The sun has returned

Dear Friends,

As forecasted the sun has returned to the Côte d'Azur.  Unfortunately the heavy rains over the last several days caused significant damage and several deaths.  Weather patterns all over the world are changing, and the weather is causing more and more damage.  It is too bad that politicians refuse to admit that we are causing much of the change and refuse to take any action to change our behavior.

The method that the school uses to teach us involves introducing a new subject without telling us the rules which at first we struggle to discover, then are made clear, then another is added and then more and more examples and exercises.  We are reaching the end of the learning about the passé composé and the imparfait.  First, we had many exercise to learn the passé composé.  Then we had many exercises to learn the imparfait.  Now we are trying to learn when to use the passé composé and when to use the imparfait.  Neither tense corresponds directly to a tense in English and both involve the past.  Even the explanations we get in French are not directly translatable to English.  Anyway suffice it to say that the rules are not particularly clear and there are, of course, exceptions, and there are times when both could be used but a particular teacher might have a preference.

Part of tonight's homework assignment involved choosing between the passé composé and imparfait for each verb in a couple of different stories.  In addition to choosing which tense, we needed to be able to explain why.  Jane and I took awhile to do just this part of the homework.  There was also a movie at school tonight which we skipped.  By the time we went shopping for dinner, got home, did our homework and had dinner it was almost 10:00 pm.  We do not understand how others do it.  But you may recall that the others in our section range from age 22 to 44.  We think that explains it.

Our evening was interrupted when a candidate for Mayor of Villefranche-sur-Mer, knocked on our door.  It was, of course, immediately clear that we were not people who could vote.  Nevertheless, he wanted to chat in English which we were happy to do.  He spoke good English and had been to the United States, including Texas several times.  We are not sure about his politics, but he acknowledged that he had met Rick Perry through a mutual friend.  He disclaimed associating with him politically.  It was a fun encounter and made us feel like we were at home during election season when everybody is door knocking.

A young woman from Russia gave her exposé today.  It was very interesting. She compared Moscow and St. Petersburg.  She obviously loved Russia and both cities.  Jane was particularly struck by her love of Russia since Jane knew from previous conversations with her that she had not been back to Russia in 4 years.  Jane asked her if she planned to return to Russia and she said she had no plans to do so.  She said that there are so many problems and it is so sad that she does not want to return even though her family still lives there.  She said maybe when she is 50 (she is 22 now) she might return but not now.  It was heartbreaking to hear that since she obviously loved her country.

More later,
Jane and the Unabashed Liberal