Love is in the air...

I guess it's fair to warn you all now. I may not be coming back to the United States at the end of the academic year.

After yesterday, it seems I have my pick of at least seven suitors and I'm pretty sure they all would agree to marry me so I could stay in the country legally.

Let's see how this day started, shall we?

When I went to my first CE2 class, the little boy who does the best in my class and walks with me to school some mornings came up to me at the end of the period and asked me with rather sad looking eyes, "Monica [they all think I make my name sound French because I'm an American living in France, so untrue!], your birthday hasn't passed yet, has it?"

Not really sure why he wanted to know such information, I responded with a smile, "Nope! You guys are lucky because France gives two weeks of vacation for my birthday; it's the start of the April vacation."

Then he looked really pleased, hid a little smirk and ran off to recess.

The nice thing about teaching is that I also get the recess. But I get both recess periods, so I essentially have 30 minute breaks throughout the day. Enter what I'll call Scenario No. 2.

While I was sitting in the teachers' room with the door open, I noticed the "sick bench" was full of giggling boys. I looked back to see what was so funny, but didn't recognize a single one of them. Going back to making my copies, I heard from around the corner, "'Ello Monique!" when it turned out one of my students was certainly in the doorway.

I looked back, waved and they all erupted in giggles a second time. Shaking my head and smiling to myself, I kept at my work. But during the next 10 minutes, they kept making excuses to come into the room or provoke me to enter the hallway where they were seated. Finally, it all culminated in my one student nudging his little friend, asking, "Sooo, Monique. What do you think about him?" pointing to the boy right next to him. Then I couldn't help but join in the infectious laughing, noticing that at least three of the boys were blushing and waiting for a response.

However, I didn't give them the satisfaction of hearing a response. I figure whatever I was going to say would have probably been illegal, because I can't refrain from making a good joke. But I kept it to myself.

And now for the third and final "romantic" part of my day.

When I went to my second CM1 class after lunch, the teacher greeted me hastily as soon as I walked in the room. "Don't start getting ready for class yet, we had a poetry unit this morning and two people would like to read poems they wrote about you."

Now I was the one blushing. Did all the students conspire today to flirt with their English teacher who's twice their age?!

Well, the poems were hysterical. They actually started to make me kind of nervous, ha. Either way, this is about the gist of what they said:

Monique. Elle est dynamique: Elle est tres énergique, mais jamais diabolique. J'aime comment elle est sympathique. Des fois, elle est vraiment acrobatique. Jamais alcoolique. Elle est super magnifique! Monique: elle est très très unique!

It's basically just a whole bunch of nice words that rhyme with my name. There was actually much more, but I can't really remember it all. Either way, it was pretty funny slash cute.

There you have it. The French really must be great seducers if they all do things like this from such a young age.

But what do I love?


Smoothies. And a few days ago I was trying to pass time and stay warm waiting for a friend in a bookstore. Wandering past the cookbook section, a smoothie recipe book caught my eye. And while I've seen my share of smoothie recipes -- I'm an addict, what can I say? -- nothing compares to the French ingredient lists! They're so creative and bizarre, so I'm going to try making one tomorrow.

It's kind of my twist on a recipe I saw in the bookstore, but the ingredients I have on-hand that will be going in are as follows:

-Vanilla soy milk
-Green tea
-Grapefruit (meat and juice)
-Pineapple yogurt
-Honey

Here's to hoping it's as good as it sounds!