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Monday, November 5, 2018

Andrew Coburn's Deauville October Update


Using September as a month to settle in and really get going, we hit October full on. It took about a week or so to really get comfortable with being up in front of my kids and teaching them something that literally comes naturally to me. However, after some careful planning, I finally began to get the hang of it. In the first period of teaching I covered topics of introduction (asking names, favorite things, where they lived), and weather. Each day (except Wednesday) there are afterschool activities. Tuesdays there are two slots reserved for the Americans to take over, one cultural, and one hands-on. We took turns each week covering each. Elizabeth and I covered Kentucky one week with a reading of B is for Bluegrass and some derby coloring sheets, as well as making Halloween masks and watching kids Halloween films. In the hands-on, I taught the kids Dodgeball, Ninja, and how to make ice cream in a plastic bag. We will continue these until Christmas break where we will be covering topics that we choose over the course of the second half of the school year.

         It’s not October without Halloween! My kids were overjoyed when I turned on the projector to show a Halloween presentation complete with a picture of me in a clown costume from several years ago, and a French Halloween song my teachers used to teach Halloween vocabulary words in my high school French classes. I also took this moment as a way to plug in Transylvania University's 'Pumpkin Mania' which astounded the children. On the last two days leading up to our first vacation, we held Halloween parties in the two countryside schools and learned just how much we (and the kids) love Spooky Bowling, regular bowling, but with bottles decorated to look like ghosts. The night before vacation we participated in the Deauville Halloween party that was held in a WW2 German-occupied villa in town. The party included a pumpkin carving station (ran by the TAs), a haunted house, mystery boxes, and a haunted underground bunker.
Using September as a month to settle in and really get going, we hit October full on. It took about a week or so to really get comfortable with being up in front of my kids and teaching them something that literally comes naturally to me. However, after some careful planning, I finally began to get the hang of it. In the first period of teaching I covered topics of introduction (asking names, favorite things, where they lived), and weather. Each day (except Wednesday) there are afterschool activities. Tuesdays there are two slots reserved for the Americans to take over, one cultural, and one hands-on. We took turns each week covering each. Elizabeth and I covered Kentucky one week with a reading of B is for Bluegrass and some derby coloring sheets, as well as making Halloween masks and watching kids Halloween films. In the hands-on, I taught the kids Dodgeball, Ninja, and how to make ice cream in a plastic bag. We will continue these until Christmas break where we will be covering topics that we choose over the course of the second half of the school year.
My creations this year!


During this month I did a decent amount of traveling both with the girls and alone. I took a weekend to surprise a sister from my host family in Lyon and used my layovers in Paris to revisit some sites (since the last time I was in France was 2015 with Sister Cities). Afterward, a local friend gave me a tour of the neighboring cities of Honfleur and Le Havre (where I also spent 3 days during the first week of vacation). With the first big vacation coming up at the end of the month we all decided it was a good idea to get out of Deauville and see some close by cities and countries. The first weekend we all hopped on the train to Paris where the girls spent a weekend while I continued to Reims to see some old friends. I then continued on to Le Havre, and a teacher at the Deauville elementary school gave the girls a day tour of Honfleur. The second week the travel bug was really getting at us, so we booked tickets on Brittany Ferries, and sailed off to London where we spent 5 days discovering the city, eating lots of fish and chips, pies, and drinking lots of tea. While the two weeks of vacation have been nice, we are excited to be back home in Deauville and are already looking forward to our next adventures in Europe and in teaching.



-Andrew




Palais de Justice and Notre Dame Basilica in Lyon


 London!


London Bridge wasn't falling down that day!