It Was the Best of Times and the Worst of Times

By far this week was the Worst and Best of times in Education. The Worst, obviously, was the four days of bureaucracy and paperwork that was Sunday through Wednesday. The Best was Thursday when I took a group of students to the Huntington Library. We went because in Français Avancé we studied the Gutenberg Bible and I wanted them to see it. The Best because we left at noon and had no traffic and I had a gin and tonic in my hand at 6:45pm. I can't think of the last day in education that was more pleasurable. The students in my group had the good manners to pretend that they were enthralled when they saw the Bible and then proceeded to be even more genuinely excited by everything we saw. The Huntington Library had the forethought to plan for my field trip and had a science exposition that had all of the Zodiac signs in French and the students in my group were squealing, "Mademoiselle! Look! It's in French! That one's mine!" and frantically taking pictures on their cell phones. After touring the library and art galleries, I had to let my group loose in the gardens because my leg was numb and there was no way I could have continued to shepherd around my little flock.

The only stressful part was when I heard a group of boys speaking French. If the language hadn't given them away, their short pants and fanny packs would have. At that moment my only thought was dear God, do not let one of my girls try to talk to these French bastards because all I could imagine was a Damien*-esque mini-dragueur milking his accented English for all it was worth and then losing one of them while he gave her a private lesson in a secluded spot in the Japanese garden. (Because let me tell you, the Damien-dragueur stress is the main reason I don't take students to France.) Luckily for me, most of the girls were too nervous to try out their French on the "super hot French boys." The ones who did talk to them told me that the one boy showed her his déoderant (was she supposed to be impressed he had some??) and his cahier and she told him, "Oh c'est très moche."

*To be fair to mon cher ami M. le maître de conférence Damien, when he came and talked to my classes he was nothing but appropriate and did not try to get any phone numbers or girls to come home with him. I would like to believe that even M. mon cher ami Damien would draw the line at bringing my students home to my house. Mais on ne sait jamais.