My Head Hurts...

because I've been studying. Something I'm not accustomed to doing this year! The épreuves communes have hit us, these nasty test things I described in my last post. Two weeks ago I took math and science tests on a whim and got a 12 and 13 (out of 20) on them. Those don't sound like good scores from an American perspective, but from a French one, they are really good. To give you an idea: I got the third highest score on the math test in the class, and the first highest was the other American. The other kids got like 6s and 4s. 13 was on the high end of the class too- I know that the science teacher was being generous, but I really deserved it, I wrote a lot in French. Since I did so well on these tests, my friends managed to convince me to take not only the english test this week (three hours long, tomorrow afternoon) but the science and math tests as well. And so I had to study. Yesterday in science class one of my French friends wrote me a note and asked me to come over to her house that night and teach her the math. I wrote back that that might not be smart, cause really, I don't understand it all too well and the French methods are different than mine. She said "Anna Rae, I got a 4, you got a 12, you clearly understand a little more than me". So last night I went over to her house for a couple of hours, the first hour we spent on math, initially she told me that if I needed to I could talk in English, but I managed to do the whole thing completely in French, and by the end she actually understood the concepts on the last test. It felt so good. I was in France, teaching a French girl math, in French. Afterwards she went over the science with me. We're doing the eye, which is something I know in English but I don't know all the vocab in French or how the definitions of certain things in French. By the end I was mentally exhausted, but I felt kinda good doing something with my brain. The tests were this morning and the math went really well for me- by teaching my friend I managed to memorize the concepts. Though my friend thinks that she still did really bad on the math test, I'm hoping she got above a four so I can feel I helped a little. The science was very difficult because it was long and required a lot of writing in French. Once I thought I nearly finished it and the period for the test was over I realized there was another two pages I had hidden under all my scratch paper that I didn't even get to. Uh. C'est la vie. At least I tried.