15

Feb 21, 22

Yesterday I walked home from the center of Revel (a very small square closed in by buildings) after school, and it was really beautiful and sunny out. You could see the entire valley with Grenoble and everything there were a couple chickens and horses around as well. I took lots of pictures. 

When I finished climbing a small section of mountain I arrived back home, where the family dog Taiga was waiting at the fence. She's the friendliest being I've ever met, and stays outside most of the time, even sleeping out there. She's got super thick fur. 

Anyway, she really likes to play fetch, so what she does is she drops her toy over the fence, so that you have to pick it up if only to bring it back to the yard. But at this point, she's tricked you into holding her toy as she wags her tail and prepares to catch it, and you can either carry it in (it's really gross and slobbery) or you can throw it to her. 

She knows what she's doing. 

Today was Friday. 

I really don't like the way that students are treated in my lycée. No teacher trusts you on your word; you have to get a teacher to validate everything.  

So the way it works is like this: the cafeteria serves all the students at lunch, starting at 11:30 and continuing to serve until 13:30 I think. Students line up outside and are admitted in intervals, scanning their lunch cards on the way. Students with class schedules that only allow for an hour to stand in line, get your stuff together, sit down, eat, dispose of stuff properly, and leave (theoretically) get priority seating. Otherwise they would not have time to eat because there are so many students standing in line (side note: lines in France are a bit more "everyone for themselves" then in Canada. I'm used to it being customary to let others pass in front of you knowing they would do the same, but here if you wanna be in front you gotta push your way through and bugger the consequences. Otherwise you WILL be last, just like us polite Canadians). 

Today our class had limited time to eat, so we tried to get priority passes. The teacher wouldn't let us so we had to go ack around and join the pack of everyone else. It was kinda like being herded like sheep. We waited half an hour, but then we were really running out of time so we went and asked again, this time with the whole class who had since shown up. Only when our homeroom teacher came and talked to the supervisor did they let us through. I definitely think there's a better way to organize things here, and it really bugs me about the lack of trust in students. 

So not a great day at lunch, but later in the evening I taught Clémentine and Nadia the card game Dutch blitz, and watched Sherlock in French with the parents (who both loved it by the way). Tomorrow is skiing again :)