un jour a l'ecole. // a day at school.

the first part of today was super boring -- i went to school with camille and had to sit through all of her classes, which are in the same room. i sat in the back of the classroom and worked on my french journal and biology journal for 5 hours today (and luckily finished my biology homework!). that's ridiculous. however, i do have some interesting stories about the teachers. 1) they all address us as "americans," 2) the first thing they say is "ELLO, DO YOU SPEEK ZEE FRENCH?" and 3) upon learning that yes, in fact, we do speak french, continue to address us in english.

we were sitting in class, talking and giggling (quietly, don't worry) amongst our american selves, when a teacher bolted over to us and demanded that we do our work. all of us were baffled at her aggressiveness because we assumed that all of the teachers knew that there would be three american students in their classroom. apparently, she didn't, because all of the students began yelling "they're american! they're american!" she then asked us if we wanted to do some work, and we had no clue what she was talking about as she handed us a picture of a chair. all of us were under the impression that we were in history class, so when she went on to say, "DRAW ZEEEZ, OUI?" we were all utterly confused. i guess we were in art class...? the chair that i drew was a masterpiece, by the way.

the next run-in was with the latin teacher. she, again, came up out of nowhere and asked us if we knew latin. none of us know latin, so we shook our head, but she insisted that we take the exercise and try to translate latin phrases into french. she obviously didn't comprehend the fact that none of us knew latin...

anyhow, after school, we caught the bus and went back home. i sat in the kitchen with the girls and helped mathilde with her english homework. nothing interesting happened until dinner. dinner was very talkative today and the best part was, they were trying to talk in english! i feel like i have encouraged the entire family to be more confident in english. christophe asked me how i felt after living in france for a week and honestly, i couldn't compare it to my life in iowa. it's completely different. i wanted to say something really deep, because i had a lot to say about my realizations in france, but my french skills only allowed me to say that the food is different. pathetic, isn't it? oh, well. i spent the rest of the night being quizzed in french and english and laughing my head off as the girls tried to sing "head, shoulders, knees and toes," in english. their accents are pretty funny, not gonna lie.

tonight, i actually felt like part of the family. i have inside jokes about the bizarre english teacher and the girls are so much more open with me. plus, i heard manon talking about how she told her english teacher that i was here and about how much she liked me. it felt really good knowing that i can come away from this experience with not just a pen pal in france, but a lifelong friend.

love you guys and miss you lots!
xoxo,
jyothi

p.s. i used my curling iron and i didn't blow up anything. way to go, me.