high (and mighty) school

ok... i really need to get a little notebook to carry around with me everywhere i go. i keep thinking: oh! i should post about this... or: oh! that would be a great post! and every time i tell myself: you should write that down somewhere... you’re gonna forget! but i reason with myself, saying: no... i won’t forget. that’s way to spiffy to forget. and without fail, like 5 minutes later, i’ve completely forgotten whatever the devil it was that i was gonna write about.

so... cool stuff has been going on lately for whitney. and frankly, i must say that i am sorely jealous.

the family that we were staying with for the first week or so in france -- the bigays -- is super cool and helpful. i think God was all like: hey... you guys are gonna need all sorts of help doing things when you’re in france... so i’m gonna prepare a family PERFECTLY suited to all your possible needs. he’s a banker (and we had to set up a bank account basically as soon as we got here, so that we could get paid...), and she’s an english teacher. yeah... how cool is that?

well... she teaches in high school... so her level of english is severely advanced, making it quite easy for communication to take place with whitney. also, she has a lot of knowledge to share with me about methods and stuff... or at least i’m pretty sure she would, if i would just buck up and ask her.

but, alas, i digress... chantal (sister bigay) has been saying that maybe we could talk to the language department of the neighboring university (literally, it’s like 2 blocks from our apartment...) to see if they would exchange using whitney as an english speaking lab for french lessons. we thought that was a great idea... but hadn’t yet gotten the chance to get around to actually asking anyone there. (it’s a really well know language teaching establishment, evidently, and people come from all over the world to learn languages here... who knew?)

last week, as we were on our way to or from church, chantal had this brilliant idea: maybe i could talk to the folks down at the high school, and get them to let you take classes there...

genius!

so... about 5 days later, she calls us up and says that we need to go in and talk to a guy about this, that and the other thing... and she should be able to start school on monday. how stinking cool is that?!

she’s the french equivalent of a high school senior. basically, she’s an exchange student... only 20 and married. nifty, eh?

yeah... needless to say, i’m quite envious. her schedule is quite a bit more relaxed than the regular students... and some of the teachers seem like they’re not even gonna give her tests or anything... i can only assume because they know that she’s not gonna be receiving any sort of grade for them... so why go to all the extra effort of making her take it and then having to actually grade the papers.

yeah... so jealous.

and on top of that... she’s gonna be helping out with several of the english classes. so she gets all the fun of english teaching that i’m getting (well... minus the stress of having to try to wrangle the little tornadoes down into their seats long enough to get their mouths shut long enough to get a chance to speak long enough for them to understand something... if they’ll listen long enough...) PLUS she gets to take other classes too.

if i were a rose... i’d be so green.