It's the last week of classes and my classmates and I have been doing exposés, or presentations, in French. Yesterday I donned my Red Sox cap to talk about Boston, my hometown. In my research, I stumbled upon this interesting tidbit: the Bostonian accent resembles the one found in Lincolnshire, England, because the Puritans came from there. At the end, there were lots of questions about Boston, and a request to hear the famous accent. I obliged with "I pahked my cah in Hahvahd yahd to get a wicket good cupah clam chowdah but the weahd chowdah guy was lookin at me funny and I had no idear why."
This weekend we watched Le Tour de France (live, as in we were there when Lance passed by, however, they were going so fast that I wasn't able to pick him out from the crowd) and Le Coupe du Monde (live streaming, as in we were watching it from Pickwick's Pub with about a million other fans).
This week France celebrates its national holiday—Americans call it "Bastille Day" but the French refer to it as "Fête nationale" or le quatorze de juillet. Yesterday Paris hosted une grande procession/paradesur les Champs-Elysées. The French officers' uniforms were beautiful and meticulous, nary a thread or feather out of place. The parade is a veritable display of military power—and also a synchronized military fashion show of blue feathers, ebony black, crisp whites, and blood reds. Zarkozy on the other hand...he would look better with a smile on his face every so often. In a historic moment this year France invited its former colonies in Africa to participate in the grandedéfiléin Paris—thirteen out of the fourteen former French colonies accepted the invitation, including representatives from Niger who added a little bounce to their march. This YouTube video shows parachuters presenting President Nicholas Sarkozy and other eminent heads of state with thirteen flags (one from each of the 13 participating countries).
Bon vendredi! R and I finished the 2nd week of French classes today with 1 week remaining out of our 3 week session. I've been occupe comme une abeille! Learning a new language is hard work and fun at the same time - there's so much to learn and I'm like a sponge, absorbing everything in and outside of class. The world is my classroom.
At school, we've quickly shed our initial trepidation, and everyone (myself included) is speaking with more ease...though not always with the same graceful rhythm or pronunciation of the French/French-speaking Swiss. The students/teachers are serious about learning...so it's not always fun and games, but we're often laughing together while doing role play/oral exercises. Other times, especially in my phonetique and pronunciation classes, we are working the muscles in our mouths, jaws, lips and tongue to make French sounds and it's pretty hilarious to hear a whole class in unison try to make the 4 nasal sounds of "an", "in" "on" and "un". Or when one of my classmates brayed like a donkey in pronunciation class when she was asked what sound a donkey makes in her native Greek. A theatre student by training, she gave it her 100% and it was the best darn donkey I have ever heard in my entire life.
At the end of the day, I am super tired and my brain is buzzing with new vocabulary, grammaire, tips from my phonetique classes, or French idioms (like busy as a bee and strong as a Turc or as tall as 3 apples..meaning, not very tall at all).
The biggest progress I've made is that I can now formulate sentences using a few verb tenses! I'm super excited I can finally communicate in French...albeit a bit slowly and with poor pronunciation. This weekend, I have to work on an expose - basically a 5 minute speech about a theme of my choosing to present to the class next Tuesday! Wish me luck..I'm either going to write about Boston..or about what I like about living in France.
I don't know about your neck of the woods, but SUMMER is ripe here. We're having a canicule - a heatwave of 30+C (which is 90+F) this week. Thank goodness for 3 things to beat the heat: 1) climitasation in some classrooms at UNIGE 2) free cold eau potable at most fountains in GVA 3) the huge, clean municipal pools close to our parking spot in France. Twice this week after school, R and I spent the afternoon at the outdoor pools. J'ai saute dans l'eau et j'ai nage! There are 3 pools, a tall slide, ping pong tables, mini golf, and lots of green park where we can lay in the shade. I tried the water slide twice...you climb up the stairs, sit your butt down, and then weeeeee!!! I thought I was moving fast, but apparently, I was slow..the little kids were zipping along but I was happy to be going at my pace. I heard it was hot in Boston too - and my nephew Isaac swam for the first time by himself!
R and I have colorful plans this weekend - what about you?
1. I will sleep in both days as much as possible on my new mattress! And I'm hoping to tend to my garden..R saw a few green tomatoes today. I'll also keep in touch with my family - my 97 grandmother broke her hip this week and just had surgery. She's awake but not quite alert yet and unfortunately, she's at the age where her short-term memory often fails her. So she will sometimes wake up and forget why she's in the hospital.
2. The Tour de France is passing by this Sunday on their 8th TdF stage! R and I will be dressed in yellow and will be supporting Lance and the hot Spanish one (or at least I will be. Heheh.) I can't wait - so excited! I'll be thinking of you Steven + Yoshie - who's your favorite rider? I will try to take a pic of him speeding by.
3. World Cup finals on Sunday: NL vs ES. We'll be sporting our oranje again and hoping for the first Dutch World Cup ever.
Lastly, here are some pictures from the past week or so. Enjoy! And keep cool.
The vide grenier (flea market) with 200+ tables in our little ville. R and I bought 3 copper pans, 12 DVDs, and an old leather briefcase for a great deal!
Picture of one of the cheese stations at the Fete de la fromage a few weekends ago. I sampled beaucoup de fromage...comte, reblochon, and more. So good!
I just finished my first week of intensive French language classes at the University of Geneva—a sorry excuse for not blogging, but it's true, as I recall below.
After Monday's placement exam—much to my surprise—I was placed into level B1, lower intermediate French. How did that happen?? In any case, I am absolutely loving my classes. My teachers are terrific and passionate about teaching and the classes are a small size (around 18 in my morning cours de langue class but more in the lecture-style classes).
UNIGE's approach is full immersion into the French language by any means possible, be it grammar, literature, culture, cinema, or song. The program is 3 weeks long, with the possibility of taking an additional six weeks afterward. The days are long, as I'm up by 6:30h so I can arrive by 9:00h. Classes generally wrap up around 16:00h, but touring walks of Geneva or excursions could keep one occupied until 20:00h.
A sampling of my classes at UNIGE this session: cours de langue, grammaire intermédiare, prononciation laboratoire, two different pronunciation classes (with a teacher), cours de la suisse histoire, communication orale, stylistique grammaire, and chanson francophone. Among the songs we sang today were Le Parapluie and Les Petits Papier today (below).
This particular Wednesday R and I didn't get home until 23:00h. After class we had dinner at CERN with R's friends, a very vivacious older couple who are frequent visitors to world-renown physics research center. The husband, an older gentleman most likely in his 70s, is a pretty well known professor of Physics at NYU. For work, said professor and his wife travel to CERN every year to collaborate with other leading scientists.
During dinner the couple happily recounted how R had saved them many years ago. One winter long ago, the professor was cross-country skiing in the mountains of Lelex (probably backcountry trails with not that many people around) when he fell and dislocated his collar bone. Unable to drive to the hospital himself, his wife walked down to find help, flagging down R who stopped and offered a ride back to where the professor was. Not only did R bring them to the hospital but he also stayed to translate since they do not speak much French. ♥
On Friday evening R and I dressed in orange to attend our friends' World Cup party—can you guess what orange represents? Even though we got lost and missed NL/Brazil game, we arrived just in time to hear unbelievable news—that the Netherlands had miraculously defeated Brazil 2 to 1. Our friends and their friends are really nice..and again, super international. I met a woman from South Africa who I might be going to salsa classes together some time in the future.
We spent the evening talking, drinking and finished by watching the Ghana/Uruguay game. To my utter disappointment, Ghana was robbed of their win. If you watched that game as well - what do you think? What the hell with the red card at the end? I think that should have been an automatic goal for Ghana. I was heartbroken for the player who missed the penalty kick.
Are you following the World Cup? Have you ever learned a new language before, and what is your learning style? Tomorrow, I'll write about my football experiences in my own backyard today. Literally in my own backyard with my new Japanese friend and her family.
A beautiful day gave way to a beautiful fuschia sunset. The full moon is high tonight—was hoping for a USA win, but Ghana played well. There are so many Spanish speaking countries in the Round of 16, the finals may end up pitting one Spanish speaking country against another.
Today's Good Things
Received my 4th piece of snail mail. Thanks SD for your letter. I'll write back soon
My coriander seeds are germinating—I see tell-tale coriander leaves
Skyping with May and family
The local Fete de l'ecole and folding paper cranes, balls and boxes with my Japanese friend who was manning the origami table. I folded a fun box—and it got me thinking about decorating a wall of our new "reading room" with a colorful paper crane garland
Worked on my resume a little and forwarded my resume to someone who's offered to review my resume from a Swiss/international perspective. I'm really grateful and looking forward to hearing his feedback
Started some weight training and hope to keep up with it. My back's been bothering me lately and I hope this alleviates the pain
The full moon is two days from now, on the 26th of June. For the past two nights, I've fallen asleep to moonlight streaming into our bedroom and woken up to blue skies and sun. Thank goodness because it's about time the sun decided to come out.
For the past two weeks, it's been raining steadily with only some slivers of sunshine. Some days I was even wearing my down jacket and sweaters, in the middle of June! I stayed out of the rain and worked on my French conjugations, did some driving lessons, and baked. David Lebovitz's supernatural brownies came over so well that I can hardly keep them from being eaten. Yesterday I drove on a real road within a business zone so there weren't that many cars around, but I had to navigate rotaries, stop and restart, and then reverse. I'm used to the clutch and the gear box, so it's getting easier and I hardly stall the car anymore. Yay for that!
R and I finished working on the former bedroom...it's now a reading room with some outdoor/indoor deck furniture. It's next to the guest bedroom which is next on our DIY list.
Real summer is here now to stay until September or so and my vegetable garden and I are happy for that. Because the days are longer here, I'm hoping the cherry, quince, and plum trees will be ready for picking in a few weeks. In the vegetable garden, the 9 tomato plants are doing well, and are slowly climbing up their spiral stakes. The 12 lettuces and single zucchini plant are growing fast as well. When I checked yesterday, two large yellow zucchini flowers had bloomed, and under them were two three-inch zucchinis. About five other zucchini flowers were just starting to bud. As for the three eggplants, they're surviving, but no flowers yet. The seeds I planted for melons, beets, and leeks may have sprouted but they're difficult to pick out because there's also a lot of weeds in the mix. But good news on the herb front: the coriander, basil, ciboulette, and mint are all doing well. When they're full grown, I won't have to buy any of these until late fall. If I have too much, I'll dry or freeze some in ice cube trays so I can use them way past the harvest season.
Today, R and I walked down to the farmer's market—tomorrow is R's birthday and I still need some fresh berries and nectarines to top the fruit tart I'm making. We didn't find berries but we got some fresh baguette and smoked salmon—and had that for lunch in the park by the river.
Tonight, we're going to Geneva again for a World Cup party—the Netherlands vs Cameroon. R's Dutch friend is hosting again so we were encouraged to wear Orange, the Dutch color for the Royal house of Orange. R is not only wearing orange, but he's decided to bring his giant Dutch flag to the party.
What's your favorite thing to do in the summer time? For those of you with green thumbs...how does your garden grow? Are you watching the World Cup and who are you cheering for?
