Phew!!!!

I finished my first week of 'touring' yesterday - and no, I don't mean it was me seeing the sights. I'm talking about work here. I spent my first week, last week, getting the trails ready for hiking and cramming my brain full of French species names and a billion facts on plants, trees, birds and other animals, and then this week is when it all paid off. I gave my first tour by myself on Tuesday, to a kindergarten class. I was sooo nervous in the morning at the idea of speaking French in front of a group like that for so long, but it really did go very well. Then Wednesday, we had grade 3's, and Thursday was a split between gr.1&2 and 5&6. The way it works is that one guide shows half the class around the indoor interpretive centre while the other (me) takes the other half on a tour of the trails. Then we switch in the afternoon and each take the other half of the class. So I end up doing two tours for every class that visits... Also, the kids are young and rowdy, and don't speak a word of English. So, needless to say, I am preettty tired at the end of the day. Tired, but satisfied. As frustrating as it can be sometimes, I really, really enjoy giving the tours, and who can complain about having a job where you get to spend all day hiking on such beautiful trails?! Also, I get hugs from the kids.
Anyway, I have a story from one of the tours of something that happened to me which was really quite frustrating - but also very funny. You'll understand after this why I was so nervous to give tours in French.. So I was following along the tour last week with a student who works there with me, Caroline. It's her second year working at Marais Laperrière so she's comfortable with the tour and a good teacher. Then one of the boys (this was a kindergarten class) asked me where he can find some flyers. So I answered him.. it was a simple sentence, I swear!! But he just could not understand me. I repeated it four or five times, the boy just staring blankly at me, and then finally he told me that he doesn't speak English. Ouch. I was pretty much on the edge of tears, because considering I spent over 7 years of my life learning their language, I get really frustrated when I'm not understood. I guess my accent is pretty different to the kids here - but one of the ladies standing near me jumped to the rescue and reassured me that my French is great and I shouldn't feel bad. Anyway other than that it's been going great and I've had many compliments on my French speaking (really nice to hear)!! Also, I've had a few kids who have been genuinely surprised to hear that my first language isn't French. (Although I wonder if they might be deaf.) Anyway, that's it, I am loving the job so far and tomorrow I'm heading for a workshop for tourism guides in the area, which should be cool.
I'm also going to have some holes poked in me in the next few days - yikes. Tonight we're all donating blood for a blood drive put on at City Hall, and then in the next few days I'll probably get my ear pierced again. Strangely enough, I'm way more queasy about the blood donation...
Bonne fin de semaine, tout le monde!