The Expose

Dear Friends,

The big news for today is that I presented my expose, but more about that later.

Earlier, we promised some photos of the lunches to give you an idea why our teacher told us that people gain 1 kilo par semaine at the school.

It was delicious. It was preceded by cauliflower on toast with sauce hollandaise and followed by a lemon cake with orange sauce.  The other students were upset that I asked them to wait while I took a picture.

We have laboratory every day.  It is not what I remember as language lab because the teacher completely controls the timing and can listen to individual students.  The pace is frantic, and we are easily flustered.  We go through the exercise at least two times.  The first time the teacher actually reads and asks us questions.  The following times it is a recording of her the first time.  It is during this period that she can concentrate on what individual students are saying.  Today, Jane was getting particularly frustrated with the constantly changing passé compose and various pronouns, when she heard the teacher say, "Jane faites attention au verbe. C'est le passe compose".  If you think that Jane was flustered before that interruption just think what she was afterwards.   We did not know that the teacher had that ability.  Now we have yet another thing to worry about.

During class in the morning, the teacher was asking us questions about our past and ask each other questions to use the passé compose and the appropriate pronouns in the correct locations.  Since Jane and I could be the parents of all of the other students (even the oldest one that is mid 40s), our lives and relationship were the subject of many of the questions.  Eventually, I was asked how I met Jane.  I responded by saying that they would learn that in my expose.  The teacher accepted that answer and moved on.  Then just as we were breaking for lunch, the teacher announced that she had decided that I would present my expose at 4:00 pm so the class did not have to wait too long to find out how I met Jane.  Needless to say, that destroyed my lunch, and I did not learn too much in the practical session after lunch where we discussed a variety of idiomatic phrases and some politics of France.

For my expose, I talked about the importance of music in the world and in my life.  This included the story of seeing Jane at a high school dance when I was about 15 playing her guitar and singing there's blood on the saddle, blood on the ground and a great big puddle of blood on the ground.  That was how I met Jane.  It is not an easy grammatical construction as it requires the reflexive and pronouns all over the place.  Nous nous sommes rencontre.  You must change avoir to etre also because of the reflective.  You can see why the teacher liked the question.  Anyway, I spoke for about 15 minutes and then answered questions for 30 more minutes.  The questions ranged from how does music help to heal the world (I had said that music can heal the soul of a person, a country and the world) to what was my favorite song by Diana Ross and the Supremes (I had earlier admitted that I liked them the best).  It turns out that one of the youngest in the class not only knew of the Supremes but loved them too.  His favorite song was the same as mine - "You Can't Hurry Love".    Anyway, I thought that it went ok and Jane being very biased said I did really well and the kids were all very nice to me - either pity or envy that now I was done.

It was rainy and cloudy most of the day.  By the time I finished my expose, the sun had come out, the sky was incredible, the sun on the opposite side of the bay was beautiful and the color of the water was a perfect blue.  I am afraid that my iPhone does not properly capture the beauty but here it is.  You can see why people move here to live.  The temperature at the time was 60 degrees.

Now it is only Jane who needs to worry about her expose.  I hope to sleep well tonight.

More later,
Jane and the Unabashed Liberal