Vendredi le 28 novembre

TGIF!!! Got prepared for my English classes this morning and we headed down to Europcar to check out rental prices – not cheap but we really need to do it. Again, it is cheaper on the internet to book so off home to explore again!
My class at the Lycee was with 19 year olds – a new experience, but I enjoyed it, the time went so fast and unfortunately I didn’t get them all to talk as much as I wanted. Next time! I did get them to introduce themselves and tell me their interests, they were really varied and I was surprised as a 19 year old boy and another girl were into horses and competed in show jumping and dressage etc, many into music, another boy was really into singing, other interests included dance –hip hop, modern, tennis, basketball, judo, reading, theatre, cinema etc. In New Zealand I think many would be too scared to be seen as different and not so accepting of others interests. It was a real eye opener.
These students are in “terminale” their last year before University – they take 10 subjects and work from 8:00 -5:00 every day at Lycee. (You wouldn’t see this many in N.Z. – we start to specialise early.)
Very busy – they have for English to pass a written and oral exam (10 minutes) in May. This oral exam is based on a picture and they have to talk about it for 5 minutes then the next 5 minutes can be anything related to it. Today we had a cover from Time magazine, about Global warming and on the front was a picture of a solitary polar bear floating on a tiny piece of ice.
They had to talk about the composition of the cover, the impact, the symbolism, the climatic change and its relevance and impact. Very involved!
I have noticed that all learning and conversations are about very deep issues – even in Seph’s class they study famous pieces of art and other classes look at social issues, political systems etc. Our children would say this is “boring” but our children are so unrounded and unaware of the rest of the world. I am starting to think they have too much say over what they learn and how they learn it. I do believe they miss the base content knowledge (that probably comes from chalk and talk) – speaking of chalk – most classes here still have this!

Home at 5:30 – pitch black and rush hour!
Rang Dad - great to talk to him! Got cut off as ran out of money!