Surprise Surprise! There's no food in the fridge!

Today I had a wonderful surprise at the middle school! Mme G prepared a surprise birthday party for me with les 4emes. (equiv 8th grade) All the kids brought little treats and drinks from home and we had a little "gouter" before lunch. I was amazed, shocked and so happy! Mostly because I didn't tell anyone it was my birthday last sunday at the collège.

This first photo is of some of my 4emes in the section euro. This class is a special test in english class so all these kids want to be there and have a higher level of english than my regular 4emes. That doesn't always mean they behave but they are a great group of kids.

These boys are so funny. They like to joke around with me a lot and they make fun of my accent sometimes but its all good natured. We're missing one because he was off winning the champion de france running competition in Corsica! Congrats to Collège Haut Gévaudan for winning over all schools in france!
This a group photo. I'm in the back and Mme G is off to the right.

On a completely separate note, here's a photo of the sorry state of my fridge. I cleaned out the bad stuff tonight in a fit of cleaning everything I could get my hands on and then realized that all I had to eat tonight was pasta and pesto or pasta and butter. Notice how much freakin' butter I have. I'm not sure why... I bought it before the vacation and I think I thought I'd make cookies or something. Nonetheless this is a very typical french thing to have bricks of butter. (the 2L is not mine mom! Mme G gave it to me today!)

For the next couple of weeks I have class on friday with the 3emes at the middle school. They are working on a theatre production of love songs transformed into poems I think and Mme N asked me to help them out working on theatre techniques, pronociation and the like. I really have fun with them despite having to be there at 8 in the morning! I technically don't have to go since my hours are full but I want to and the kids I hope benefit since Mme N is the weakest english speaker of all my teachers. It's not a rag on her cause she's fluent for sure but she's also THE youngest teacher in St. Chély therefore it's logical that the others would be more fluent than her if there are degrees of fluency. I really love working with Mme N too cause she always does fun activities and I never have to prepare for them. I guess that makes me lazy but when I see a kid every other week for an hour and I have no idea what theme they are working on, it just makes it easier if the teacher gives me ideas or lessons and I can adapt them to my personality.

I don't have plans for the weekend but next week I might be going to Montpellier with Mme H. She's got a formation training for two days and asked if I'd like to come down with her. I have to see about rearranging my classes on thursday so I'm still undecided. Also, Oli was upset about me going so I don't know if I will either. It's completely unfair of him to deny me any opportunity for amusement since I rarely get that here but I don't want to start another lipstick war.

Bisous