A Case of the Mondays

I live in Paris. I only work three days a week. I am housed, clothed, living in a neighborhood I am falling in love with, I'm getting to know people in Paris, one of my oldest and dearest friends from home is coming to see me in February for a backpacking trip across Europe, my family is coming for Christmas, and my greatest troubles tend to revolve around having to buy generic chocolate-hazelnut spread instead of Nutella (cheaper), frequently getting lost (which in Paris is a good way to get around), and my apartment has been having some hot water issues lately. The latter, I should say, is partially due to the fact that my dream to live in an old Parisian apartment building came true, and old buildings come with old pipes, however romantic their facades and faux-balconies may be.

And yet, the Monday morning wake up alarm at 6:30 am is something I will probably never get used to. The 8:30-4:30 workday I have on Mondays? That too. And teaching approximately 16 mini English lessons on those days as classes of 25 kids and more cycle through in 5-person groups? Yeah, rapid-fire language learning? Not so much with the reality.

That said, sometimes I love teaching. They call me the professeur d'anglais at both of my schools, which just makes very little sense to me, because I have no training whatsoever, but it sounds kind of cool. Also, I will never feel more like a rock star than I do when I go to work. Being the American English teacher is like being a minor celebrity. The kids, even the ones I don't teach, stare at me whenever I go anywhere in the school, point me out to their parents when they get picked up, and try to say hello and goodbye to me in English as often as possible. It is adorable. Kind of scary though. Tons of children staring at you relentlessly? When it isn't cute, it's definitely unsettling.

In one of my classes I'm working with ten 7- and 8-year-olds for 45 minutes once a week. They're in a split-grade-level class, so they have English with me while their teacher works with the other students. And these kids are lovely. They're really hilarious and cute and very focused. But every class is different, and I'm getting the sense that Mondays are just going to require massive amounts of caffeine and patience, only one of which is totally guaranteed, and definitely a book for the train ride, which wouldn't be a big deal, because I'm ten minutes from the train line I take, and it takes twenty minutes to get to the town, but then I'm no longer in Paris and public transit isn't as perfect, so I have to wait a long time for the bus to take me to my schools.

And I forgot how much being tired makes me feel like a zombie. It kind of makes me understand my time in high school better. I wonder what it would have been like to be fifteen and not have to get up at 6:30 every morning. What else could I have accomplished in those four years that I didn't get around to because I spent so much of it totally sleep-deprived?

I know, I know. Complain complain complain, girl who lives in Paris and only works 12 hours a week.

I still think they should start school later.