Goodbye Cards: A Cute, but Worrisome, End

I thought there were no victims, only laughs, when I ironically
taught them the worst Valentine's Day poem. Little did I know
it would come back to haunt my last memories of Martinique.

As I mentioned in my last post, my experience in Martinique was cut short due to a family emergency. For my of my classes, my announcement - in French - that I was leaving (as well as the fact that I could speak French) was a surprise. However, one of the teachers in one of my CM2 (11-12 year old) classes told them ahead of time that I was leaving and gave them some time to make me cards. The results are adorable and ... enlightening. In a troubling way. I thought I had been doing a fairly good job of teaching English, but their creative gifts, while adorable, suggest otherwise.

First, I was suddenly made aware of the fact that I never actually wrote down my name for them, but I stubbornly pronounced it in English, rather than how a French person would pronounce it. Apparently my students had widely varying ideas of what my name actually was.

Secondly, only on my last day did I realize that I had taught them all how to say, "I'm in love," but never, "I love you."

Third, while we did go over how to express that one feels ill oneself, we never discussed the right thing to say when someone else is ill. Apparently, their teacher googled it and came up with, "We wish your [relative] a speedy recovery." Some of the students, like the one's whose work is featured just above, got that more or less down. Others struggled a little more and came up with much funnier sentiments.

What I really hadn't expected was that, for many students, the correct way to say goodbye to an American assistant was to draw her homeland's flag.

As in the above case, for many of them, "United States of America" seems like some sort of blessing. Is this the over-estimation of globally-reproduced American culture? A response to perceived homesickness? A middle-schoolers best guess? I don't know, but it's both sweet and funny.

As I mentioned yesterday, most of my students really don't
have it down that the U.S. and the U.K. are separate
countries.

For context, "passe" is the verb one would use in the French
sentence roughly equivalent to "Have a good day."
I think he just wanted to prove he knew a bonus word in
English. Or maybe "lake" has a special place in his heart. 

"Coucou" is a cutesy greeting that isn't really what kids are
supposed to say to their teachers.

"I wish your [grand]ma well / I love
you? you / Rose are red / I love you
with all my heart."

Finally, their artistic exercise reminded me that middle schoolers are really fucking naive. When they made these cards, they didn't know I spoke French. But most of them still used French on there somewhere. Allow me to emphasize, they were all 100% stunned that I knew any French at all. Yet it never occurred to them that if they wrote in French I wouldn't be able to appreciate it. Luckily, I can appreciate it, because it's really fucking cute.

In the end, the only good thing about being in Martinique, besides a few interesting cultural and natural quirks, has been my students. Kids give me the energy to work, and they're honestly the only humans I'll agree to work with for any extended period of time. They're the only thing I think I'll miss about Martinique - shocker, not even the buses make the list. I'm honored to have these little reminders of the fun we had together.

"What is American Culture?"

Following a family emergency, on April 8th, the last day of Easter vacation in Martinique, I bought a ticket on the first flight out, which was two days later. That left two days, one at each of my schools, to try to close out my year of English classes and give my students, especially the older ones, some sense of closure. First, I finally spoke to them in French, and the jaw-dropped look of surprise on every last one of their faces was priceless. Then, I let them lead the class by asking any questions they had about the U.S., other English-speaking countries, or traveling abroad. That hilarious ordeal is the topic of today's post. My oldest classes made me going away cards / hope your grandma gets better cards, which, if things in my family continue to mellow, I'll share soon. While I miss all my students and hate changing my plans / not using my lesson plans, I'm glad to be out of Martinique and where I need to be with my family. They're not nearly as funny, though, as my 5-11 year-old students, the best of whose questions I present here, translated and unfiltered.

The Dangers of Misreading Dates (and Dairy)

What can I say, I'm a living white-American stereotype, and in more than one way. Currently, I'm living in the intersection of three of those ways.
First of all, I drink a lot of milk. A lot of milk. On days that I stay home (which are often on this damn island), I can easily down a liter a day. One good think about living in Martinique is boxed milk, U.H.T. pasteurized milk that's shelf-stable for a long-ass time. One bad thing about it (among a litany) is that I have to carry any milk I buy with my own arms out of the store, onto the bus, along the bus ride if the bus is as full as it usually is, and the short trek into the house from the bus stop. When you drink as much milk as I do, that can lead to a non-negligible strain on your shoulders.
Second of all, I LOVE buying shit in bulk. Entering a thrift store with used clothes in my size, cowboy outlet stores that sell jeans in my size, and discount groceries stores gives me a pure high. So, naturally, when a couple other assistants and I rented a car during the Carnaval break, I took advantage of the horsepower to buy milk. A lot of milk. Enough milk to last me until my departure in May. Fort-eight liters of milk.

Third of all, no matter how long I live an work outside of the U.S., I still instinctively read dates as month/day/year. It's caused a few problems in my life previously, to say the least. Most recently, I read the expiration date on all that boxed milk, which usually lasts several months, as December 3, 2018, when, in fact, it is 12 March 2018. So, all 48 liters of my milk are set to expire over a month before I leave, less than two months after I bought all of it.
Luckily, according to the internet, boxed milk is good for up to a month after the expiration date as long as it is cool and dry, which will buy me nearly enough time to be ready to leave. Otherwise, I'm currently filling the refrigerator and freezer with liter bricks of milk and trying to maximize my calcium-rich consumption.
Wish me luck. And that my flatmate doesn't actually intend on keeping food in the fridge for the next couple weeks.