Now Rebecca knows what her professors went through.

If I ever see Yeager, Brager, or any of my other college French professors again, the first thing I'm going to do is thank them for helping me get into this program to go to France. The second thing I'm going to do is apologize for speaking so little in their classes. Before this week, I had thought that long silences in class only bothered the students who were supposed to be talking. But now I know how painful they are for the teacher.

(There are three basic divisions of language classes at this school. I'll be referring to them as 1-classes, students who have just started learning English; 2-classes, intermediate students; and T-classes, who are at the highest level of English.)

I started teaching (if you can call it that) yesterday with Madame Camus. We started out with a T-class, doing a lesson on Hurricane Katrina, which Madame Camus had asked to discuss. She is an excellent teacher, very nice but also very tough – the students don't just talk in her class, they stand up straighter when they see her in the hall – so it wasn't very difficult as long as she was in the room with me. Then she left me alone with half of another T-class, to do the same lesson by myself. The students were a little confused by my strange American accent and my fast talking – I tried to slow down, but even Americans have told me that I talk too fast – but their English was good, and overall, the class went okay, although it was hardly what I had hoped for.

Today I was scheduled to teach two more afternoon classes, but because one of the English teachers has been out sick this week, I had to teach a morning class on short notice. I wasn't prepared, so I used the Hurricane Katrina lesson plan that I did yesterday. Lo and behold, I was teaching the same students as yesterday. I couldn't understand why they were so bored with the subject, or why they looked so familiar, until finally I realized. It was positively painful.

When it was finally over, I went back to my room and felt sorry for myself and thought about what to do with my 1-classes that afternoon. I decided that it was Friday, and the students didn't want to hear about a depressing hurricane that happened two years ago on the other side of the world, and the subject was too difficult for 1-classes, anyway. I needed easier material, and thinking back to Brager's class, I decided to go with the Proust Questionnaire. (It's a list of questions compiled by Marcel Proust asking simple things about what you like or dislike, etc.) I also confessed to Madame Camus and Madame Gady about what had gone wrong with the morning class. They told me not to worry about it, and Madame Gady offered to stay in the room with me during the 1-classes – of course, I jumped at the chance.

So I spent the afternoon asking the 1-classes Proust's questions and trying to coax responses. It was difficult getting them to talk, but it was much less painful than the morning class had been. I gave a few answers to each question, which seemed to give them ideas. For, "What do you dislike?" I suggested Monday morning and cafeteria food, which made the students say homework and bad grades. I think it went well, but I was so exhausted afterwards that I didn't go grocery shopping like I meant to.

I plan to spend this weekend resting and planning more easy things to do next week. If the weather is nice, Heather and I might walk out to the McDonald's; it's far, but we miss our crappy American food.