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Sunday, November 20, 2005

OK, so I know in my previous post I said I wanted to blog about the French Exchange but I didn't in the end. My bad yah? After the French Exchange I just had camp after camp so I have been really busy. But I'll continue from where i left off. Bits and pieces of the French School experience. I can't recall all of it but I'll try. I'll just post about the nicer lessons i remember.
Well, the Tuesday I had Science lesson with the class and I couldn't understand much as usual. They were kinda learning Geography in their Science lessons and I was like "huh?" Anwyays, they were doing chemistry about the formation of limestone and luckily I could understand the names used! Lol! Carbon dioxide in French is "dioxyde de carbon", hydrochloric acid in French is "acide de chlorohydrique", calcium carbonate is "carbonate de calcium" I think... and experiment in French is "experience!" Haha. I found it really amusing that it was still possible to recognize chemistry terms in French. Then, I had English lesson and then the teacher was like asking me and the other gal who was in the exchange program to introduce ourselves and then the lessons started! It was really draggy i guess. The teacher was polishing up their vocab. Like using other words to substitute "laugh", "small" etc etc. So I just sat there and stoned. Then he gave the class back their compositions they did before and it was titled "The one incident that changed my life" If only we had this type of compositions and lessons in school now. I realized that the compositions they were doing were mostly self- expressive. Then, the teacher dropped a bomb on me and the gal, he said the class would interview the two of us on the next lesson about our lives. :O Then, the day came two days later and the boys were like firing questions at me lor. For the boys, they had to write "Nicolas and I. Parallel lives." They were damn shocked when I told them my school had public caning. Lol, felt like a celebrity being interviewed. Then one boy asked for my autograph, and he said it looked cool when i signed it! ^^ They were so comical lah! Woots!
Wednesday - I had Art lesson in the morning. Their Art lesson is held in English so this teacher with weird hair and two ponytails was just blabbing away in her Irish accented English. Then she gave us visitors some Art paper to draw on lah. I sat there and stared at my paper as i could not think of what to draw. So that woman came over and told me to "draw something from your head or I'll give you something to draw"and then she said "because if you don't draw, they(the French pupils) won't draw too" I'm like WTF! What dumb theory is that! B*tch! So to shut that woman up I just drew some still-life art and smudged my pencil lead all over it to do some horrible shading. Take that you horrid Art teacher!
I had History-Geog later on which is basically combined humanities lah. The thigns they learn for Geog is really different and I could not understand anything. Even my buddy found it tough. Poor guy. I saw him struggling but i could not help.
In the French school, they have maths FOUR times a week. Lol. Crazy right?! But the maths they learn is sooo easy! They're only learning how to multiply and divide fractions! Hah! Finally i could do some work! So when they had a study group later on I was practically helping my buddy do his maths. I was glad I was of some help! (: They questioned me and asked if I found it easy and I of course replied yes lor, then they asked when I learned it and i replied flatly "primary school". They were like "WHOA!" and asked what i learned now. I said we're basically learning a lot of algebra at our age now and they did not know what algebra is... hmm?

Then there was French. Tsk tsk. The French they are learning is so high standard that I have no idea what it is all about. But I just blindly copied down all the notes the teacher wrote on the board, hoping it would be of some help next time. I certainly do. The teacher was rather concerned about us being there. She mentioned that we would not understand as even her own students found it difficult. Then again, French is 3 times a week and one lesson lasts for 2hrs. Oh man... the good thing about the French School is that they have breaks between lessons if they have lessons for more than 1 hr! Cool~
Friday - Had P.E. again. I love the school's P.E. lessons! Its sooo slack! We had gym class yet again and this time we were doing jump exercises. Its great fun! We have a spring board and 2 poles and a string attached across to determine the height we have to jump over and the cushions for us to land on. So practically for the whole lessons I just jump up and down. LOL! And hardly broke out in a sweat. Special mention to the P.E. teacher who is a New Zealander woman who is so nice and she didn't scold and spoke in a kindly voice! Rock on! Much unlike school, where they torture us every week by running 2.4 all the time. My gosh, in French School they just run 5 times around the hall. Which is ideally - air conditioned! No sweat! =p
Music lesson. It was awkward at first as the class was singing French songs and the teacher keeps prompting them to open their mouths to sing. He kept yakking "chantez! chantez!" which is "sing" in French lah. Then the teacher changed music to Maroon 5's She Will be Loved! OMG! It was one of my favourite songs and me and the other 3 gals in the exchange program were singing along...so fun! The next song which they sang was Mariah Carey's "We Belong Together". Yep, great song. Sadly I did not know the lyrcis to it so I just listened to the class sing. Hehe. The teacher also said something us exchange program students about being "tourists"? OR something close to that. And the class broke out in laughter and we were so blur. One French gal asked me if i understood what he said and of course i said no... Then again, she didn't tell me what he said. -__- Honestly, I wish music lessons in school was like that. Just singing songs for the whole lessons. French school fact : In music lesson, the instrument they are learning to play now is the RECORDER!
In French School, the students have to take 3 languages. Mainly French, English, and a choice between Latin, Spanish, German or Chinese. Wanted to sit in for Latin and Spanish. But went to attend the German and Chinese ones in the end. Just to see how its like.

First up, my least fave subject of the week was the Chinese lesson. The teacher was a complete bitch and spoke with a China accent. Blah, just because her French is good does not mean she can act like such a big shot. For most of the lesson she just went around making the French students pronounce the different pinyin words. Some of them were really struggling to pronounce it. Which was heart-wrenching as the teacher kept pushing them on. So bad. Then she taught them to learn some words and the "bi hua" and she herself was so blind. ( yes, I'd say she's blind) She can write the "bi hua" wrongly for "zhe" and "lao". We Singaporeans just made comments behind her back. She was obviously teaching the French students the wrong things. How could the school employ someone as naive as her. Wtf~ We wanted to correct her but kept quiet. That woman obviously had a screw loose. Then, at the end of the lesson, she dumped a pile of homework on the poor students. Crazy!

Physics lessons. Nothing much really. As usual, I did not understand much, except that they were learning about electricity and circuit routes. Yeah, so I flipped throught the textbook and realized they were learning about the same things as us. Mostly about light and sound. Etc. French school fact : The students only learn Chemistry and Physics at 13. No biology at all. Sad.

German lessons. Omg, this was one of the best language lessons ever. My buddy took German as his third language so I followed him to the class. The teacher was really really fun and amusing. He's so over dramatic. When students were not paying attention, he will stamp his feet on the ground and start shouting. Lol! Then when students spoke French in class, he will tell them off also! Then, when we Singaporeans came in he wanted us to introduce ourselves --- which we did. And he thought us how to say good morning/afternoon in German. Which is "guten Morgen" (correct me if I'm wrong please!) Something like that. Yup, damn fun lah. So he was teaching the students how to spell numbers in German and how to tell the time. He wanted the students to have a listening sort of test. Then he switched on the radio and Angela Zhang's "Yi Shi De Mei Hao" started playing. I was like, hmm? There's a German version of that song?! Then, Angela started singing in Mandarin and the teacher was like 0.0!!! Started stamping his foot and made weird face and went to switch it off. I was laughing my head off lah. Hilarious. Really enjoyed his lessons. Went for German lessons twice that week. If I knew the Chinese teacher was a mad woman, I would have attended all the German lessons instead. Humph. Oh well. So he taught us how to say "yes/no", which is "ja/nein" and thanks which is "danke" and he will reply "bitte" which is something like welcome. German lesson highlights : While leanring numbers, he made the students spell out 3 415 612. Which is "dreimillionen vier hundertfunfzehntausendsechshundertzwolf". There was 12 016 113 901 as well but i did not take it down. Haha. Numbers! LOL!
At the French School, we had lunch at the school cafeteria which is really nice as it is air conditioned and the food is like buffet style lor. The food is ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS. Had pasta, beef, chicken --- all cooked in French style. On the last day I had pumpkin soup and quiche! The quiche was H-E-A-V-E-N-L-Y! I could eat it everyday! The cheese was fantastic! Yumm~ Sad thing is, the food doesn't come cheap. On averge my lunches costs about $4 a day. Not bad i guess. For the French students though, their food is already pre-paid so they just need to take a queue card and order what they want!
To sum it up, the French School Experience, as I would call it, is wonderful and I won't hesitate to go there again to have lessons. Minus the Chinese lessons of course. Heh.

Can't wait for the next exchange program! (:

_____________________
Hail Mary.