An Ode to Black Beans and Guacamole...among other things

Soo...this week has been looong!!! The kids sense Christmas vacation like a rabid animal senses prey...making their attention spans wander and their level of apathy skyrocket. Apparently, its a tradition for French people to eat Oysters for Christmas...which means that most of the kids get a seasonal job the week before Christmas harvesting oysters, since Marennes is the oyster capital of France. It certainly is a unique environment. Today, we had a veritable tempest. I'm not even kidding. I woke up early this morning to the wind attacking my apartment and peals of thunder that continued most of the day. Several trees blew down on the island. It was the oddest thing to see the trees bending over sideways in the pouring rain...all while the sun was shining. It was the weirdest weather today.

Last night, courtesy of my mother, I gorged myself on black beans and guacamole. If you know me, you know that I eat inordinate amounts of black beans and guacamole...but I can't find them here in France!! So, my mom sent me a package of black beans...but what a lot of work just to enjoy their deliciousness! I had to soak them in a pan of water for 6-8 hours and afterwards cook them for an hour to an hour and a half. The wait was excruciatingly long and I was several times tempted to try to eat them while they were still uncooked. As the storm raged around my apartment, the beautiful marvelous smell of black beans began to fill my kitchen. I also managed to find some ripe avocados and I made some guacamole that was pretty tasty if I say so myself. I also cooked some rice, cut up some chicken, and threw in some corn...making it the closest thing to Mexican food that I have eaten since arriving in France. Couple that with some Orangina and my dinner last night was simply devine. I am still glowing at the thought of it...and you know what makes it better? Leftovers!!

So...here are some anecdotes from this week of teaching. I thought I would pass them all on to you. I was discussing with one class some images and political cartoons related to eating well and exercising. They have a big test at the end of the year where they have to speak out loud for 5 minutes in English about a picture that they see...so we were practicing. One of the cartoons depicted an overweight child in the school cafeteria. I asked them to describe what they saw. One enthusiastic boy responded, "She eez fat!". What can I say? I conceded the point..."yes, she is fat"...he then proceeded to say, "she is like a ball! She will roll away!"...at which point, I gave up all semblance of dignity and gave myself to the laughter that had been seducing me all class period. In most of my other classes, we have been talking about slang. For some reason, today we got on the topic of racism in America and I brought up September 11...and when I asked a boy if he knew what September 11 was, he said, "Oh yes! Boum boum enorme!". I probably shouldn't have laughed...but he was so enthusiastic! In another one of my classes, I had to stop several boys from dropping f-bombs...the french word for seal (foques) sounds an awful lot like the f-word...so when I stopped them, they protested that they were talking about seals swimming in the ocean. Yeah. Right. We then were talking about accents and one very clever boy (mischievous, but oh so clever) told me that there is a french joke about "le soleil sur la plage" which translates to "the sun on the beach"...which if you've ever heard a French person pronounce that last sentence, you know what I mean. All in all, a tiring yet satisfying week. I'm going to go eat some more black beans and guacamole. Somebody please go enjoy a california burrito for me.