Who Doesn't Love Scattergories?

No time, no time, no time. Always no time. I wanted to watch a show before bed, but I am pushing 11pm, so it wouldn’t be a smart decision. Uhg I go to bed so early now; I am so lame. Whatevs.

Today I got a reality check in French and realized I want to move down a level. I am not comfortable in there, so I don’t speak up. I need to feel comfortable because I need to speak to improve and make progress. No more excuses now, I need to learn French. So hopefully tomorrow I can switch, but my hopes aren’t high because all the classes are full.

I met a girl who went to UNC today in my class… so awesome! It was nice meeting someone who knows my life if that makes sense. State and UNC are only 30 mins away, so we have a lot in common! I hope we become friends. We have class together tomorrow too yay! She had to go immediately after class today to get a haircut to which I said good luck with that, but she told me there is an au pair here who has an fb group and she cuts hair for 10 euro! I am totes doing this soon!!

I also met a girl from Texas, who was nice as well. I like my Americans… sorry if I sound so uncultured, but I crave American interactions living here haha.

I bought some English grammar books today for the kids too along with a notebook with NORMAL lined paper. Usually the notebooks here kinda look like our graph paper… too many freaking lines. I don’t get it, and that is why I am happy I found a normal notebook. I had to leave straight after that to make a train to get home at a decent/early hour to prepare for eng lessons.

So I got home and prepared. THEN I RAN YAY! It was 20 mins, but that’s enough. I got to sweat and get my heart pumping if only a little bit. I did the Word of the Week with the girl first (prev au pair’s thing, but I am continuing it bc the parents like it). I taught her the verb “spread.” She had to write 5 sentences in different tenses, then throughout the week give me sentences when I ask to earn points. When she reaches 10, it is time for a new word and she gets a piece of candy. It is a good way to really learn a new verb. I then did worksheets with her from the books I bought. We worked on pluralizing words.

Then it was the boy’s turn. His WotW was “blow up,” which was hard to explain, but he got it eventually. I then played a home-made version of Scattergories with him, which he LOVED. He kept wanting to do round after round, so I felt pretty smug. He thought of English words while I thought of French words, so it was very challenging for me. At the end of each round, we went over our answers and when we had a blank we would tell each other a word we could have used, thus we both learned vocabulary. Killing two birds with one stone, go me. And the dad saw all of this and how much of a hit it was, so I am happy my first day of English lessons went well.

I then created an excel document of the weekly schedule of the kids. The prev au pair did this, and hers was still up from last school year, so I just switched it to the new one. I am being a Productive Au Pair today.

Well that’s it pour moi. Tomorrow is le week-end wooohooo! Il me tarde! (Rough translation: I am excited/I can’t wait).

Oh that reminds me… at dinner when we had dessert, the boy grabbed a mandarin orange and said in a song song voice, “Mandarine est ma copine.” I chuckled a lot (Mandar-een est ma co-peen—see it rhymes!!) This sentence means the mandarin is my friend; I thought it was cute, and you know what, I understood what he said too!