Secondes Helpings

You may hate Mondays, but I absolutely love them! Even though I often have to wake up earlier than I would like, seeing my wonderful secondes completely motivates me. Today I worked with Clothilde's classes; one which is a real nightmare, and one which is a total dream. I won't even bother complaining about the bad class, because their counterparts more than made up for it.

For example:
on terms of endearment in French: "My mother call me grand poucet, but I am not big! I am small!" (le Petit Poucet is our Tom Thumb, so grand poucet is a nickname that is translated as big thumb, but there is no equivalent in English). The most adorable thing is that this student is a little guy. He is very chatty in class and just all around adorable.

on my story in the newspaper: "I saw you in zee journal! I saw you in zee...'ow do you say eet? Obama!"

on American movies: "I love Stallone! I love Rocky Balboa! And Rambo! And Die Hard!" Also from the boy who's nickname is grand poucet (Mom, my kids love Die Hard!).

on future aspirations: "Our dream eez go to United States when we are 18. We visit you!" One of these boys also wrote a very sweet "perfect date" scenario for our Valentine's Day lesson. "I go on zee beach in United States with girl who eez beautiful and like me. We look at stars."

on the Great Lakes: "I like zee Great Lakes! In Wisconsin, you live by zee lake? (Me: "Yes. I lived about 3000 metres from Lake Michigan.") "Very good! I want to sweem in zee lake! I can do zees, yes?" Once again, the kid who's mother calls him grand poucet.

on Big Red chewing gum: "Eet eez very good! (Me: "My mom sent me the gum so that I could give it to my students.") "Tell your mother 'THANK YOU VERY MUCH! You send us American gum when you go to the United States?" (Me: "Of course I'll send you gum!") "Zank you! We will send you French chewing gum!"

I feel that every Monday, I should just make a post entitled "Secondes Helpings" and document the adorable things these classes say. They're making it a really hard decision on whether to request to stay at Boutet de Monvel next year or not.