oh me oh my

so people have already left - and now some of the last of the americans are heading out. whitney on tuesday, bryan a week after. eleni's back in cyprus. oh it's overwhelming.
there is a sadness in the air - despite the sunshine and the girls' night we had last night and the time being spent with friends. this could be a combination of having to work the full week next week for the first time in a while, the test i need to administer to my CM2 classes that i did not create, and the departure of two of my closest friends here.
hm. full work week - the week before the two week vacation in april - classes were cancelled. upon my return from break in april - one of my classes didn't meet for two weeks. then we had a 6 day weekend. i return back from said weekend to find out that thursday is a strike so my schools are closed. this upcoming week is the first time i have seen some of my monday/thursday classes in FIVE WEEKS. this is insane.
the exam. was created by the conseilleurs pedagogiques, and is standardized throughout the department. this is not fair. my kids learned what i taught them, how i taught them. i was going to give them a fair test that would be a fair assessment of what we did during the school year. if you want to give a standardized test - give a better curriculum. the current one was pages and pages of information we could teach - it was up to us to sift through it. even when we taught the same thing - we taught different lists of vocab. did different types of exercises. and now this 8 page bullshit test. but, it will get done. it will. there is an oral part where i need to talk to them one on one. my smallest class of CM2s is 24 students. that will take forever and a day if i do what they want. so we're changing it. i've already changed a lot of things on that test. j'ai rien a branler... to be quite vulgar about it.
and of course - the departure of two of my closest friends here. alyson, jen, and tim are gone. that's sad. i had bryan and whit to turn to. whit's leaving in less than 72 hours. bryan a week after that. this is not okay.
so the combination of those three things are creating quite a knot in my stomach and chest and throat.

at least the sun is shining a little.