The school’s christmas show took place last night. The timing was a bit strange: 7.30 pm. It was sad that from what saw, there was no reference to Christmas in any of the performances we saw, only a remote reference with the smaller ones with the music of Jingle bells in the background. Christmas seems a very sad and empty thing when it has been emptied of it’s substance.
We left at the break half way through as it had been snowing and the road was quite slippery.
We went to see Jean-Baptiste’s teacher yesterday. She had said we would meet and chat about Jean-Baptiste’s progress at some point. She was quite positive, impressed with his improvements in French. He has a lot of vocabulary to catch up, but that’s fine, some of the monolingual kids have done worst than him in the recent vocabulary tests. His understanding is also good, again , doing better that some. Writing is a bit more tricky, but she is not worried about it and is confident he will continue to improve. Numeracy is also coming slowly but he understands well.
On the behaviour side, she said that he is a boy, quite lively, mostly good, but can get carried away. For example when the children are instructed to walk calmly to the toilets, he is be the type to run rather than walk. But she usually only needs to look at him to bring him back on track.
On of our encouragements is that she understood our desire to bring Jean-Baptiste up bilingually and she understands the challenge it is. She did not discourage us to do it, and she’s had bilingual children before. She has observed that although bilingualism will be an advantage later, it can be a bit difficult at this stage. Good meeting, we were glad to meet up with her.
The plan was for me to go to Ikea in Brest with my parents to get a table. It was snowing a little and we left anyway as we thought it might be better on the way there. It didn’t, so we turned around after about 25 km. It was probably clear a bit further, but we can go another time. Thanks to Roger Durand for the Pictures.
It’s the kind of thing that you should expect, but you are always surprised and pleased when it happens. A week ago, when we were speaking on Skype with Emmanuel’s dad, he suddenly said “Je veux voir le chat” (I want to see the cat). And today at lunch he started speaking French to our visitor. We were the only ones to understand of course, but it was proper French. Now his Grandparents have arrived, and he babbles happily, going from one language to the other.
It was good to meet up with Jonathan today. Jonathan is a British missionary living near St Lunaire, about 120 km away. We were given his details before our move because he and his wife are supported by some churches in Cardiff (he studied in Cardiff and his wife is from Highfields free church). He was in Guingamp for the day and came around for lunch.
Emmanuel’s parents have also come for a long weekend. They travelled through France on the TGV today, and are leaving on Wednesday morning. No need to say that the children were very excited at the thought of seeing their Grandparents.
