The experiment called for hydrogen peroxide which -- silly me -- I assumed would have a name that sounded similar in French. I couldn't find anything of that description, so I picked up a brown bottle of something from the first aid section of the supermarket. The bottle looked like a hydrogen peroxide bottle, so I thought we'd give it a try. Well. The experiment involved filling a balloon with oxygen, which was going to be produced when we mixed the hydrogen peroxide with yeast. We were then going to release the oxygen near a candle burning under a glass jar, at which point the candle would burn brighter, demonstrating an important property of oxygen. Whatever I bought produced nothing when mixed with yeast, which I suppose is better than the alternative (that I bought something explosive). I then had an inspiration. We would mix vinegar and baking soda, which produces some kind of gas, fill the balloon with that, and see what happened. Those of you who know more about chemistry than I can already guess the results. The balloon filled nicely with gas, we released the gas into the jar with the candle, and the candle sputtered out (actually, it didn't even sputter, because some vinegar had gotten into the balloon as well, and it doused the candle immediately -- and made a mess of the kitchen counter). A quick visit to Google informed me that what we had produced was carbon dioxide gas. I comforted myself with the knowledge that Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, and even Oprah Winfrey were at one time considered failures. (I learned this from a blog entitled "50 Famously Successful People Who Failed at First.")
I will be making frequent returns to that blog, as homeschooling in Switzerland does present some unique challenges. Yesterday, Luc, Jo, and I had a meeting with the children's doyens. These people are basically guidance counsellors, who are each assigned to work with one grade level of children in the local public school. They follow that particular group all through their middle school years, which I think is a nice idea. Anyway, we should have met with them earlier, but it takes me a while to work up to making French phone calls, and I had some others earlier on the list. The two worst things about going to meetings which I have set up on the telephone are: 1) I am always a little nervous that I have the wrong time, since in addition to the numbers being in French, they also use 24-hour time. So I had written down 16h30, but you never know. 2) Unless I remember to ask for the spelling of the person's name with whom I am meeting, I usually have no idea what it is. This time, I had forgotten to ask, so all I knew is that we were meeting with a woman whose name sounded like it began with "s." Before the meeting, I had written down the things I needed to find out or obtain: Scope and sequence for history, geography, and the sciences, so the children could choose paper topics; French textbooks, which I had been told I could get for free; and previous-year copies of the Evacoms, which are the standardized tests the kids will take in May. I gave myself a strict pep talk about not leaving the meeting without answers to my questions, and I told the kids to look as happy, smart, and well-adjusted as possible. They had to go to running practice right after the meeting, so in their Stade Genève track suits, they at least looked sporty.
The good things about the meeting: There was a nice big sign hanging from the ceiling directing us to the secretariat, where we were supposed to present ourselves. The staff mailboxes were in plain view, and only one doyenne had a name that began with "s." The doyens spoke less English than I do French, so they were very patient with me. Best of all, I did not have to ask a single question, as they were outstandingly prepared with website recommendations, a calendar of test dates, and textbooks for not only French, but math and English as well. Also, all of this took only about 20 minutes.
The bad thing about the meeting: The kids hopped on the bus to Stade Genève right outside the school, leaving me to walk the mile home carrying a stack of 15 textbooks.
The good thing about the textbooks: Whenever we start to develop inferiority complexes, we can open up the English workbook and knock out a few exercises.
Forme des phrases complètes avec les mot suivants:
a) can/speak/I/French/.
b) Julie/the/Can/piano/play/?
c) can/Denis/not/baseball/play/.
I'm feeling smarter already!
I am always so impressed by your perseverance in getting things done in French. The sentence "we should have done x earlier, but it takes me a while to work up to making French phone calls" describes me perfectly if you take out the adjective. I'm pretty sure my ability to accomplish anything that involved making phone calls in French would be zero.
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