11 year old hopers. and the bike fairy.

Call it Karma.  Call it a champagne-included bday celebration in the teacher's lounge at lunch.  Heck, call it a Tuesday.  All I know is, I had a fantastic afternoon. 

Which was an uplift from 7:00am this morning when I woke up thinking, 

are you SURE it's not 11pm right now?  

I'm really in France and not in Utah anymore?

Want to hear about my afternoon? 

It started with (gasp, I'm really saying this) my kids- my favorite class.  They're a group of contagiously enthusiastic sixièmes, which puts them at about 11 years old. 

I've had them twice before, and both times I was smiling as they gathered up their huge backpacks and scurried out of class afterwards.  

Today, appropriately enough, we talked about the holidays- Christmas, traveling, New Years and such.  I had a handy worksheet for them to talk about New Years Resolutions.

They had to write 4 things they would promise to do in 2010 (starting with the example, 'I promise to listen to the teacher' of course).  

'I promise to...'

Then they had to write two examples of that they hoped for this year.

'I hope to...'

After I put them to work and walked around the class answering vocab questions for awhile, I asked a couple of them to go up to the board and read their responses to the class.  They were nearly jumping out of their seats to come up and share their answers 

(small note to self. and to all readers. 

remind me of this example when I'm on here wondering out loud 

why the bleep I decided to try my hand at teaching)

They came up two by two and read to the class, with mistakes here and there.  My favorite response though....

'I hope to be tall'

It was just so innocent and matter of fact and perfect.  

Not, I hope to grow, I hope to be tall. 

I laughed a bit, and he looked at me questioningly,

'de quoi?' 

yes. and?

'rien, ça c'est un très bon but pour 2010'

absolutely nothing, I think that's a great goal for 2010.

Then it was his partner's turn to read his answers.  

'I promise to encourage the world'

Can we just pause a moment folks.   Maybe I'm putting more meaning into a sentence from an 11 year old English learner than there should be. 

But have you ever thought about 'encouraging the world'? 

Usually I think about how the world won't stop discouraging certain days. 

Does it work the opposite way?

A sort of 'kill 'em with kindness' sort of mentality? 

I was so delighted with his response.  It made my afternoon.  

And it got better after that. 

For those of you who read about my bike-dragging affair yesterday, 

read on.

After arriving yesterday in front of the bike shop, completely exhausted and exasperated that it was closed, I left my bike locked across the street.  

There really wasn't anything else I could do... I certainly wasn't going to drag it back another mile and a half back to work. 

After work today, I walked straight there, hoping against hope that no one had decided to snag it 

(even though they wouldn't have gotten very far considering the back wheel WOULDN'T TURN).

I was SO relieved to see it sitting there when I turned the corner. 

As I walked up to it though, I noticed a yellow piece of paper stapled around the frame.

The first thing I thought was, great.  It's a ticket.  Bum bike and now I have to pay a fine. 

So I was a little surprised to open it up and find 

'velo ok.  roues. pneus.' and a couple other illegible scrawlings. 

'bike ok. wheels. tires'?

Whatever.  I crumpled the note and put it in the front basket, and unlocked my bike to take it across the street into the store.

I lifted up the back wheel like I had to do to drag it 109384098 blocks yesterday, and set it in the street.

Except.

When I set down the back tire, it didn't skid against the pavement in protest.

It rolled.

IT ROLLED!

The bike fairy!

I was totally shocked.  And was until I got across the street, came through the door, and found the infamous bike guy.  

'Monsieur, vous avez repairé mon vélo?!!'

Um hello dude, did you fix my bike?

To which he responded, 'um oui, bien sur.  and I also filled up the tires for you and replaced

two bolts that wouldn't stay put'

To which I thought, where the HECK am I?  The country so thoroughly reputed for closing pile à l'heure for their 2 hour lunch break.  So concerned with their coffee breaks

to care about customer service.

I was in shock.  

He seemed not at all put out, and wouldn't even let me pay.

'Allez, sauve toi.  A plus tard!' he said as he held the door for me

a friendly, 'get outta here, we'll see ya later.'

So I rode my bike home.  Both wheels rolling.

France, I stand corrected.  

So tell me your Tuesday story!

a+

alli