First Day Teaching

Hey all,

Wow. I just finished my first day 'teaching' as a scab English teacher at a nearby high school. For the first time, the high school is offering conversational English classes during the two-week long Easter break, and the salaried English teachers are boycotting. It attracts exchange students and retired Anglophones like ants to a log.

I have a newfound appreciation for teachers. Not only had I forgotten my main course material (New Yorker articles) at home, I didn't have a pen for my white board for the first half-hour of the three-hour long class. Calling it 'awkward' hardly comes close to how it felt.

Three hours, you say? Oh, no, it's not that bad. Fortunately French students are really chatty, especially in a foreign language they hardly know. Argh.

I take great solace knowing that I will learn much from this experience, and will get paid pretty darn well too. And, as the sucker for a beating that I am, I look forward to jumping right back into it tomorrow morning, better-equipped and much more comfortable.

Just tossed a batch of cannelés in the oven; thought I'd master the Bordeaux specialty before heading back to California at the end of May!

Other than that, I'm just working on the final papers for a couple classes, studying for the GRE which I'll be taking in June, and closing up shop here in Bordeaux.

Ben

Update: The cannelés couldn't have turned out worse. Not only did I burn them into tiny carbon blocks, I had mistaken salt for sugar... As if it's my fault my host family keeps a copious amount of salt in a clear container! :( fortunately, enough of my tastebuds survived the bitter defeat to fight another day...