poste le neuvième, starring SMALL CHILDREN!!! or, the children are the future. watch them and you will be able to open doors and find the communal toilet paper.

I LOVE KIDS. They make me so happy. Sometimes really annoyed/tired/exasperated, but mostly just full of love and sunshine and smiles. SO many smiles. (grown-up French people don't smile. unless they know you. but why would you want to get to know someone who doesn't smile? Je ne comprends pas les français, but what else is new?)

I was having a rough patch and missing people/Bae/kitties/music/HUGZ, but my day turned around today when I got to be a teacher! sort of. I am doing something called an internship (un stage) but it is basically just another Stanford student and I going into a French public school once a week after school to do an English workshop with a group of nine ten-year-olds. We can do pretty much anything, as long as it is in English, fun, and not illegal, etc. (dangit, no climbing the water tower!)

We got to the school a bit early, so we were hanging out in the schoolyard supervising the recess/snacktime before activities started, and I decided I would set a good example (or precedent, since I was the only one paying attention to myself) and do a GPP* before class. I went over to the little building with the bathrooms and the doors weren't marked but both bathrooms were empty so I picked the one that had been pointed out as the girls'. (First of all, there is not toilet paper in each stall, just one giant roll by the sinks...um, what? I definitely did not realize this until another girl came in while I was washing my hands. Oh well.) Anyway, while I was washing my hands, I gazed out at the blacktop, where a group of about five eight-year-old boys was staring at me and laughing. Perplexed, I made a confused face at them, which only made them laugh harder. Now, being laughed at by kids is not a new experience for me, but I usually know why they're laughing. Hurriedly emerging, worried I had gone into the boys' room (despite having seen a girl in there), I asked why they were laughing. As they shrieked and scattered, one stayed long enough to tell me: "We thought you were a boy!"

Oh.

Well, yay for realizing I wasn't? (this reminds me of picking up a prescription this summer at the QFC pharmacy on Broadway (in Seattle's queer neighborhood), when the pharmacist saw my dad's name on the insurance card and asked if I wanted him to change my name in the system to Paul. No thank you, but I appreciate your awareness/sensitivity.)

Clare

* General Principle Pee. Thank you Ro-Ro!