the good, the bad, and the frickity crap i'm so stupid!

Hello.

So today has been a mixture of highs and lows and, as Homer Simpson would put it, "D'oh!"s

- First things first, I could NOT sleep last night. I was definitely awake till three and then woke up at five so my energy level today has been... well, I've been running on less than a full tank, basically. But the coffee was a-flowin' at work today so that's allll good.

+ As soon as I walked into work, I was greeted with "Emilie Emilie Emilie" (imagine little mice squeaking out your name. But in a really really cute way). I cannot handle how cute it is to hear their little choruses of my name. And, you know "Es-tu un garcon ou une fille?" (yes, they still ask me this)

+ One of my teachers took her kids skiing this week so I didn't have to go to a class!

- Boo, absolutely no control during my first class of the day. So disheartening, made me want to give up. Like a Negative Nelly (do people say that?).

+ My CM2 kids are really smart and I always forget how much they know and they like to show off and it's great because I think we might actually be getting somewhere on a weekly basis!

- Ok, here's a BIG BIG minus: In that very same (awesome) CM2 class, we were going over "How many?," family, and "to have." That means I ask "How many brothers do you have?" And they respond with a complete sentence (which is v. v. hard), "I have 3 brothers." So I was trying to go through all the family members that we've learned (from g-rents down to cousins) and I asked one quiet girl, who usually gives me maj probs, "How many mothers do you have?" When it took her way too long to answer I should have stopped. But no, I kept asking. DANG DANG DANG. If you had been in my head, you would have said "Turn around, Emily, run away!" But no, I didn't. I kept on asking. Eventually she started crying.
----- <-beaucoup de negatifs, mes amis: So then she left the roomw ith the teacher and I was like "qu'est-ce qui se passe?" and all the other kids told me that her mom died. FRICK. I felt SO BAD. SO SO bad. And so we tried to continue with the lesson but I was just horrified with myself. Eventually class ended and I busted out of there, not knowing what to say to E*.
------ <- MORE negative: Then the teacher met up with me after class and was like "Don't worry about it, Emily, you didn't know. But just so you do, you might want to know that E is adopted and her biological mother has died. And her adoptive mother just died too. She's now living with a classmate."
FRIIIIIIIIIICK. I had no idea. This is my worst nightmare. And it happened.
Well, in conclusion, it's going to be ok, but I sort of couldn't stop hating myself and my big pushy mouth for the rest of the day. Blugh.

+ During lunch I chatted for an hour with a teacher and another woman. And the other woman (ok, she works at the school but I don't really know what her job is) has a 21 year-old daughter who goes to school in Marseille and we've exchanged numbers so that when she's in town we can meet up and I can practice my French with her and she can practice her English. Holler! Also, it'd be cool if I had a connection with someone so I could CouchSurf in Marseille!

+ I finally did something right with the teacher who kinda scrres me! Yayyyy. In most of my classes today we sang "family Tree" which is a song by Tom Chapin that I grew up on - so we can practice family members in English. Of course in most of the classes we didn't even get through the chorus but that's all good. We'll refaire it next week and then sing "No One Like You" for Valentine's Day!

- I think this is the last negative thing of the day: I was harassed for hte first time today at the bus stop. What does that mean? It means that a guy asked me for a cigarette or something, I responded with no (ok, I don't remember how we started talking), he noticed my accent, I told him I'm American and he then proceeded to tell me he hates America and he asked me why America attacked Iraq. Awesome. Such a comfortable position to be in! I then told him I didn't want to have this conversation and did my best to ignore him as I sat there waiting for the bus. Too bad there was nowhere to go as this dude would not shut up. Luckily, the bus came five minutes later and then I had a nice chat with the driver.

Wooeee what a day!

*E: name has been protected for privacy