Jump du Golfe

Today was a big day of adventure with Calvin's 5th grade class.... I joined the class, the teacher and one other mom as we took a field trip to watch the 9th annual Jump du Golfe, national horse jumping competition here in Vannes. Believe it or not, the 31 students and 3 adults took the city bus to the exposition center at the port to watch the races. I have never seen kids being given the personal responsibility that these kids were given today. We took a city bus with frequent stops and frequent on and offs of other passengers. We even had to change buses at the city center! No one was constantly counting heads, no one was reminding the kids not to leave their lunches on the bus, and no one was constantly corralling them. You know what??? Everyone did fine!! No one got lost and no one lost their lunch throughout the entire morning! Pretty impressive what kids can do when we give them the opportunity. After arriving at the Exposition center, we were able to watch the warm-ups while given some background on the horses, riders and competition. We were then able to watch many, many races before being given a backstage tour of the stables. We returned to the ring to watch the winners receive their awards and were then led outside to meet a famous horseback rider. Alexandra Ledermann was a French Olympic Bronze medalist in 1996 and is the co-creator of many equestrian video games for Nintendo. She was kind enough to sign autographs and have her picture taken with the class. The class will now be in the West France paper tomorrow morning. They were thrilled!
After 5 hours at the show, we walked the 45 minutes back to school with the entire class. Once again, they did a great job with almost no whining and no stragglers.
I was exhausted after trying to decipher the French of kids! Wow! They either have very different accents, use different vocabulary or just plain speak in slang all the time, because I really had a hard time understanding them. Calvin's teacher and I managed quite well to speak in French almost all day though so I don't think it's all me. His teacher was kind enough to tell me that Calvin is actually the best reader in the class! She is amazed at his verbal French and his pronunciation is perfect! She did say that he struggles with "autography" where she speaks and they are to write down what she says. The spelling is difficult for him. Whew, I wish that were the least of my problems!
After our long day, I headed home to check on Coco and the tree cutters (they are still not finished with clearing out all of the logs) before I stopped over at Valerie's to check on her back. A friend was there that I haven't seen in about 5 months. She could not stop complimenting me on my French. She thinks that I have made huge progress and should be very proud. Thank you, Bernadette!