Jeudi - rain

This morning at 5h30 I got up and prepared myself for Lycee. I left, as usual, at about 7am and arrived at Lycee for 8h45. It was really dark this morning because it was cloudy and the streetlights had been switched off. Usually the sky is clear and so it isn't dark but it was strange this morning - no streetlights and clouds. I went to la salle de professeurs before my first class and Olivia, one of the English teachers, asked me whether I'd be interested in giving private cours de conversation. One of her friends' daughters is in troisieme and lives 'just behind the Lycee' and her mum wants her to have extra English classes. I said of course I'd be interested. Olivia told me it's perfectly reasonable to ask for 20 euros an hour so I said 20 euros an hour. For my other private student I didn't ask for that but then again his mum does fetch me from and take me back to the metro station. Anyway, my second cours de conversation should be starting on a Thursday after Lycee in a couple of weeks. My first class of the day was one of my many BTS students. I was sent 2 students, one of whom I'd met before. The one I hadn't met before was very very weak. He couldn't even explain to me what he'd done during his work experience. I am still none the wiser now. He worked for 'Societe de l'eau de Marseille' but talked about infra red camera and well, I don't know. My second student worked with elevators. Between them they taught me a new word. I asked them whether they got paid for their work experience and they said no and then something in french and they both fell about laughing so I asked them what it meant. 'radin' is a familiar word meaning 'stingy'. There, you learn something new everyday. My second class was my anglais renforce class with Christiane. I like this class. I went in and, as always, got a good greeting. I teach them for the first part of the class and I can do whatever I want with them. This week I did Children in Need. I began by drawing Pudsey bear on the board and asking whether anyone knew who he was. Nobody did so I played hangman with them until they got 'Pudsey'. Still nobody knew who he was so I wrote Children in Need on the board and then went on to explain. I then handed out the sheet I'd prepared and they had to do a gapfill - all the information they needed was on the board. I went round and monitored and they we went through it. Then Christiane took over and we went back to the text we're studying. After this class it was break time and then I had 3 terminale students which means an image class. Because I get sent all 3 students at once rather than one after the other it means I can alter what I do with them. I'm supposed to give them 10 minutes to prepare an image and then they have to talk to me about it but their level isn't good enough to be able to to do it. So today I ran it as I did with 3 students from this class last week only this week we did binge drinking. It went quite well, they were quite talkative and they definitely got lots and lots of vocabulary out of it. After this class I went home for my 4 hour lunch break. Rachel came round and we lunched together on the sandwich filling I'd made the night before and pitta bread. They she had to go as she had a lesson at 14h. My class wasn't until 15h so I left at about 14h15 calling in at La Poste on the way to post a couple of postcards. I then got the metro and bus back to my Lycee for my final class of the week - mes secondes. But it's my good class of secondes. We were working on the same text as last week. I had to read it out and then we translated it into french. I think I got just as much out of the lesson as the students did! We also went through the exercises they'd done related to the text. At 16h I left to get the bus to go home. It was raining, and not just a light shower but proper torrential rain. There were so many people waiting for the bus that when it did come it was a logistical impossibility to squish everyone on. I waited for the next bus but when that arrived it was already full so I waited for the third bus. Good job they're frequent! I had my umbrella and the rain eased off a bit. When I got off the metro at Colbert it was still raining, grr. I came home and changed my jeans as they were wet before running to Rachel's. And there I stayed in the dry until quite late. Louise came too and we, or should I say Rachel, cooked cheese and tomato cibatti and tomato pasta. We then sat and watched a film on french tv. It was an English-American film with Tom Cruise that was described in the tv guide as a 'drame' but it was more of a comedy. It kept us occupied with our tea and biscuits anyway. Et voila, jeudi.