Theo's First Week of School

School is great. I love it. I have a great teacher and great friends.
School starts early so we get up early, eat our breakfast, play a little video games (if dad allows it and mom’s not around) and go to school. We walk to school and sometimes we meet a couple of friends along the way. Then you go into school – but not before 7:50. The principal talks about discipline and what your day is going to be about. When you go into class and you say hello to your friends. Next, you do a little tiny bit of work and you have mini-recess. It’s awesome. After that, you go back in and do work: history, math, french etc. Then you have more lunch and recess. You go back into the classroom and do some more work. Tired and hungry it’s then time for the afternoon snack and recess. On Fridays, if you are good and don’t waste too much time, then you do sports. Then you go home. You say to yourself, “My day at school, I guess, it wasn’t that bad at all.” I know it sounds like there is a lot of time spent in recess and eating but that’s what happens when you stay in school until 4:30 pm.
My teacher is great but a little strict. Her name is Madame Thomas but sometimes people call her Madame Tomate (Ms. Tomato). She has given les lignes, lines to copy over and over, to punish the bad students. The principal is also great. She’s also very, very strict and she talks about discipline every morning. Her goal for the school is to make it a place where everyone succeeds. She mentioned including handicap students or learning disabled students but I think she also means those of us who might not speak or read French perfectly!
There are many differences with school in the U.S. Did I mention we are working on this on Wednesday morning? No school on Wednesday!
Aime Cesaire is the most famous person who ever lived in Martinique. He was a poet. He wrote Retour au pays natal. This is what I had to memorize. (When you read it imagine in your head adorable Theo reciting it in his amazingly authentic French accent.)
Et le temps passait vite, tres vite.
Passe aout ou les manguiers pavoisent de toutes leurs lunules.
Septembre l’accoucheur de cyclons
Octobre le flambeur de cannes
Novembre qui ronronne aux distilleries
C’était Noel qui commencait.

Here’s our admittedly free translation:

And time went by fast, very fast.
Good bye August when the mango trees displayed their moon shaped fruit
September giving birth to hurricanes
October the lighter of fires in the cane fields
November that makes the distilleries purr
Christmas was beginning

Stayed tune because the second part of the poem is coming next week!

French students learn how to take beautiful notes in calligraphy-like script. Script is a little hard for me but now I’m doing fun activity sheets learning how to read French script so it makes me a little happy but it also makes me sad that I’m a little bit behind other kids.

As you probably noticed we have recess three times a day! We play duck duck goose after lunch sometimes. I tried to explain it to everyone in French. While I was in the middle of my explanation people said to me, “Is this le facteur (the mailman)? Then when I was done explaining it everyone said, “Yeah it is le facteur!” But the teacher said, “Don’t sing the song.” Some children sang it softly so they didn’t get into too much trouble. One day we were playing le facteur and the teacher didn’t realize what time it was so then we had to run to the bathroom, vite, vite vite! drink some water vite, vite vite! and run back to class vite, vite vite! and then it turned out that even the teacher was a little bit late. So it was fine. Some days now we do arts and crafts but some of the students get to play le facteur. I don’t think that’s totally fair because the groups aren’t well thought out.

On Fridays we have a different teacher and we play sports at the end of the day after snack. One day I taught them a new game but the teacher said, “That’s a little too noisy.” She didn’t want to be too mean but we had to stop playing. So then we played, Steal the bacon. I forget what it’s called in French but it’s similar something like Steal the Sausage. It was very fun and I got to be number 1 and every time I won. The big girl who was calling the number called a second number then two other people came in so there were 4 people. Mathieu grabbed it quickly but I ran so quickly that I touched him. I almost fell but I saved myself and our team won the point.