peas and carrots

i forgot to add in my last post something that happened on thursday, but it's a fairly interesting example of what the kids i work with are like. So i arrived at Valery around 9h40, since i had a class at 10h, after recreation. so i was sitting in the staff room, chatting with Josette, one of my teachers, when a few other teachers close the doors and put on serious faces. they spent the rest of the break talking about how horrid the kids have become this year, mainly in their blatant lack of respect for the faculty and their habit of addressing teachers like they would their friends.

then the gym teacher stood up and told us about how earlier in the week a boy in 3e decided that he wanted to just goof off in class, and when she told him to grow up, his response was 'ta guele, prof de merde'(shut up, you shit teacher). she had apparently even gone to the police to start a file on the kid since the school has already taken every disciplinary action they can against the kid, but the cops just laughed at her.

soo the teachers called for solidarity and a tightening down on the shit kids and a possible "conseil de discipline" (dunno what that is, but it involves the principle...?) and at that moment, they wanted to take a stand in front of the kids. so we greved/did a "demande a la retrait" which basically amounted to us standing in the courtyard for 20 minutes at the end of recess. while the kids kept on playing. i asked olivier if this was going to have any impact on the kids, since as far as i could tell they were too dumb to even realize anything was going on and really, why would they be worried if they had a longer break? buuut he thought that it was going to be effective, that the kids would think that something was up and be a little concerned...i am doubtful. after the mini-greve was over, we went to class, each teacher explained the situation to the kids, and we carried on as usual.

let me just say, though, that that afternoon they were just as loud and obnoxious as ever. and my 6es (well,the boys), with whom i was working on "i like/dont like/love/hate" (i cut pix out of mags, like dif foods, activities, animals, etc) just talked about how they liked the girls in all the pictures. "yes, i love women a poil (naked)...i love big bottoms, i hate little bottoms." OMG these kids are like 11 yrs old!!! shooooot, talk about typical french. anywho, that was my day at P Valery last week...

so this article is wonderful, gotta love book snobbism: Oh literary dealbreakers

and i just dont understand the never-ending franco-american love-hate fascination/relations/whatever, but this article is cool: French Love

and finally, yesterday was sunny warm perfection, so a bunch of s went for a walk along the river. i dont know why we havent done that yet, but it was lovely. we saw ducks and river otters and found the valence marina. and then went for tea at a DIFFERENT tea house, les p'tit pois et carrottes, which is even CUTER than tasse and has more selection, but i still love tasse anyway.