Les Courses de la Saint-Nicolas

I'm back with the CP (first grade) classes this week, and what a start to the week!

Today was the annual Courses de la Saint-Nicolas (Saint Nicolas Race) for all the elementary school students in the Nancy area. Elementary school students from all over Nancy come to the Parc de la Pépinière to run between a 600-800 meter race, depending on their age. Lots of parents came to see their children run. Despite the chaos of trying to find your students after the race, the students had a lot of fun and got a Saint Nicolas gingerbread cookie for finishing. I think we had only one student who fell during the race, which is pretty good considering the crowd of children at the start line.

Here is a picture of the winners of the CP boys coming to the finish line:

This annual race is named in honor of Saint Nicolas because he is the patron saint of the Lorraine region. After many years of hearing "Saint Nicolas" in Christmas songs, I have finally learned the real story behind the saint. Saint Nicolas is not exactly Santa Claus, but I would argue the legend behind the saint inspired Santa Claus. The legend is that Saint Nicolas resurrected three children from a wicked butcher who had murdered them. Quite the gruesome story. Nowadays Saint Nicolas brings goodies or gifts to French children of the northeast regions in early December, and the children want to avoid Père Fouettard (Whipping Father- who whips naughty children) who follows Saint Nicolas on his rounds. Then Père Noël (Santa Claus) brings gifts on Christmas later in the month as well.

Here is Saint Nicolas greeting students at the park:

Happy races!

Une Thanksgiving Nancéienne

Here are some pictures from the Thanksgiving dinner I had tonight with the other assistants. Enjoy!

The cafeteria at the youth residence.

The beautifully set table that my friends did.

La cuisine (kitchen) attached to the cafeteria.

The first sweet potato casserole I ever made!

The group- Joyeuse Thanksgiving! (Encore!)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Due to a change in schedule, I was with the CE1 (second grade) students again this week. Today I got to teach them the basics about Thanksgiving on the actual holiday! Since the French do not celebrate Thanksgiving, this was the first time my students had heard about the holiday.

I read The First Thanksgiving by Nancy Davis, a very easy flip book for young readers. The book gives a very simple history of the first Thanksgiving- of how the Pilgrims came over on a ship, how the Native Americans taught the Pilgrims how to farm, and how they gave thanks for the harvest.

In addition, thanks to another assistant, I was able to read Run, Turkey, Run! written by Diane Mayr, and illustrated by Laura Rader. The book follows the farmyard adventures of Turkey, who is running away and hiding from the farmer on Thanksgiving Day. The book is excellent for young English Language Learners because it is repetitive and reviews familiar farm animals. The story also reviews with readers traditional Thanksgiving foods.

In other news, my floor-mates and I were feeling crafty this week, so we made two paper-mache turkeys (une dinde). They will be centerpieces at our Thanksgiving meal tomorrow with the other assistants!

For those who want to plan a traditional Thanksgiving meal in France, be prepared for the following: You must order a turkey in advance, and it will be cher (expensive). You will most likely find sweet potatoes and cranberries (will be expensive) in a local market (These foods are usually not in a supermarket). You will have to know how to make pumpkin pie from real pumpkins because French grocery stores do not sell canned pumpkin.

Looking forward to the Thanksgiving meal tomorrow, even if it is a day late! Joyeuse Thanksgiving!

"My Favorite Pumpkin"

Back in Nancy! This past week I worked with the CE1 (second grade) class again. The teacher introduced the story of Jack and the Beanstalk (Jack et le Haricot magique) to the students this week. I found this version of the folktale (retold by an educational company) very strange because at the end of the story Jack buys back his cow after defeating the giant and the cow transforms into a princess when Jack kisses it. Perhaps the company who developed this version wanted to draw parallels with other common folktales, and so they decided to have the cow turn into a princess. I guess folktales are always open to interpretation.

The main event that the school was preparing for this week was today- the Halloween celebration! There was a costume parade around the school courtyard. I was very proud that some of the students were wearing the orange paper-plate masques (masks) that I helped paint during the week. The first and second graders got to sing "My Favorite Pumpkin" to their parents, a song that they had been rehearsing all week. For anyone teaching English Language Learners, I highly recommend this song because it is very repetitive and reviews numbers, names for parts of the face, and simple commands. The older students sang "What are you for Halloween?". I also recommend this song to review simple Halloween vocabulary with students.

Joyeux Halloween! (Encore)

Paris

What a whirlwind of a séjour (stay) in Paris thanks to my dad's cousin and his family!

• Monday: I got to visit the musée du Louvre. We visited the Egyptian wing and, of course, the Mona Lisa (La Joconde). The painting is definitely not as big as one would hope, but is nonetheless impressive. 

• Tuesday: What didn't we do today? Or better yet, where didn't we walk to today? We took the metro to the Eiffel Tower and got great pictures with the tower and fountains. (We didn't go up the tower because the lines were too long.) From the Eiffel Tower, we walked to the Arc de Triomphe. The walk up the Arc de Triomphe is totally worth it- I believe it has the best views of the entire city of Paris, even better than the Eiffel Tower. After lunch along the Champs Élysées, we walked through Place de la Concorde and the Jardin des Tuileries all the way to the Louvre. We turned at the Louvre and then walked to Notre Dame. I learned that in 2013 the cathedral will be celebrating its 850th Anniversary! Nonetheless, we were ready to call it a day after visiting Notre Dame. 

• Wednesday: A shopping day! After an afternoon of shopping, we had tea at Mariage Frères, a well-known tearoom in Paris. All tea enthusiasts would really like this tearoom! 

• Thursday: The first stop of the day was Sacre Coeur and Montmartre, which is another magnificent site for views of Paris. It was also really cool to see the Monmartre artists' paintings of Paris. From Montmartre, we took the metro to the musée d'Orsay. Anyone who enjoys late nineteenth century or early twentieth century art should visit this museum! I didn't know that the musée d'Orsay was originally a train station that was later transformed into an art museum. I was very impressed with the work of the Impressionists that I saw. Although I had studied Impressionist paintings in French class, pictures of the paintings do not accurately convey the depth and intensity of the real paintings.

• Friday: Back to the Lorraine region!

Joyeux Halloween!

The Toussaint (All Saints' Day) holidays have began and I am very lucky to have French family that has invited me to spend the vacation with them.

When one of my younger cousins invited me to come along with him and his friends trick-or-treating on Halloween, how could I refuse free candy? I dressed up as a witch (broom and all) and went with them around their neighborhood.

Halloween is not very big or very commercialized in France. I had a hard enough time finding a witch's hat in Nancy, I was lucky that one of my friends is very observant and found what must be the only Halloween costume shop in the city. Trick-or-treaters never know exactly which houses will hand out candy, and those who give out candy never know how many trick-or-treaters will come. Since those houses who celebrate Halloween do not always light an outside light, trick-or-treaters ring the bell at each house with a light inside. The consequence is that sometimes all the candy has already been given out to the early trick-or-treaters. Even if that is the case, some very generous people look around their house and give a group of trick-or-treaters a whole chocolate bar to split or a small bag of candy.

One kind lady gave each trick-or-treater a small bag of cookies that are usually eaten for Christmas:

I'm going to have a stomach ache for a couple days from all the candy and sweets! Happy Halloween!