One of The Biggest Tourist Destinations in the WORLD...

Last weekend we celebrated Bruno's 26th birthday...he is exactly 2 months younger than me and now we have both crossed over the line of 25 and are officially closer to 30 than 20. whoa.

It's crazy how fast time passes. I got to thinking about his birthday last year when we went to the Mont Saint Michel. He was all astonished/appalled that I didn't know about the Mont Saint Michel...he kept telling me it's 'like one of the biggest tourist destinations in the WORLD.' Dear readers, have you ever heard of the Mont Saint Michel? Back me up here, people! I keep trying to tell him, "Hey, I am an American. I am lucky I ever made it out of the country at all and that I know how to locate France on a map."

The Mont St. Michel was actually a really cool place. It's basically like a big 'mount' with this small, almost medieval village and a big monastery on it. It is out in the middle of nowhere in Normandy and when the tide comes in, water surrounds it and when the tide goes out it has quicksand all around it. We spent the night in a little hotel in the village and it was really neat because it was January and the off-season and it was pretty much empty. There are obviously no cars or anything, just these tiny little winding streets. It was very quiet, and a night it was very foggy and dark and we could see so, so many stars.



When we got back from the trip I was talking about it with my friend Jeannine.

Jeannine: Hey cool! I didn't know there was quicksand around the Mont Saint Michel!

Tina: Yeah, totally. (I give her a look that says, 'Ahh, poor little Jeannine. Must I explain everything to you. I mean, it IS one of the biggest tourist destinations in the world!')

Jeannine: I did't even really know quicksand really existed.

Tina: Really? (Poor, poor Jeannine.)

Jeannine: Yeah, I thought it was just kinda made-up, didn't you?

Tina: No. (I give jeannine the self-satisfied smile that says: I am so smart!) I knew it existed. It's in The NeverEnding Story.

Jeannine: You based your knowledge of quicksand off THE NEVERENDING STORY?

Tina: Um....yeah.

(Jeannine gives me the 'I still like you anyway' look.)

(I give Jeannine the 'I'm very grateful' look.)

Well, a year has gone by and Jeannine and I are still friends. She’s living in Japan now. I'm still in Paris, Bruno and I are still together and a year older. And hopefully a little wiser…

The Great Decoder

To teach English as a foreign language it helps to be a really good decoder. The student says something to you that comes out all scrambled, it enters your brain, you descramble it, repeat it correctly to the student with a smile and the student then repeats the correct phrase, smiles and continues talking. You get about a 2 second window in which to take in, decode and spit out the correct sentence...if you take longer and the student can see you puzzling about what they said, they get uncomfortable, lose confidence and shut up. Let me tell you, when you have 75 minutes to kill, the last thing you want is the student getting uncomfortable and claming up. So, as you can see the decoding game is very important. If you do it well, the student can learn something AND he or she will happily chat away to you and the time flies by.

Here are some excerpts from this weeks classes:

Student A: Hello Kristina! Did the Christmas father come to search you in your parent's house in USA?
Kristina: Yes! SANTA CLAUS did come FIND me at my parent's house in THE STATES!

Student B: I met my old friend hazardously in the street.
Kristina: You ran into an old friend in the street? That's nice!

Student C: For Noel my childrens received movie plays!
Kristina: Your children got video games for Christmas? I bet they liked that!

Another student told me that at the lunch break after the seminar he lead in English, he asked one of the participants, "Did you pleasure yourself this morning?" He couldn't figure out why she got flustered and acted so strangely. I told him that I thought something had gotten a little lost in translation and that next time it would be better to ask, "Did you ENJOY yourself at the seminar this morning?"

Of course, I get a kick out of the little things I hear people say in English...but there are two sides to this coin! It makes me wonder what on Earth I'm saying in French half of the time!

Miss Sherwood - English Teacher Extraordinaire

So here is the first of what I have to assume will be many posts about my job as a Business English teacher. This first post will just be a quick intro to what I do. I teach English to French business people...most of them already speak English pretty well, so it's a lot of fine tuning. Of course I do have some beginner level students, as well. Advanced level students can be difficult to teach...sometimes they speak so well, I can feel like I'm at a bit of a loss to teach them something. I start thowing out really random idiomatic expressions so it looks like I'm smart and have sooooo much wisdom to impart... "You don't know the expression, "A stitch in time saves nine"?! Well you just HAVE TO learn it! We LOVE to use that expression! Why I was just using that expression this morning with my other native English speaker friends! It was coined by BENJAMIN FRANKLIN! This one is a MUST KNOW!" Then with beginner level students it can be difficult because it's really slow going and it when you see them only once per week it's hard to make very much progress. I even have one intermediate level student who has the really bad habit of pronouncing the silent 'k' in words like knee and know. He said to me the other day, "Oh-oh! Kristina, I am impressing you with my k-nowledge, no?" We've been over it several times...but like I said, one class a week can be slow going.

Most of my students are upper intermediate level and like I said we work on a lot of fine tuning. Such as helping them say, "Call me back after 1pm." instead of "Call again to me in the hour of one." (Call a-gin to meee in ze howwwerrrr ov one.)

I'm in my fourth year as an English teacher and I spend A LOT of time listening to people make English mistakes...and the scary thing is, some of those mistakes are starting to sound RIGHT to me! Just the other day a student said, "I have to make a presentation." and I jumped right in and said, "DO a presentation." The student gave me a look and I said, "MAKE a presentation. Yes. Okay. As you were saying???" Oops.

Or like the time I mentioned in a blog from last year when I asked a student, 'Is this word a noun or a drink? Errr...I mean a noun or a VERB?" Oops.

Maybe it's just the kind of work that can make you a little crazy after a little while. My boss is definitely proof that! But more on him next time...