You know your French is bad when.....

A room full of fourth graders laughs at you when you try to greet them in French.  Yikes… it happened today.  These kids are WAY smarter than me!!!

            Also, when the guards you greet on the way home have to do motions and sign language along with their words for you to understand what they are saying.  And you still don’t really understand, but you just laugh and say “oui” anyway.

            And then (also on your way home) some kids playing soccer don’t even try to speak French to you.. they know you know nothing so they just say “hello”.

            On the plus side, we did an appreciation circle today and they all said really great things like “I appreciate my classmates” and “I appreciate Ms. Fisher because she is very kind and she teaches us a lot of things” (okay, so maybe this kid was just trying to get on my good side, but im just gonna pretend she was serious!)

            Today I decided that Wednesdays are my new favorite day.  Let me tell you why!  The youth pastor’s wife baked these yummy peanut butter chocolate chip cookie bar things and had all the ladies over for “Mug and Muffin” she had coffee and tea and juice also and it was so fun!  She’s going to do it EVERY WEDNESDAY at 10 in the morning!  I know.. at ten in the morning I should still be with my kids right?  WRONG!!  There is this glorious little thing called an hour break while the kids are at French class and Recess.  It’s the best part of my day!!  I’m kind of kidding, but only kind of.  It was perfect also because I had forgotten to pack a snack this morning, and that delightful little treat just filled me right up!! So.. moral of the story.. GO WEDNESDAYS!

            Also, another way you know your French is bad is when the man at the boutique (basically a teeny tiny grocery store)  tells you how much you owe him and you have no idea what number he said so you just hold all your money out to him so he can take what he needs.  Yeah… that’s my life.  It’s a good thing I’m BFFs with Tafa (the real spelling is probably something crazy like tchogoafoa but his name sounds like Ta-fa), the owner… and the only worker.  Because I KNOW he wouldn’t take advantage of a blonde white girl and steal all her money… right?  Right.  No but seriously, he wouldn’t!  Wanna know how I know?  Because he’s psychic… and kind of creepy.

            So, one day I was walking home from school.. all alone.  I think it was the first time I walked home alone.. but don’t worry I would never walk home alone in the dark.  and its completely safe to walk alone in our neighborhood during the day time.  I know because I asked all the dads of teenage daughters that I know (all two of them)  if they let their daughters walk alone in the neighborhood and they said “oh yeah, its totally safe.. but during the night she’s not allowed to walk alone.”  So, if they let their daughters walk alone… its safe! (that part was just for you mom)

            Okay, so there I was walking back from school.  And I say bonjour to Tafa.  He says it back and does the whole how are you thing… and then he tries to speak more French to me.  I never know what to do when people do that.  So I just shrugged my shoulders and gave him the most apologetic face I could make.  He said “you don’t speak French?” I said “nope, sorry!” and he said “me neither, only Wolof” and I said “and pretty good English too!”  and he said “French is too hard.”  And I said “yup, I agree!”  (this is where the creepy psychicness comes in.. are you ready?)  He says: “Lauren, right?”  and I said “WHAT!” and he said… “LAUREN FISHER!!!!” and I got so scared, but then he pointed to my nametag.  So he wasn’t actually psychic, just a little bit creepy.  So that was the day we became BFFs.  Now every time I walk by he says “LaurEN!”  he says it with a really cool accent and I just like it a lot.  So, that is why I trust him to take money out of my hand.

            Today during work out time (that’s right, I worked out today.. and I’m sneakily posting about it in my blog..) I asked the other girls if they were getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and they said “eh no not really.”  I promise that I always have at least 15 bites on me at all times.. mostly on my legs. Its horrible!! Even after I spray a gram of insect repellant.  (yup, I now measure in grams and kilograms and other cool things like that) Ugh, if I make it out of here without getting malaria it will be a miracle.  Ok so anyway.. the true point of the story that I wanted to tell you all is that their theory about mosquitoes is this: they attack all the new blood, and you have a really bad reaction to it but then they keep biting you, but you kinda get used to it so don’t have as bad of a reaction.  I don’t really know how much sense that actually makes, but I’m hoping I quit reacting soon.. I would really love to not have itchy red dots all over my legs at some point.

            Okay, I think this might be the last story I have for tonight…  I was thinking about what I could have for dinner tonight and then I remembered that our house help was coming tonight and cooking for us! Wooo hooO!!!!  So I stayed a little longer at school and got some good stuff done..  and then I came home from school and the apartment was seriously a whole new world.  It was SO clean.  She is amazing.  And the food was soooooooooooooooooo yummy.  It was this rice stuff with beef in it and some seasonings.  She also made sweet potato fries YUM.  And this salad that it would be okay with me if she never made again.  But anyway.. she made SO MUCH food.  SO MUCH.  So we took the rest to our neighbors down the stairs.. a lot of the rice and beef stuff and all of the salad since it was so *delicious*.. I know very generous of us!  But I can see how some people might like it… I just wasn’t a fan. 

So now it is time for bed. Past time actually! And tomorrow is already Thursday! Yahooooooo! J