Monday 17 December 2012

Winding slowly down

It's been a peculiar sort of day. The end is so close I can practically taste it; all over the school people are winding down, bringing back books/tests/things they'd borrowed and not told me. On top of this, I'm trying to sort through all the books in my little mediatheque library and sort the utterly awful from the merely bad. Digging through and finding little diamonds of the 90s is unsettling; a book by young Delia Smith, for example, in which she is free of worry lines and the little wrinkles one gets when one gets drunk and shouts at football matches. Other gems are books about famous footballers, fronted by Michael Owen, another expounding the incredible technological breakthrough that is the Morris Minor...poor misshapen things.

My last class tonight was peculiar, to say the least - we played French trivial pursuit, and my students tried their best to translate the questions and the answers. It started slowly, but before long they were leaping in and out of their seats, making noises that they hoped were approximately similar to words, and desperately trying to get the answer before anyone else. Magnificent. We also went through zodiac signs, just because, and face cards, because that was one of the questions. It's interesting to note that where the republican (and some might say sexist) French see a lady of noble birth next to a king they just think "Lady," while we think "Queen."

They also call the Jack "le valet," which to my mind is a damn sight simpler. A little research tells me why we have Js instead of Vs, but I like Vs. Not as much as this guy :


But, you know. They're better than Js.

My other student - my private student - had something of a cop out lesson, in that we played board games as well, but it was good practice and I feel like we did a lot of vocabulary expanding, even if I was not as strict with tenses as I should have been. We also played a game called Abalone, which if anyone else knows about I do wish they'd told me. Originally French but formed from the Greek ab and the English alone, and terribly good fun. Simpler even then chess, but similarly strategy-based. It's marvelous fun and I'd love to get it for Christmas, along with other board games. I have discovered that I rather like board games. But in all seriousness, if you don't know about Abalone, I'd recommend having a little go. Find someone with a set and bother them.

In fact, after Christmas, bother me. I shall be itching to play someone.



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