Me, the american representative!

Today I went into a class where I don't teach regularly (in a school where I have 2 other classes every Thursday) as a sort of cultural liaison to answer questions they had prepared in french and english regarding me and american culture and life in general. They started with the basics (Where are you from, what is your favorite color and food, how old are you, do you like La Rochelle, do you like France, etc.) and then asked more specifically about the US- What do people eat here? Do we have big houses and building in the US? Do people on the street have guns? Are schools different there and how are they different? And on and on. But I think the topic of food and buildings brought a lot of discussion- especially regarding skyscrapers! I didn't have all the answers because they wanted to know how many stories are in a skyscraper, how many elevators and how long it takes to go from bottom to top in the Sear's Tower in the elevator. I have to do a little research now and bring back some more concrete answers on that subject. This makes me think how fun it would be to get a whole class pen-pal exchange going on, especially between this small town french kids and a school like Miette's last year in the predominantly african-american southside of Chicago!! There would definitely be some surprises for the kids. (In all my schools here I have only one black student!)