A new addition....

Well...we were hoping to have a "family" of course, but we thought it would be while. We just got married less than a month ago. I still have my wedding dress out in the guest room!

Last Saturday Cyr and I went to his mother's house to celebrate her birthday. We went to eat lunch at a Greek restaurant in Belgium and then went back to the house for the afternoon and had a light dinner there as well. She really enjoyed her presents (three large wooden owls and a bracelet) I think.

When we arrived everything seemed normal. Once we said our hellos and did all the kissing cheeks we headed into the kitchen (which seems to be the meeting area in all countries). Both Cyr's brother and his mother were talking about what I thought was an accident that one of the cats had. "Ewe" thought I. When we got to the kitchen Cyr's brother picked up a little black furry thing and said, "c'est la petit merde!"

Annie found 3 (or 4, not quite sure) kittens at her office in a some machine thing last Wednesday. I think one of them died, but two were adopted and then she still had the little black guy and was looking for a home for him (or her). He was so cuddly! I have never had a cat and didn't really think much of the little guy until Cyr said; "Uh oh, I think Susan might have found a home for the little guy." I actually never thought we would take him home, I just thought he was cute and liked to hold him. Of course I jumped on the boat though and we stopped by a pet store coming home from lunch and bought all the necessities. One thing I can't handle is a house that smells like a cat lives there. So far we have been pretty good. But when the little guy goes...you know he goes...I'm a fairly immediate pooper scooper. Thank goodness it only happens once or twice a day. I'm hoping the poop will mellow with his age, but I'm thinking this is actually the opposite of the developmental cycle of cats. But hey...our house doesn't smell! It actually smells better because I'm so paranoid I am lighting candles and such. Before the kitten the candles just sat around, now they are being used.

So then there was the naming thing. Apparently there is a cat/dog naming convention that I was not aware of. Each year has a letter of the alphabet (as opposed to another kind of letter. Why do people say that?) ascribed to it and you are supposed to name your animal a name that begins with that year's letter. This year is "D". We don't really know if it's a boy or a girl, things are really small down there, but we think it's a boy. We went through a few rounds of names, but then we settled on a strong Scottish name from the Highlands...Duncan. Because there can only be one... Check out our newest addition!!
So far he's great. Very friendly and playful!

As for teaching...today I had The Class and Zee Class both. The Class was first. I went in with the same lesson plan I did last week with Zee Class. Low and behold...it went great! The class ended and we had finished the lesson (advertising campaigns) and I really felt they had learned something. I went to a meeting for the language classes during lunch (chicken baguette sandwich) then went on to Zee Class. We had to finish up the lesson from last week, which we did. After much prodding and poking. Then we moved on to some grammar work. Then all hell broke loose. Seriously...35 kids in this class. A few kids are completely fluent, most of them are conversationally able to survive while speaking English, then there are about 8 of them that are really, really behind. I'm going to have to split the class up next week and plan two lessons because the fluent kids are going crazy with me trying to work with the slower ones and the material I am supposed to use for the class is WAY over the heads of many of them. I am so glad I had the first class because I would have left feeling like a total failure. Blah, blah...I'm not in the mood to be all dark and pissy tonight. I get so irritated when I read blogs that do nothing but complain so I am going to reserve my "oh woe is me" post for another day. Things really are not that bad. Other than the fact that I have to go back to Zee Class next Tuesday. :-(