One Month

I've been in France, in Metz, for one month today! That seems hardly possible, since I feel like I couldn't possibly have already spent a month here, and yet at the same time, it also feels like time is flying. I only have 2 more days of school and then I will be on vacation for 1.5 weeks! Have I worked enough to earn a vacation yet? I guess the "real" teachers are certainly thinking so, since they started at the beginning of September.

So, with two days of school left, it's time to celebrate Halloween! I've been working on my Halloween lessons little by little for about a week now, and have vocabulary cards with some key Halloween vocab (spider, witch, vampire, candy, etc) prepared, and some easy and fun word searches, crosswords and such for the kids to have fun with. I also made (what I hope will be) an awesome set of bingo sheets with the Halloween vocab, and some great pumpkin and Jack-O-Lantern stickers [thanks Alicea!] for prizes. The kids will also be getting some simple coloring instructions (got to reinforce the colors here!) to color their bingo sheets before we play. My older grades also have a poem to read and hopefully enjoy. I'm also really excited to read my In A Dark, Dark Wood book with a special surprise pop-up ending. I hope they'll think it's fun too!

On Sunday I went to the FRAC Lorraine, a contemporary art gallery right next door to the foyer where I'm living. They're showing this fascinating exhibit called L'esthétique des poles. Le testament des glaces right now.

It's all about the northern and southern poles, frozen lands, ice, snow and what that means for various artist-explorers. There were some beautiful videos and slide-show presentations, with photos, spoken words and written words. It was really great! I didn't get to see 2 of the longer videos, so I'm hoping to get back there sometime soon.

And today, being the standard no-school-Wednesday, and fortunately a lovely, sunny and warm day, several of us got together for a lunch picnic in the park and our first (of many to come) slack-lining lessons from Cole, the assistant from TN. Basically, slack-lining is tightrope walking, but on a less-tight rope, and much closer to the ground. It's also really challenging!

We set up Cole's line in the park, between two trees and spent about an hour trying it out. We got lots of curious looks from lots of Messins (people from Metz), some friendly questions from an older couple who were happy to hear it's not really a dangerous "sport," and we were (thankfully!) totally ignored by 3 policemen on bicycles.

We even had one woman stop, sit on the stone wall, and watch us fall off the line for a good 15 minutes! I'm sure we'll make dinner table conversations in at least a couple of homes tonight!