This morning I got to school early to meet up with Corinne's maternelle class to leave right away at 8h15 for the cirque!! The kids have been "studying" the circus ever since they'd seen a Charlie Chaplain movie back in January, and I've been teaching them animal names for a while now (consequently I've been learning them in French lol)... so I got to help chaperon the field trip too! ...I'm sure being buds with Corinne probably helped me get one of the adult chaperon gigs as well;)
The kids were soooo excited, and to be honest so was I:) Little did we know our buses would be late, so we had the kids all lined up and outside waiting for them, but only 1 arrived on time. The littlest prek class got on that one and us in the grande section stood on the sidewalk. I at least got a chance to freshen up my animal vocab and remember names (being in this class once a week for 20 minutes kind of makes remembering names a challenge!). I stood at the end of the line with Andy, Noa, Assia, and Mélusine. Assia is a very calm little girl, the other 3 were a handful! But- the buses finally arrived and off we went! C'est parti!
On the way there, I sat next to Florian's mom who chatted me up about the kids learning English. She thought it was funny that the kids taught me words in French more so than I taught them in English (these kids have a tendency of looking at a picture I show, repeating the word in English, and then immediately translating them into French, as if they're making sure I know they know the words in French lol... but in the process, I think most of what they repeat in English goes in one ear and out the other!).
Once we finally arrived at the circus, we led the kids inside the tent, got them seated on the benches and we waited for the show to start. I sat next to Andy and Noa who probably enjoyed holding all of my attention. Noa would get very excited and stand up every few minutes to get a better look, so I'd remind him to sit down so the other kdis behind him could see. Andy wanted to know what I thought was coming up next after every performance. He also liked to count the number of acrobats we had seen, the number of items being juggled, etc. They made the odd experience worthwhile!
I say odd, only because I've never been to a real circus with animals. In general, I don't think I liked it much. The tigers and lions being forced to stand on little stools made me sad... the camels had big bald spots and sagging humps which just reminded me too much of Free Willy... and the acrobats kind of made me scared they were going to fall a few times. Some of the tricks were neat, and it was definitely fun to talk to the kids about it, but I don't think I'll be heading back for an encore!
We got back about half an hour late, which meant my lunch date with the other teachers wasn't happening (they had to leave without me to have enough time to eat themselves!). I walked home thinking I'd eat real quick and come back, but they called me and said not to bother coming back if I didn't feel like it. I kind of felt like a smelly camel, so I decided to stay home and shower:)
Elise called me this evening to set up our outing in Lyon tomorrow. She's going to pick me up and take me to her house for lunch... then we're going to Lyon to see the traboules in Croix-Rousse. I'm pretty excited... so I'll have to tell you all about it tomorrow! Here are some circus outing pics!
Reste cool:)
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