Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Yesterday I went on a field trip with one of my schools to Felleries, a little village that took about half an hour to get to. It was a fun day overall, though it seemed a little bit random. The class is CM2, which is basically like fifth grade, so the kids are pretty much all ten years old right now. They must be learning about birds right now in school, because half of the day was about that. They got into groups of four and made “nichois” (basically resting places) for birds out of plastic bowls covered with newspaper and glue. Then we went to another room and someone led a little class on different kinds of birds, which was educational for me since I don’t know the names of many birds even in English. We then went on a really short bird hike, but there weren’t many birds to be seen.

The second half of the day was devoted to learning about the old forestry industry in the region and the mill. There was a little five-room museum about all the forestry stuff, and all the kids were paired up to answer questions about the things in the museum. I got paired up with a little girl named Mathilda so that I’d have something to do. After that the guy who had taught us about birds took us out to tell us about the mill. I’d always thought that “moulin” only meant windmill, like Moulin Rouge, but it actually means any kind of mill. This moulin was “à eau,” so it was operated by water. It was kind of interesting to see how they controlled the flow of the water to turn the wheel (the kind that you’d find on a steamboat) and make mill work. The guy poured wheat into the mill and then we went downstairs to where the flour was coming out, at which point some of the kids found it appropriate to pick it up and then eat it. I thought it was funny with our whole stereotype about the French eating bread all the time. Obviously American kids will eat sugar plain out of their hands, but flour, and whole wheat flour at that?

After the mill demonstration, we went to a place where another guy, the one who’d made the nichois with us, showed us how he makes things out of wood. He put a block of wood on this machine that makes it spin really fast, and then he used some tools to carve it (or just make woodchips fly everywhere). He sanded it down a bit and by the time it stopped spinning, it was a perfect, smooth spinning top. It was pretty impressive. Then he made a mushroom out of part of short log. All the kids got a top at the end of the day, but a dad who was along as a chaperone and I both got mushrooms. Ooo.

After that demonstration, the kids got to play the various games, all made of wood, that were outside the museum. A group of girls who decided that I’m their new favorite person had me play with them. I think my favorite part was bowling. I think their favorite part was holding my bag and umbrella (I couldn’t put in my bag because it was all wet, so I had to hold it even after it wasn’t raining anymore) for me whenever I was taking my turn at whichever game. They also enjoyed playing Mary Poppins with my umbrella.

It was a fun day, but I was exhausted by the end of it. The same group of girls had me sit next to them in the back of the bus, since that’s the only place with five seats in a row, but it was hard to concentrate on what they were saying by that point. I think everything is more tiring when you really have to think about what you say and what people say to you since everything is in a different language.

Either way, at least I got a handmade wooden mushroom out of it.