Swimming and walking. 30, June 2009

Swimming on the Seine sounds like it could be extraordinary. Even romantic.
It’s not what it seems.
I thought it would be a good idea to walk from the Louvre, where I left Fabio, to the pool, which is at the metro stop “Quai de la Gare”. This, if you look at a map of Paris, includes walking half of the city. I knew this when I started…but I decided it would be intresting to walk almost aboard the Seine, halfway through this city.
The walk was OK. At some points, I was the only one on the street. A few times, I thought I wouldn’t make it. In fact, I stopped at a pharmacy to buy band-aids for my beat-up feet, and asked the Pharmicist where the pool on the Seine was. He looked at me and smiled, pointed across the street, and said “iright under the bridge”. YES! I walked for an hour and a half, and FINALLY I had arrived!
There were a lot of people waiting outside of the pool. I went up to one of them and asked her when the pool opened. She told me that it was already open, but they couldn’t let everyone in at one time. So, after walking one and a half hours, I waited in the sun for another hour. But I was NOT going to leave this pool without experiencing swimming on the Seine!!!
So…I waited my turn. I went into the co-ed locker room (there are little changing closets where you can change without exposing oneself), put on my suit, and headed out to the pool. It really is on the river! If you swim on the north side of the pool, you are afew feet from the river itself. But noone seemed to care. I saw not one person glancing, marvelling at the river they were swimming with. To top things off…ther eis absolutely NO order in Paris (or at least in this) swimming pools. I wanted to swim a mile. But you can actually swim about 3 strokes before running into someone. No rules in the pool, apparently no capacity, and only 1 lifeguard, who was rather hard to spot.
After swimming for about 45 minutes, which probably equaled about 2 whole lengths, I got out of the pool. And went into the co-ed shower! Some women shower with their tops off (not this woman!), bu tmost people jsut rinse themselves. Then, I headed into the co-ed locker room, grabbed my things and went into a tiny changing closet.
My feet were beat up, so I decided against walking back to the Louvre.
I hopped on the nearest Metro, and headed back to the museum.
It wasn’t extraordinary, or romantic. But I did swim on the Seine.

Swimming on the Seine?! 28, June 2009

OH LA LA!! I’m going to swim on the Seine tomorrow! There is now a pool built on this river.
I have to make this a very quick post…Fabio lost his converter plug today so the computer can not be charged…but today, I also went to a Michael Jackson memorial underneath the EIFFEL TOWER! It was crazy! My friend took pictures. I promise to write more about both of these events once the computer charger has been replaced.

Paris 27, June 2009

Here we are! We landed in Paris about 8 hours ago, and have been walking around almost non-stop since.
The airplane drugs I took DID NOT work! Oh la la. They were supposed to be the strong, dream drugs of those who are petrified of flying. Supposedly stronger than the valium I took last time, which didn’t work either. :>) Thankfully, the flight was mostly smooth, and I only death-griped Fabio’s arm during the take-off.
When we disembarked and Fabio was getting money from the machine, a lady came up to me and said, in broken French, “Regardez-moi”. Which means “Look at me”.
I looked at her. She said “”Vous parlez l’angaisa or la francesca?” Which means (in awkward Franch) “Do you speak English or French?” I replied in French, and told her that I spoke both. She was very happy, and said, in English “oh, good! My bank will only allow me $400/day. How much should I take out in Euros?”.
What???
I didn’t know this lady from Eve (and…by the way…why did she tlel me to look at her in the beginning???!)
I answered her in English with my approximation. She said “How did you learn how to speak English so well?”

Well…that’s lovely. I’m passing as a non-American to the Americans. That says something…

My 1st grade classroom and the world 20, June 2009

The school year has ended.

I have emptied out my classroom, and will head back in August, to get ready for a new, fresh bunch of 6 year-olds.

You know what’s funny? My 6/7 year-olds already have a pretty good concept of fairness; or of the difference between right and wrong. My students dealt, all year, with me treating a difficult student different than I treated the rest of them. He got special treatment, a special chair, he didn’t have to do everything as the rest of the class had to. Simply because he had a bad temper.

My students would complain, at the beginning of the year, that this wasn’t fair. Why, simply because this student has a bad temper, should he get special treatment? If we act bad, would we get that special treatment as well?

But you know what? The rest of the class did not start acting up. And I continued to shower special attention on this 1 student. My class simply learned, over time, to accept the unfairness of the situation. The last month of school, I heard not one single complaint about how I was treating this difficult student different than I was treating the others. And I was still treating him differently. We all got used to it.

I am afraid that this might be a bad lesson I have taught my students. If someone acts bad enough, they will get what they want. And everyone, including those in charge, will simply get used to it.