Le Grand Lemps

This past week I finally started teaching at Le Grand Lemps (leh grahn-d la-nce), a village east of La Côte whose only real claim to fame is that there's a gare (gehr: railway station) in the center of town allowing the villagers a quick and easy escape to Lyon forty minutes away.  Of course, it could be any animosity I hold toward this village is le collège (leh koll-ehj: the junior high) where I will be spending a weekly nine hours of my life for the next five months.  As if going through junior high the first time wasn't bad enough.

I don't know about you, but junior high was a nightmare for me from day one.  The kids were petty and often just plain cruel, the classrooms smelled like bad BO and acne medication, and junior high was also my first introduction to public locker rooms which is, let me just clarify, a nightmare scenario in and of itself.  My single happy memory of my junior high days was graduation: my ticket out.  And now here I am teaching those hellish students in those stinky classrooms.

The really scary thing?  Junior high, the second time around, isn't so bad.  Les collègians (leh koll-ehj-ee-ahns: the junior high students) actually haven't grown into that bitter stage in life yet, and are actually excited about English and - dare I say it - eager to participate in class.  Every day I walk into a classroom it's like a scene out of the Twilight Zone: I expect to be eaten alive without any shred of dignity left yet, at the end, I miraculously manage to live to dread another day.  I'm certain these collège students are going to turn on me sometime.  It's just a matter of when.  Until that happens, I'm actually having fun.

Also, in 10-15 days I might actually have the Internet.  In my bedroom.  Meaning I can continue my pre-France life of staying in bed until noon searching for bootlegged Sex & the City episodes in my nightgown without any blocked website access or crappy wireless signals.  What's the French word for euphoria?  Oh, yeah: la euphorie (lah oo-for-ee).