Wednesday 27 February 2013

Mad Wednesday

Once again, the day started with me being locked out of the office. This is becoming an unhappy habit.

The morning was taken up by not very much at all, so to avoid the ennui that comes from reading the same thing day in and day out I shall skip ahead to lunch, which was absolutely full of returning students who, it seems, still need someone to hold their hand and tell them how to prioritise. These students have all received an email from their course supervisors, informing that they must take a specific test in order to graduate. This, for me, comes under the heading of really quite important, but despite living in an age in which you can freaking email from your phone, twenty students came to see me today - 10 days after the deadline.

They were full of apologies and, because school life is not really like real life, I signed them up anyway. I am a sucker for a good apology. On top of that, one student is taking the FCE - I have no idea why, it's a hideous mess of an exam and not as valuable as Cambridge think it is - but he will need fairly intensive coaching as it contains a free-writing part. That will fill my lunchtimes fairly solidly over the next few weeks, I think, and I'm looking forward to it.

Speaking of intensive coaching: I had my first session with a group of tiny boy-children today. I'm lucky my mother works with kids; any man unused to it might have felt some fear at the sight of a house with five - count them - boys under the age of 8, all tearing around and killing each other with missiles. Pretend missiles, obviously.

In any case, I settled them down after a few minutes and we did colours and body parts. It was a really, really tough lesson. They barely know any English, and it's really hard to resist the urge just speak in French, but I think I managed to push for half and half. Amusingly, because they know so little English, they don't realise where my explanations stop and the vocabulary begins, thus we had un avion - plane, a plane. Not a plane. Plane, a plane. We finished off the lesson by touring the house and sticking post-its everywhere. We found door, window, table, chair and mummy, though I don't know how impressed mummy was about being labelled.

A long stroll home - it's a good 45 minutes but a great chance to stretch my legs and listen to music. I just stretched my legs because my phone, my main repository of music, has a battery life of exactly one hour less than needed. If I need it to work until 8pm, I can guarantee it will conk out at about 7. If I don't need it, then  it'll be brightly showing half battery when I got bed at 1am. It is possessed by something. I wouldn't call it evil. Just a little malcontent.

In any case; I'm home, my French prep for tomorrow is done, I've a half-baguette for supper and I'm probably going to an ice bar tomorrow. So the blog may be very early.

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