Mes Pieds Sont Tres Fatigues!

A little better day today after the experience yesterday, although the French language school still does not seem to comprehend the word "efficiency."  Today no one showed up to teach my class; we all sat there staring at each other for 30 minutes until someone finally showed up, apologized, and started teaching the class with almost no preparation.  As it turned out, she was an excellent teacher, if a little curt sometimes in her critique of the students, and of course there was no continuity between the first class and the second. She focused on pronunciation, which I very much need and which not many teachers do. On the other hand, she also made us do a skit, and I hate doing skits. I am not a skit kind of guy. But it was almost fun given the fact that I was in the liveliest group (two Spaniards and an Italian, which accounts for that, I think).

The other good news is that my younger son Andrew (who was appalled that I posted some not-entirely-flattering, albeit quite funny, descriptions of him yesterday, which he convinced me to later delete, meaning that only those of you who logged on early got the full post) got swapped into a class (Will's class) that was much better suited for him, and he had a fun, exciting day, meeting other kids from around the world.  We had a little excitement on the way back, for Will had gone on to the Metro station ahead of us, then decided to take the Metro home himself, and so was lost for a time, but miraculously appeared out of nowhere while Andrew and I were waiting for the Tram.

Suzie is happy (as am I) because the boxes we shipped arrived today.  They look like King Kong had used them for punching bags, but they didn't split open, and everything seems to be there.  Suzie says we packed way too many clothes, which is probably true, since I haven't even worn everything I brought with me in my suitcase.

Suzie had visited the neighborhood schools yesterday, and was told she had to go to the CASNAV de Paris (the French love acronyms; it stands for the "Centre Académique pour la Scolarisation des Nouveaux Arrivants") to get the kids tested for their French ability, so she took the kids after class today to the CASNAV (all the way across Paris, of course), only to be told (...wait for it...) that testing had finished for the summer that very morning, and that she should come back at the end of August. All was not lost, however, as she got all the forms and such that she needs to get the kids registered for school when the time comes, and presumably the kids' French will be much better then than now.

While she was doing that, I took a long, long walk, from our apartment all the way to the Gare Montparnasse, did a little browsing in the shopping center there, took the Metro to a random stop, and walked back to the apartment. My feet hurt from all the walking, but it felt good to get out and about alone, just me and the city and the variety of people in it.

Just as I got back, Andrew was going out the door to the skate park, and he convinced me to come with him, so my poor sore feet had to do a little more walking, down to a park near the Porte d'Orleans, which is much larger than I thought, and very pretty and well maintained.



I sat most of the time enjoying the green space (funny how quickly I've missed that), but also took some pictures of Andrew doing his tricks. Here are two, one of him hitting a great jump, another of him right before he wiped out:





A group of young boys was hanging out at the stake park, and one of them asked me, "Parlez-vous Francaise?" and when I answered "un peu" he said, in highly accented, halting English, "Your son is very good stakeboard. He will be the next Tony Hawk." To which I replied, "Please, please don't tell him that." On the way out, we passed this same group in another spot, and the same kid said, "Bye Americans!" Even the kids hanging out at the park are friendly.

The boys are watching The Simpsons, overdubbed in French. It is odd to see the characters open their mouths and have French come out.

I'm all done in ... creve, as they say here (from the verb "crever," which means "to burst," so the image is one of a deflated car tire, flat, with nothing left; also, note that I have no way to make accent marks on this keyboard, so you French language purists [you know who you are] will have to bear with me), so this will be a short post. The cool and showery weather seems to have followed us here from Ireland, but tomorrow is supposed to be warm and sunny. Suitable weather, I think, for an afternoon bike ride through Paris.