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| St Anne |
Some of the conversations I've had with my students:
"When you were born, did you have hair and eyes like that?"
"So you know how to speak English pretty well?"
"Yup"
"And read and write too?!?!!"
"Why are there more white people than black people in France?"
The one white kid in the class responded, "I can respond because I'm French; it's because it's less hot in France"
"Can you name a country in the world where we speak English as an official language?"
I've had quite an array of responses to this question, even after explaining the meaning of an "official language":
most common immediate responses: Dominica (tiny island below us where they do speak english), Haiti, St. Martin (another tiny island nearby), (I believe these answers are all correct except Haiti, where a large amount of the population does speak English, but the official languages are French and Creole; also, St.Martin is not a country, it's a territory of France and the Netherlands )
other responses: France, Asia, Europe, Mexico. Most classes were eventually able to name the US or England, but none were able to show me either one on the map of the world.
I have almost two weeks of vacation for All Saints Day (Toussaints), so I've got some time on my hands to update. Well, I started teaching last week and wow, it's a lot harder than I thought it'd be, but also fun. I actually started my first few lessons the week before last because there were a few teachers that thought I was done with my observations (I had been observing math, french, and geography lessons for the past week and it wasn't really serving me much purpose.), and I was honestly so bored of observing classes that I thought to myself, "What the hell, I'll wing it. How hard can it be to go over stuff like "My name is..., what's your name?". As it turns out, even the basic stuff is challenging, firstly because this is my first time teaching in a classroom and secondly, I have to speak in french about half the class because their level of English isn't good enough yet for me to only speak in English. The students are too cute. Most are really eager to learn and show off what they already know. I have one class that is really really difficult to control, and it's really too bad because there are a bunch of kids in it that I really like and who obviously want to learn, but about half the class just talk so much that it's impossible to get anything done. To make matters worse, the teacher of this particulier class left the classroom for about half an hour last time (which they're not supposed to do because I'm technically not allowed to be alone in the classroom with the students). In the middle of the lesson, he returned with an electric drill in hand and started drilling into the wall in order to hang a clock....Just started drilling, without letting me know, and all the kids put their hands over their ears and made this huge fuss. All I could do was laugh.
Last week we had a meeting for language assistants in the morning and started off on time only to be stopped before we could leave the parking lot of our apartment because of an enormous traffic jam. (we rented a car last friday, had to give it back today). We live across the street from a large high school, and they were striking like many high schools in mainland France have been doing, in protest of the raised retirement age from 60 to 62 years old. They had blocked off the main road leading into town with tree branches. We eventually got through it because people started illegally turning onto the adjacent road. What a mess! And the whole time I was thinking to myself, "Why doesn't someone, or the police better yet, just walk up and move the tree branches out of the way?" It took us 45 min to go a distance that normally takes less than 5min.
In addition, the official strike in Guadeloupe took place this past Tuesday, the 26th and we had been warned that we should stock up on water and non-perishables because last year the strike ended up lasting 44 days, and they ended up cutting off the electricity, gas, and water and they ran out of oil on the island. There were apparently a lot of people who lost their jobs, and a lot of businesses closed down at least temporarily due to the strike. I heard that people didn't want a repeat of last year, which is why they really toned it down this year. Apparently there were some protests in the city but nothing too bad, and the next day things were back to normal. I talked to my roomate who's from here about why they were striking, and it seems like it mostly has to do with protesting against racism and unfairly elevated prices of food, clothing, and imported products in general. There is a group of mostly white people here called the "béké", who are descendants of the former slave owners of plantation owners here, and who own the two big malls and other large money-making businesses that are on the island. They apparently rarely hire blacks to work for them, and are the reason why prices are so exhorbitantly high in many stores. The protestors also would like an increase of minimum wage, which they believe is too small to live off of here.
We had a friend visit us last week, who is actually a language assistant on a tiny island off of Guadeloupe called Marie-Galante, and we rented a car for the week, so we were able to get around and see some sights. We took a tour of the eastern side of the island, which is called Grande Terre, and visited some really beautiful beaches including one called Pointe des Chateaux, where the water was crystal clear, and there were hardly any tourists. Just a gorgeous natural beach with beautiful cliffs as a backdrop. We also headed to the western part of the island, called Basse Terre, which is more rugged and less urban. Guadeloupe's national forest, and famous volcano and waterfalls are all located on Basse Terre, along with some other gorgeous beaches.
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| Beach near town of Deshaies(pronounced de-ay) |
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| waterfall "Cascades aux Ecrevisses", Basse Terre |
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| Marina, Libe, and me in Guadeloupe's national forest, Basse Terre |
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| Pointe des Chateaux |
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