But before my vacations started, I spent lots of my free time volunteering in Hugo's "maternelle" class (the French equivalent of kindergarten). As a teacher, this was particularly exciting for me! I had asked multiple times if I was ever needed for help or anything like that, and his teacher finally had a job for me: help supervise the making of truffles ("truffe au chocolate") and share some American Christmas music and stories with the kids.
Before the week of helping out arrived, I felt very excited, but also a bit wary to be honest: it was almost like going back to my first day of student teaching when I had no idea what I was doing. Except that this time, it was with 30 children who spoke a language I only had a basic grasp of (if that).
But when I entered the classroom, I instantly felt at home. It looked a lot like an American kindergarten room, but with small changes.
Without further ado, the teacher took all 32 of us to the tiny kitchen and proceeded to explain the directions for the truffle recipe. They were making them from scratch. That was my first shock, as everyone knows that nothing is made from scratch in America (ok ok, almost nothing). But a bigger shock came next: the teacher whipped out two hardcore knives and asked me to cut the vanilla stick and scrape it into the bowl... inches away from the kids. As I did this, I almost had a panic attack as a massive group of 5-year-olds clustered around my elbow to watch.
But the surprises weren't over. She then asked me to turn the stove on and heat the chocolate/milk/vanilla/butter mixture until it was very hot. And she had Hugo be my helper. In the United States, any knife that isn't plastic is essentially forbidden in a school. Also, you would never have a stove burning chocolate for all the kids to help mix:
I love how bored the kid next to Hugo looks. Hahaha!
After we had stirred the truffle chocolate mix enough, we put it into the fridge and it was my turn to take over the class.
It was a bit intimidating, to say the least!
I had found a book at the local International library. The theme of this week was Noël (Christmas). So I started reading this book about a postman delivering Christmas letters... It was in English, so everyone except Hugo was completely lost. But they were still so captivated! I find that children are much more frank with their fascination with my "strangeness" (I speak weirdly, after all). They stare at me, they ask me to speak in English, they try to talk to me in French, they throw things at me, they laugh and make fun of me. (Not all of it has been good, sadly). But these kids were just so sweet and kind.
The next day we finished making the truffles. The kids got insanely messy, and I got to know a bunch of them even more as I went around taking their picture:
After we finished with the truffles, I took over the class again. This time I taught them "Jingle Bells", a song that they already know because there is a French version called "Vive Le Vent" (long live the wind) to the same melody. I'm not sure how successful I was with the English version, as the kids seemed to be pronouncing the English words wrong, but it was very cute nonetheless!
It was an amazing week and I can't wait to return to help out again (hopefully that will be soon)!
À bientôt!! :)
