Oisin30

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Entry 30 Legion D'Honneur Francaise'
Even after a long hard day, even after being called a wuss by some muscle bound asshole in gym, even after starting to feel that strong, sweet, tea wear off, Legion D'Honneur Francaise, was great. For starters, we had a real mission. I know that sounds like somethign adults in grey flannel suits come up with, but a mission tells you what your organization should be doing, and the Legion D'Honneur's mission had not one drop of merde in it.

Our job was to promote French and encourage other kids to take the language and also provide fun, French oriented cultural activities, though the fun part could wait. That meant we needed to talk to the French Ones both here and in the middle school and join forces. We also needed t-shirts to make French more visible and we needed to give fliers to middle school kids to tell them to start with French instead of Spanish in seventh grade. Yes, we were proselytizing for our language, but so what. The adults could talk about "More High School for Your Money." We were talking to kids so our message was different.

This was going to be hard because kids would face their first years of French on a computer instead of with a live teacher. Why our district hired a foreign language teacher who could only teach Spanish was beyond me.

The problem was how to reach the middle schoolers. They pretty much lived in their own bubble just like the little kids did. Their principal might have an assembly to bring in a dance troop or teach about fire safety, but she didn't have one to talk about the assortment of high school subjects.

"They have Moving Up Day in the spring," explained Koli which I all ready knew. I remembered the first tour of the high school. It had not impressed me. The high school was just not that impressive.

"We need to get on the schedule for Moving Up Day," Koli insisted.

"How do we do that?" asked Joshua.

"Write a letter to the middle school principal," suggested Atalaya.

"We also need to write to our own principal," explained Koli

Leave it to girls, I thought. Still they had a point. Then Lenny suggested we show a French movie and invite kids from all the schools. This was not a bad idea even though we knew we would not get a large turn out because we could get the movie on the big video from the AV room a lot sooner than Moving Up Day which was not until the spring.

Then we tried to figure out what French movie to show. We needed a catalog of French movies. I got drafted to find one. Yes, I was too tired to think and there with extra work but some day I told myself, MIT would love me, a future engineer who is good in the humanities.

I thought about this as I rode home alone on my bike. I missed Stasch. There I said it, even though we actually got something done at our French Honor Society meeting. I realized that I was also very hungry. I was glad there was iced tea leftover from breakfast. I poured myself a big glass of it and sat at the kitchen table. Stasch was building a castle from Legos in the living room. Aunt Aliza and dad were downstairs in the shop. My parents would be up late again tonight. The world of hard working people stays up late. I guessed I had just joined that world.