Bon. Je fais quoi ces jours là, quoi?

Bah, ché pas moi.  J'ai rien pigé.  J'en sais rien.

That means, "Uhh, I don't know.  I didn't understand anything.  I don't know anything about that." I literally hear these words a million times a day.  A million.  Maybe more.  Today, for example, I had to go around in C's class and ask each group, "Love is blind.  What do you think about that?  Do you agree or disagree?"  Bah, j'en sais rien.  Thanks French kiddies.

It's not like I want them to give me a novel or a doctoral dissertation.  I'm not asking them to cut off their hands and write the answer in their blood.  And I get that you really don't care about English discussion hour.  But, I'm required to ask you this question.  And you are required to answer it.  So please, you are 18 years old: answer my question.  And if you really don't know, tell me that in English.

It's not that today has been very frustrating; this is quite normal (and certainly not blogworthy) and normally I would just pass it off as l'habitude, but today I just... couldn't.  There were a few students who absolutely refused to answer my questions, who wouldn't even look at me.  I have come all the way from America to talk to you.  Yes, you.  You are my job, you are the reason I am here.  Today, I just gave up.  If, in a group of 5, there were two people willing to talk to me, I just talked to them.  They are lucky; they get to practice speaking with a native speaker who is basically their age.  What I wouldn't have given to have a French 22 year old come and talk to my high school French classes. 

This is not to say that all of my students are like this.  No.  In fact, I have some pretty darn incredible students.  Students who go out of their way to speak in English or ask me very curiously how this expression or other translates into English.  People who might be a little terrible at the language (we all were once, right?) who still try to put words together and most often succeed.  That's nice. 

Actually, today, I had a wonderful experience.  I have this stupid 4 hour break in between my first two hours of class and my last two hours of class.  Enough to go home if I want (I'd be home for about 2 3/4 hours) but not long enough to really en profiter.  So today, I decided to make the most of my time and go to the bank and the grocery store (all non-perishables, bien sûr) and then come back to the school and eat my lunch that I brought.  And on my way back to school, I ran into just about every single one of my students.  "'ello!" said every single one of them.  They were pretty cute, and I felt like quite the popular teacher.

Oh, one petite story: in one class, the students had to write a love poem that began with the line "If I were in love, I would..." And one poem had a line that said, "If I were in love, I would love you like a fly loves poo."  BRILLIANT.  You'd never know I hadn't written it myself...!