It has been a while since my last post, and probably with good reason! It seems like life has been a little more crazy than usual these past few weeks.
My classes have been going well and I am enjoying it for the most part. It seems so weird to me, I have been teaching classes here for the last two and a half months and I still haven't even met all the students yet. Another difficulty I had was adjusting to a less-than-fully-equipped classroom to teach in. Since my go-to lesson plan - having every student introduce him or herself then ask questions about their likes, dislikes, hobbies, and future plans - can't really be used anymore now that I'm seeing some students for the third and fourth time, I have had to start thinking about what else to teach. The English professors in the school gave me free reign. They said I can talk about anything I want. Some might think this is perfect and couldn't get easier, but it is actually a lot more difficult than it sounds. I don't know what these students have already learned in their classes. I don't know what they are expected to be able to say, the vocabulary they are supposed to know, or anything regarding their academic goals in English. I also don't know if I'm expected to give grammar lessons or just cultural lessons while talking in English so the students have a chance to talk to me and listen to a native speaker... I chose, for my first round of lessons to give to all the students, a subject that I find interesting and fun, that has a lot to do with American culture in my opinion, and allows for a lot of speaking in conditional tense in English - Super Heroes. This allows the students to say things like, "My favorite super hero IS/ my favorite heroes ARE," then we switch it into past tense, "When I was young, my favorite hero(es) was/were..." Then I start encouraging them to be creative. "If I were a super hero, my powers would be... my weakness would be... I would use my powers for good/evil... etc." With some classes this has been extremely entertaining and enjoyable, whereas in others... well, I'm pulling my hair out after thirty minutes and praying for time to pass quicker to get out of the class. Do students in high school really have so little imagination? They can't even think of a single thing they would disguise themselves as? They can't imagine one power they would like to have? One class full of students with zero imagination was particularly getting on my nerves. Every student was responding "I don't know" to every question as if it was a get out of jail free card. I was pushing one student to respond SOMETHING, ANYTHING, but he couldn't, and a student behind him whispered, "Just say 'I don't know' and it's good." That's when I got a little frustrated at them. They did start coming up with things to say after they saw I was upset and I told them that "I don't know" is not an appropriate answer. I told them that if they didn't have an answer, they had to at least tell me in a complete sentence in the proper tense. Instead of answering "I don't know" when asked what their childhood hero was, they had to tell me, "When I was young, I didn't have a favorite hero." When they realized I would make them use the grammar whether they wanted to answer or not, they started to play along. We all had a good laugh. Students started creating a super hero persona for themselves and every answer they gave added on to the previous answers. Still, it was hard for them to think of things to say, and it wasn't just the English that made it hard. I blame TV/video games. Last night I watched Toy Story 3 with Ariel and there are several segments of little children playing with toys and imagining an entire world around their toys. I remember playing with toys like that. I remember Power Rangers/Ninja Turtles/race cars/etc. I also remember pretending to be a professional athlete and playing in a championship game even when I was out playing alone. I once drew an entire basketball court on our driveway around the basketball hoop in chalk and pretended that I was playing for the Jazz in the championship game against the Boston Celtics. Now all the imagination is gone. You pop a NBA CD in your Playstation 3 and you don't need to pretend anymore, the players are all there in front of you. I like a good video game every once in a while, but I think it has taken the place of imagination in most of these students, and I think that is very, very sad. Ariel and I decided that we want our future kids to play with toys, to imagine worlds, to create with their minds, because this sort of creativity will lead to a more practical creativity in the future and who knows what sort of things our kids could think up for themselves and for the world.
I suppose that has been the main part of my teaching experience recently, talking about super heroes each day. What a tough life, right? I am enjoying it, even though it is tough some times. Aside from the teaching, things have been interesting. We had Thanksgiving a couple weeks ago and that was quite an ordeal. We were having the missionaries over for the dinner, and we wanted to give them a nice, American Thanksgiving meal. With our tiny kitchen, two burners, and glorified toaster for an oven, we knew it would be hard to get everything cooked and still be hot when we ate, so we decided to start cooking as last as possible so it would all be hot at meal time. Mistake. I guess we were using a little too much electricity by using both burners and the stove at the same time and the power went out one hour before meal time. I ran out to the concierge, the person in charge of the building, to ask him to call the person to fix the electricity. That is what I had to do last time the power went out and it was a really easy fix, but one that I could definitely not do myself because the box is located in the girls dorm on the same floor of the building we're in - probably not the smartest place to put our electric box, but I guess that's how it is. So unfortunately the concierge office was closed. I had no idea where to go to get help. It was definitely a blessing when I ran into one of my BTS students out in front of the school. He approached me and started talking in English. He told me he loves English and wants to get better at it. He invited me to look in his little apartment in front of the school, which I did out of politeness, and I was trying to hurry because I knew Ariel was in the apt in the darkness waiting for electricity and the missionaries would be over soon and the food was not near ready. Then the student told me he worked at the school. I was so happy. He took me exactly where I needed to go and got the right person called and he showed up at the apt shortly after. We thought everything would be alright, we even unplugged a bunch of stuff to keep the power from going out again... but it did! About five minutes after the repairman left, we were again in the darkness. I ran out and found him again and he helped us a second time. We unplugged even more things and turned the water heater off so we could make it through the night with no more problems. We did end up having a nice Thanksgiving after all.
Last week was the Stake Conference in Bordeaux. I had always taken for granted transportation to church meetings and events in the USA, but getting to Bordeaux for the conference was quite an ordeal. It seems that hardly anyone in the Branch in Perigueux has a car and every single car that went to Bordeaux was full. We were supposed to go with a member that lives somewhere out in the countryside, but we decided it wasn't worth the 15 euros each that she was asking and that we could probably get there cheaper in a train. Another family heard about this situation and decided to take another car so we could fit along with another person who was supposed to come with us. They did ask us to pay for the tolls on the freeway, which came to about 13 euros, and that was fine and definitely understandable. It was a little frustrating trying to find a way to get to Bordeaux, having to pay and trying to find a way to get to some random freeway to meet someone to give us a ride for something spiritual, when just the day before, we had gotten to Bordeaux for free for something completely unrelated. We were invited by our dear French friends, Clelia and Cyril, to go watch the Harry Potter 7 movie in Bordeaux so that we could watch it in English. They are both English teachers in a high school, just barely having graduated, so they wanted to watch it in English anyway, but I thought it was so thoughtful of them to invite us, drive us there, pay for parking and toll roads, etc. and ask for nothing in return. We went out to dinner before the movie, a nice little place that they knew of, and it really was a good meal! When we payed for the tickets, they had all be reserved under Clelia's credit card, so she had to pay for it. I didn't have cash on me and told her I would repay her the next time I saw her. She told me not to even worry about it! When I saw her, I handed her the money and a some extra to help pay for gas/tolls/parking and she refused the extra and only reluctantly accepted the money for the tickets. To top it all off, they had originally wanted to go to the movie on Sunday because it was much less crowded in Bordeaux on Sundays. I told them that we would rather not go on Sunday because we had church meetings we wanted to go to and the immediately accepted to go with us on Saturday. They really are such kind people and have made Ariel and I feel so welcome in this city.
Last Saturday evening, I had just finished planning and preparing for my Sunday School lesson for the following day when the phone rang. It was the teacher of the adult Sunday School class asking me if I could teach his class as well as mine the following day since he had had his knee operated on. I agreed, but unfortunately that meant I had to prepare another lesson entirely because my class was one week behind theirs. I knew it was for a good cause so I got to working and spent the following hour or so preparing for the lesson. The next day, I was giving the lesson to half the branch and had been teaching for about fifteen minutes when one of the sisters got up to go get a drink of water. She reached the back door of the room and fell over flat. I saw the whole thing. It looked like she had just tripped. I started heading back towards her, along with several other members of the branch. We were all worried because she wasn't moving. It took a moment to even bring her back to consciousness. She just stayed on the floor not moving. The ambulance was called and they came to pick her up. Her husband showed up to see how she was doing. It was quite an ordeal. Some people were insisting we needed to give her sugar or something to drink. Others were saying we should definitely giver her nothing at all because we don't know what caused her to pass out like that. I guess it was a good thing the ambulance showed up pretty quick so they could take care of her as they should. I was able to help giver her a blessing and did the anointing before letting the branch president do the actual blessing. It was quite an ordeal. When she was gone in the ambulance, the hour for my lesson was up and it was time for Sacrament meeting. I guess I will be able to give the same lesson again another day... While I'm on the topic of the church, last week there was a television show called "Enquete Exclusive" that was all about the Mormon Church. All the members were encouraged to watch it. I watched it and was honestly a little frustrated by what I saw. It was not a fair representation of who we are in the church. Many of the things they showed are true, but they presented it in a way that makes even the most harmless thing seem so bad. There was one part where they said, "Every week the family takes one night to get together, to sing, and to talk about God." I tend to believe there are people of many faiths who get together and have religious conversations. I don't think this is something particularly evil or bad or even weird. The person presenting it said it with such a tone of voice and foreboding music in the background that, if you didn't speak French to understand what he was saying, you would think he was saying the family was about to sacrifice one of their children to a golden calf. Since that show, many of the students that I have had in classes but have only seen once or twice, so I don't necessarily know their names or where they are from, have approached me outside of classes to tell me they saw something about Utah and ask me if I am Mormon. Usually I don't have time to engage in a serious conversation so it basically ends at me telling they that, yes, in fact, I am Mormon. I can only wonder what that will change, if anything, in terms of the students and their level of respect for me.
Well, that is pretty much all for now. We are getting ready for Christmas vacation. The city is all decorated and it is starting to feel like Christmas. It helps that my lovely wife has been making Christmas desserts while I am teaching classes, so when I come home, it smells like freshly baked cookies! In fact, there is a batch now, I'm off to eat a cookie.
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