First of all, THANK YOU to my dear friend Cindy for posting (I say hi back to Roger, Stephanie, and Melissa) and to my "boss" (and also dear) friend Niki (you are so sweet) for posting as well!!! And Mom, you know I love you, but I happen to be an adult now and I have very solid moral values...you really don't need to put on the mom hat EVER AGAIN. I know some others are reading too (Ash, Brianna, and Becca - I love you!), but haven't had a chance to post. C'est d'accord! (It's okay!)
I am EXHAUSTED and dropping *f* bombs like crazy after the day I've had, people. I think it's going to be a love hate relationship the whole damn summer. Yowzah. Before I launch into my day, I have to extend a disclaimer to all those who will see me after this camp in September (which I am assuming will be almost all of you reading this).
When I return, it is possible that:
1. I will speak with my hands nonstop. Seriously, I will use them even more than I ever did before because I wave them around like a fool here so the kids will understand me. It's hectic.
2. I will speak very slowly in broken English. I will sound like a weirdo, trust me, I already do.
3. I will have an accent. I pick up on accents very quickly, so right now, I have a mix of American Midwestern, Canadian, French, and British. It's beautiful.
Okay, now the story of my day. Oh la la, it was messed up. I got up at 9:38am this morning and quick threw on some clothes (we can wear ANYTHING!) to eat breakfast before our meeting at 10. Cocoa Krispies proved to be a good breakfast again and our meeting was brief (we also had one last night but I can't even really remember what happened because my day has been so long); we just went over the day's activities. Then, I tried to register for classes, but was quite unsuccessful. I'm super annoyed at this and hoped to get everything worked out soon.
Then I read outside for a half hour (Harry Potter 2 is getting good for the second time) before lunch, which consisted of egg salad (I'm telling you, the French loved their hard-boiled eggs), overcooked broccoli, some type of gross fish soaked in some type of gross sauce, bread, cheese, yogurt, and fruit for dessert (we ALWAYS have yogurt and fruit for dessert, but today I discovered apple yogurt which is so so so good!!). The children arrived at 1pm today and went through "Immigration" where we simulate an airport setting and give them passports, exchange their currency, check their bags at customs for candy and CD players, give them a "medical checkup" where we find out if they are allergic to anything, and bring them to their rooms. This part is really clever as well, because on their passports, they are given a city and state where they are from. The state is the name of their room and the city is their bed (all the beds are labelled). Then, we come up with a family theme for the week (this week it is hairdos) and all the kids are given family names to go along with their chosen American names (this week the names are: Mullet, Afro, Mohawk, Beehive, and Dreads). I am part of the Mullet family with another counselor, Jess, so my name is KoKo Mullet. Catchy, huh?
After immigration, we do an opening skit to introduce ourselves and then the director, Raku, gives the kids a "spiel" while we prep other stuff. The kids got their snack following this (by law, French kids are required to get a snack for every three - or something - hours of play) and had a quick recess. Then, we did what we call the Funky Rota, which is a rotation of activities that the kids go to; the reason for this is to test the English abilities of the children because one "station" in the rota is talking to a counselor completely in English to assess what ESL class they should be placed into. I had to do name tags with the kids which was easy - I made them draw "I love KoKo" signs for me after they were finished with their tags. These soon turned into "I very love Koko" and " You is beautiful" signs. Brilliant.
A quick note about the kids: they are friggin hilarious and so annoying at the same time. Honestly, it's hard enough to keep behaved kids in a language they know, try doing it when they don't even understand you - or worse when they DO understand you and pretend they don't. Plus, I understand French, so it's hard for me to fake it or not answer "Oui" when they ask me a question. They also say some things really funny like "snake" instead of "snack" or "danks" instead of "thanks." They are completely not capable of speaking the proper English "h."
Okay, I gotta finish this up because it is 1am here and I have to be up by 8am tomorrow morning. After the Funky Rota, they showered and we had dinner consisting of a carrot coleslaw (actually pretty good to taste), "amburgers" (as the kids would say), fries, and (of course) fruit and yogurt (APPLE) for dessert. The "amburgers" were good, but that may have been because I was gut-wretchingly hungry at this point. The Mullet family had kitchen duty (you have to set the table and clean after dinner), so we finished up and got ready for the evening program which included "Whacking Off the Jedi Master" (I seriously laughed for 5 minutes after hearing the name of this game) - a game where the jedi master is blindfolded in the middle guarding a tamborine and the others in the circle around him have to steal the tamborine without being heard and whacked by a pool noodle - and a campfire where they made smores. Then we had cool down (a few kinda bad songs around the campfire) and the little brats went to bed. During the evening program, one kid had a bloody nose and one kid puked. Lovely. In particular, the boys are little terrors, but they'rs so damn cute! Their style (hair, shoes and all) definitely starts before 4th grade! (These kids are 4th and 5th graders from just outside of Paris.) All I see is a wave of spiked hair when I look into the mass of 49 children we have.
(A random note about food: the good news is that last night, we had friggin awesome chocolate mousse with little chunks of chocolate. It was the best thing I've had here so far. Just in case some of you are pitying me.)
"Dat's all" as the rowdy French children would say! There were probably more details, but I can't remember. Sorry.
Whew. I'm tired.
Good night!
Love from room number 7 at the top of the stairs,
KoKo Kelly Belly (Smelly - though I've taken an amazing 5 showers already!)
PS - Harry Potter 6 already came out (on Friday!) in the UK...I am desperately trying to get a copy.
PPS - Mom, I was happy to see that my room # is 7 cause that's your lucky number! :)
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