Ski Season's Over!

       Today was our last gendarme "sortie!" I was sad to say goodbye to the seven year olds, who have now mastered skiing more than I have...fabulous ski season in the Alps!

Roman, Pauline, me and Lily! 

Preteen Parents

          One of our topics for the week is the family. We've started with flashcards as usual. As I mentioned before, I'm enjoying coloring in my flashcards. The lack of racial diversity in ESL flashcard-land is appalling. Luckily, my students have a wide array of coloring utensils. So I've been coloring all my people to represent all races. This worked well, until we were playing "Who's missing?" and I realized that Grandma is a sallow greenish brown. Unhealthy and unappealing. Our game of "Guess Who?" similarly suffered from my bizarre color selections. I first made the board far too small. I enlarged it on the copy machine (I'm becoming a copy machine guru!) and then taped it all together...on the front side...meaning all those along the Scotch-Tape line are half-white and half-black. The class of blond children I had this morning were confused.
          A similar misstep occurred when I decided to change the words to "We are Family!". "We are family. I've got all my sisters and me!" works fabulously for practicing family member vocabulary. Except that I've been teaching "daughter" and "son" and not "sister" and "brother". Meaning, of course, that seven year olds are now blissfully singing "I've got my son and me!" #englishteacheroftheyear!

Blurry Pictures to Prove My Existence!

Brendan and me in Barcelona! 

Slainte from Siena!

Casey and me dans les rue de Lyon!  

Vatican. Casual.

Venizia

View from the top...of the Borghese Gardens

Mouill-yay

        The weather today is "mouillé". It's dreary out - wet, cold, and doing that miserable raining one moment snowing the next thing, making me look rather silly with my umbrella. In French, it's such a hard word to pronounce and I asked the students to teach it to me. I think it's important that my students think of us as teaching one another so I encourage them to help me with my French. My easy errors in French seem to give them more confidence their English "apprentissage". And I'm lucky because they are fabulous teachers. Today, I was taught "mouillé" as "moo" as in cow, and "yay" as in a rap song. Seriously, they started throwing up innocent gang signs and rapping in Franglais. Mouillé is officially memorized. Sadly, the weather forecast isn't improving so I think I'll have ample time to practice my new perfectly pronounced word.
       One of my classes had a pottery session today. I love that the children learn pottery in school! They are making bowls for their mothers for Mother's Day. I was delighted to see all the "I love you, Mom!'s" written across many bowls. I took advantage of the art time to color my flashcards. It's quite pricey to print in color, so I've been printing in black and white. Meaning, of course, that I get to color the flashcards in! My students have a cornucopia of colors - in colored pencils, crayons, and markers. This often results in creatively colored flashcards - like fushcia basketball uniforms with lime green shoes. I like to think that this just makes it easy for the kids to see the colors. Anyways, in the midst of my coloring craze, I had a chat with one of my students about the United States. She was telling me about a TV program she watched with her parents about the death penalty in the US. We discussed why it exists and how terrible it is. The insights kids have are remarkable. To them, it's simply "wrong" which is so much more effective than my lengthy explanation of all the cons as I tried to fairly list the pros some see. Wrong is wrong. 
        In more positive news, their pottery turned out wonderfully and their "mamans" will be delighted. 

Hungry? Come Pay 5€ to Eat a Churro in Teepee!

        Skiing was a trial today. A trial to pass the "flocon" test, that is. After three months of Wednesday skiing lessons, the children had their exams today. Each group had to ski a certain course, veering properly around cones and avoiding the "chasse-neige" (snowplow). The evaluators are strict because the gendarme's monitors are essentially "taking their jobs by teaching the children" (as they told me).
        My favorite sassy 5 year old asked me mid-ski, "Why do you always have an accent?" I have been increasingly aware of said accent since last week. I accompanied my students to a musical concert last week. The musical was about Louisiana and the lead singer spoke and sang with an American accent in French. When she started singing, I thought with relief that I didn't sound like her...until the student sitting next to me told me that I sounded exactly like her. And then every single student turned to tell me "C'est toi!" (it's you!). The musical was attended by all of my students from all of my schools. I consoled myself with the fact that they (usually) understand me.
        Back to the accent comment from my sassy skier. I responded by asking if I do in fact have an accent, to which she responded with a huge grin. Then she asked me if I understood French. Seven months later, I officially have a huge accent and children doubt my French abilities!
        Had this not been embarrassing enough, I was reminded by the same skier that I fell the first time I took the platter lift. This happened three months ago, so it clearly made an impression on her. She told this to the ski lift operator, who was probably confused given my age. I grimaced and proceeded to miss my turn on the platter lift.
         When we got back to the bus, we learned that most of the children had passed! The children and monitors all asked me if I passed, which I thought was a joke, and when I responded "Obviously!", they said "Really?". But then I was told I improved majorly since the beginning. This encouraged me to ask for an honorary "Etoile d'Or" (Golden Star) award. Fingers crossed it's presented to me next week!

Roman Holiday

         Ciao dear readers! Casey came to visit for a lovely two weeks and we spent our time galavanting (correction: dragging, considering the amount of pizza and pasta we ate) around Italy! I'll do a quick summary of our trip here...
         We spent most of our time walking around new neighborhoods but we tried to hit all the major attractions and museums. We relied on HostelWorld to find the best hostels, Trip Advisor for grubbing, and most importantly, Lonely Planet Encounter Guides (thanks Mom and Dad!) for sightseeing! These pocket sized books cover a city and its surrounding area. The maps and suggestions are practical and precise. Best of all, the books weigh next to nothing and can be easily popped into a bag!
         We began in Milan where we stayed in an AirBnB apartment. I highly recommend using AirBnB when traveling. You get to meet locals, see a typical apartment (obviously this really appeals to my blatant nosiness), get insider tips on what to do, and it's more comfortable than a hostel and less expensive than a hotel! Our AirBnB hostess in Milan was away for the weekend but her friend kindly picked us up from the train station and took us to dinner and drinks!
         Milan is beautiful. The Duomo dominates the downtown area and is staggering to see amidst the posh and modern shops from Prada to Pucci. Milan's the economic center of and has banks galore. Luckily, it was Sunday and the shops were closed. Otherwise, Day 2 of our trip would have entailed far too much time spent at their ATMs.
         We then took the train to Venice, which looks like a Hollywood set (how American am I?!). Casey and I have never felt so lucky to be able to swim (which, luckily, wasn't necessary). Despite being an incredibly inconvenient place to roll suitcases given the fact that there are bridges to everywhere, Venice is architecturally stunning - bright colors abound. San Marco's square was a sight to see. The vibe is convivial and energetic. Our favorite part of Venice were their "aperitivos" and "cicheti". They serve cheap and light drinks and snacks (sandwiches, meatballs, salads, spreads, veggies, you name it!) from about 6pm on. We learned to make the rounds at the best places and so we had fabulous Italian-style tapas dinners every night!
          Florence was next and we loved it. We did the museums round and Casey took hilarious pictures of the David. It was warm and sunny and we walked around for hours. We had one of our favorite dishes from the trip at Trattoria La Casalinga: rabbit-sauce tortellini.
          From Florence we trained through Tuscany and went to Siena. Siena definitely has the most old world feel of all the places we visited and we had a great time exploring the churches and squares.
          The quietness of Siena was soon gone as we headed to Rome. Rome is loud. There is a deafening amount museums, squares, parks, monuments, and galleries to visit - we were overwhelmed! We snuck into the Vatican and got to see the Museums (just wow!) and the Sistine Chapel a day before it closed - talk about the luck of the Irish. The ancient Roman sites were incredible - we wished we'd brushed up on our Roman history before visiting them, though. Our favorite part were the Borghese Galleries. Not only is the chateau itself a work of art, but the collection is awe-inspiring. Five days wasn't nearly enough time in Rome! We had a great trip overall and can't wait to explore more of Italy!