Last week I began my 3 pm class on Thursday afternoon with menacing clouds in the distance. Luckily they hadn’t arrived yet or else my students definitely wouldn’t have. Anyway, I began my lesson and hurried to get through as much as possible before the clouds broke and rain on the tin roof drowned out any hope of the students hearing me. Even though the rain would halt my lesson I was still excited for it to come and wash away the oppressive heat. Unfortunately, the once black and menacing clouds arrived a dull gray and didn’t treat us to much rain, just a small drizzle for while.
When the rain started, the sun was still brightly shining from the other side of the sky. So as my students quietly copied down clothes vocabulary (trousers, NOT pants of course, for British English) I started scrambling across the room trying to look out the holes between the straw walls and cement beams for a rainbow in the sky. I couldn’t find one but figured I ought to explain to the kids what I was doing. Luckily just the week before I had given them color-by-number rainbow worksheets (thanks mom!) to teach them colors. I had a student pull theirs out to explain that’s what I was looking for and asked if they knew what it was. “Ah hah!! Oui, oui, Madame, we know, we know.” I was about to explain the pot of gold and all when one boy said quite loudly, “Le serpent!! Sorcerie!!” All the kids laughed at the shock on my face and when I emphatically replied “What?? No!!!” I explained that we believe there is a pot of gold at the end of it and it’s very good luck. He just kept saying, no no, it’s bad, it’s sorcery. He wasn’t arguing with me, he just continued with his work and quietly repeated, no no no. Eventually I knew it was a battle I’d never win if the discussion was between good and evil, so I just said “ugh, it’s all science anyway and none of these stories are real!!!” I doubt they had any clue what this science was I was talking about, and I know the other students enjoyed my story, but my bet is at the end of the day they still all believed in his.
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3 comments:
I STILL prefer to think that rainbows are GOOD luck.
They are too pretty not to be!!!
Stay happy, Mark Loehrke (Carly's dad)
haha. too funny. yeah whenever my voodoo day pics come across my screen i see the rainbow on voodoo murals. i don't understand the role it plays in voodoo though. honestly, nathaniel probably would because he always seemed very into voodoo and was pretty up on the different sects and zangbettos when i was at the fete with him. enjoy the rain! miss you and du courage. almost done.
how can rainbows be evil? that's so counter to everything i know. but mostly i am impressed that you could explain that whole thing in french. what's leprechaun?
hope a better rain comes!
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