking more about it though, she said she had wondered if something was up because her son comes home crying many days, not understanding the homework.... it probably has something to do with the fact that the kids talk so much no one can hardly hear what's going on! Ah! She did say that regardless of the teacher, the class has a few students that are really tough cookies...

With Anne-Laure's class, the CP/CE1 class, I did the number/color activity (they had to color in the number I said with the color I gave in English). They did the best by far of any of the other classes I've done that with. Then I taught them Jingle Bells and that was that for them. At lunch, I told them about my Electrician, and they said, oh no! I bet you'll have dust everywhere for months! I was like.... yep, I would believe it (although as of right now, I'm doing pretty good... I mopped yesterday and got a lot of it up!).

After school I got to talk to my mom:) and then went to the post office to make a few copies of travel books I got from the library and to mail a few things out. I also went to the bakery and bought a demi-baguette (small one), a praline brioche (which I ate immediately), and 2 pain au chocolats.... I've kind of missed having them for breakfast!

The plumber showed up at my door at about 4pm.... he was supposed to come tomorrow at 8:30.... although now I'm wondering if I've misunderstood something and someone else will be here tomorrow morning..... However, the main thing here is that my toilet is finally fixed!!! Thank goodness!

Now I'm just hanging out.... going to do real laundry tomorrow morning and then meet Hannah in Lyon to see Harry Potter again (like we had planned on doing on Wednesday). Then, she's coming home with me to spend the night before we go to Colmar on Saturday! Yay! More Christmas markets!!!!

Reste cool:)