"Eeets a joke!"

Lesson #1 :

 

You have not truly taught a language until you have tried to explain a joke to students who don't understand that language. 

Lesson #2 :

Hand gestures as well as using dry erase board markers to circle, dot, underline, and draw boxes around words and images in a comic strip can actually go a long way.  Unless your scribbles (attempts to explain) actually end up overpowering the comic itself....

Enter said comic strip.

Har-de-har right? Might have to zoom in on it a bit, sorry about that.  Sure, I guess it could be funny, in a small sort of tiny smile out of the corner of your mouth type of way.  But, crois-moi (believe me), after you spend 15 minutes explaining the vocabulary, characters, and irony of a certain chicken bone in a certain character's mouth, well, it just doesn't have QUITE the same effect.  Don't even get me started on the Colonel Sanders part, I didn't even try to explain who he was.  At least they knew what KFC was (thank you globalization). 

The thing is, when the teacher told me last week that the students were studying humor, and could I please find some comic strips or something, I didn't really think it would be too tough.  I guess the first clue came after searching through 10 years of Baby Blues archives, trying to find something with minimal and simple vocabulary, that I realized it was gonna be a tad bit tougher than expected.  And this afternoon when I was standing in front of 5 students with absolutely blank stares, it was confirmed.  Jokes are for the fluent.  If anything, they now have a joyfully expanded fast-food centralized vocab :)

Among other memorable moments today, while talking with 2 girls about immigration to the U.S., I asked them to think of some reasons why people would immigrate to the U.S.  One of the girls' mother is Polish, and immigrated to France, so you know,  I expected some a personal answer.  But alas, a thick french accent answered me, "May-beee zhey would-uh immeegrate to ze United Stetes to zee Brad Peet".  My thoughts chèrie, parfait.  

Lesson #3 : Always read and verify that you know exact definition and examples for every single word in an article before you give it to a group of 20 year old boys.  Because when you give them an article from Associated Press about global warming and green jobs, you'd better be prepared for them to ask what 'biomass' means.  Because, oh, they will ask.  And you will have to answer them, using of course, english they can understand.  When you have figured out how to do that, please let me in on that little secret.  

Even after a full week of classes, I still have classes in my schedule that I haven't been to yet, 3 of which will be tomorrow.  When I got my new revised schedule in an email this weekend, I was pleasantly surprised at my luck of having an 8 am class with the first year students.  I kindly thanked Sonia, my boss, for that lovely addition this morning around the machine du café.  Despite the hellish hour, however, I could not have been placed with a better teacher I think.  Her name is Jeane, and she's just a ball full of energy.  I saw her in the hallway today and she came walking/jogging towards me, beaming.  She told me we'll have class tomorrow, and she has NO idea what she has planned yet, but we'll just figure it out.  She has frizzy dark hair that has definitely been dyed a bright shade of red at some moment in time, and she was wearing an incredibly bright long sweater.  Her frazzled-ness and enthusiasm is somehow comforting though, and I'm excited to see how it is tomorrow morning.  Even if it is at an obscene hour (I think all schools should start at 9 personally).  

I'm beginning to realize more and more too, that Sabrina and I really 'ont de la chance' (are lucky) for the staff we're surrounded by.  They're so welcoming- every time I see a teacher in the hall, they smile and ask how I am, how I'm adjusting, how my weekend was, etc.  And they're even taking us out to dinner on Thursday night!  The other girls here have various troubles with their teachers- the German assistant has professors that tell her what they want her to do at the very last minute, and others don't give her ANY direction at all.  All they say is they're glad she's here, so that essentially, someone else can teach the kids German.  And the British girl that's teaching at a couple primary schools around here, well she doesn't have anyone at all telling her what to do- the primary teachers don't even speak English!  The more I learn about the system over here, the more interesting it becomes....

a+  (à plus, which means, later!)