There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.

i failed to mention this in the last post: thank you so much to everyone who commented! it really made my week :)

tuesdays are good days to blog because so much happens in school. today was no exception. i only had one hour in the morning; a group of eleven 11 year olds and they were working on family. they were energetic and surprised when they answered me correctly, which was adorable. they would also look at me like i was a mad woman when i asked them to try and answer in english. it was so simple too: describe your family. and the vocab was all on the board. i started off by drawing the simpsons family tree on the board and labeled each person what they were. ie. bart= son and brother. i think i speak too quickly even though i think it's quite slow enough, because half way through the class, a boy asked me if 'father' was what homer was called in english. i think i enjoy teaching the younger students more here, they behave so much better.

i got to head home after that class for a long nap and lunch before my 3 afternoon classes. the first group was the other half of a horror group from last week. i think their teacher must have considerably chastised them all because this group was eerily silent. they loosened up midway and participated and were very well-behaved.

i had prepared youtube videos for all my afternoon classes but when i hit full screen, i got an 'unexpected error' and so i talked them through a restaurant situation (for what felt like the 40th time for me), since they hadn't done it before. and when they class was over i power walked home to re-stream the videos and legged it back to school within the hour. i'm sure the ladies at the front office thought i was insane, coming and going like i was. the total times i walked to and from school today is: 3.

my afternoon classes were trying to say the least. i would have preferred to have had one of them yell in my face all hour instead of having to deal with them all. the last group especially. they would not stay quiet even 2 minutes to watch the video. i waited and they would hush but there was never silence, and the little quiet there was never lasted longer than ten seconds at a time. i didn't yell. i picked up the list of their names and just kept reading names off and telling each person in turn to be quiet. it was all i could do i thought because they each seemed to only take notice when i said their names. i also wrote stuff by their names in hopes that they would be threatened enough to shut up. to no avail. they became even louder, demanding to know what i was writing and giving me fake names.

the odd thing was that even the chattiest person was able to answer my questions about the video. i had to ask them a thousand times and repeat myself countlessly (not a word, but don't you think it should be one?) over the voices of those who refused to stop talking. but they had all somehow managed to pay attention in between fighting each other over rubber bracelets, tipping chairs over, pulling pants down, changing seats, and pinching, flicking and smacking each other on the head, all while whining at me to get the others to stop. not everyone, but most. this time there were only 3 students who stayed quiet throughout. it's odd because i think they all learned something. i just wonder why they didn't bother to stay quiet to learn more. were we like that in middle school? i remember wanting to learn french...

monday: i made an amazing mushroom sabzi with pav bhaji masala, courtesy el madre. it was sooooo good. it was today's lunch and will be dinner.

friday and this weekend was spent trying to get rid of a frightening sore throat. google told me to gargle some very odd things but i stuck to salt and warm water. i also made 13 delicious chocolate chip cookies. only one now remains in the jar, and it is staring at me as i type.

i have noticed that so far, serignan and toronto have roughly the same outside temperatures when it is not raining. and it barely rains here. this is not fair. i picked the south of france to escape the freezing cold. it seems, as whoopi told me, that i "inspire bad weather."

today i received my appointment date for the immigration stuff. it's thursday. so i will be heading to montpellier tomorrow and back thursday or friday. i was so angry that they gave me barely any time to plan this (and throw off my sore throat) when i realized that the 7th harry potter movie releases in france tomorrow. and montpellier is possibly the only place close to me that might actually play it in english. coincidence? or does the universe love me? i'll keep you posted. (oh cross your fingers, toes and eyes and send me positive health vibes and just hope for me that there is a theater that will play it in english with the real actors' voices! please oh please!)

craving: ripe mangoes
currently listening to: crystalized- the xx