Wednesday, July 16 and Thursday, July 17: Day at the office

I pass over these two days in relative silence as I was mostly
(a) teaching.
(b) tending to issues I can't discuss in detail for confidentiality reasons.
(c) preparing next week's field trip, which I will post about when it happens.

I also made a multiple-choice quiz today; can you tell?

It is hot in Paris today, folks. I got sunburned scouting my field trip and I've drunk a ton of water today.

Relative to (b) I can tell you that I am getting better and less terrified about speaking French on the phone due to repeated, forced exposure and practice. Today I had to take down phone numbers someone was giving me, which is like a pop quiz. French phone numbers look like this:

01 44 37 16 93

You don't say the individual digits like Americans do; instead, you read them like this: zero one, forty-four, thirty-seven, sixteen, ninety-three. Except ninety-three in French is quatre-vingt-treize, "four twenties and thirteen."  An additional problem is that I don't know the number to my "official" phone. It is taped to the back of the phone on a piece of paper (because I am quatre-vingt years old, apparently) but that's no good when I'm making a call on that phone and someone asks for the number. Luckily, in 2014, it seems to be the case that not knowing your own phone number is relatively normal.

Tomorrow may be more of the same as today and yesterday. I'll try to rustle up some good photos or amusing anecdotes to share. Maybe "Jambon" (the cat at our classroom building! He is still around since last year! I was so happy to see him.) will be around tomorrow. Every blog needs kitty pics, right?