Dear Friends,
It is now the weekend. We had forgotten how welcome a weekend can be. We have a dinner and dance at the school tonight.
That reminds me that we have not written about the food at the school. We eat both breakfast and lunch at the school. The breakfast is nothing special - yogurt, bread, some type of roll, jam, cheese, coffee and tea. As a result, we eat a regular breakfast at our flat and then just have coffee at the breakfast. On the other hand, the lunches are superb. There is always a first course, a soup, salad or fancy pizza, then a main course with protein, vegetable and starch followed by a dessert. Sometimes the desserts are delicious but not good for you and sometimes they are both delicious and good for you. There is always water, apple juice, coffee, tea and bread. We will provide a picture later.
Everyone is looking forward to the dinner tonight because the chef at the school seems to be quite good. We are stopping at a new friend's flat for a glass of wine before the dinner. It will be interesting see how the party goes.
Today, our class had our first expose. The teacher picked one of the better students who did a great job. It did not appear as daunting as we had thought but then someone else was doing the presenting. We will have one a day for the next 8 days until all of us have given our expose. An expose in French simply means a presentation. The one today was about a bicycle trip in Spain.
Tomorrow we will go on a tour of the old town of Villefranche-sur-Mer with the school. It will only be two hours, and it appears that we do not have to speak French although there may be significant peer pressure to do so. Sunday we are going for a walk with a group from school out to Cape Ferrat for lunch. If it does not rain, it should be great fun and will be beautiful.
More later,
Jane and the Unabashed Liberal
Friday, January 10, 2014
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Three straight hours of French grammar in French
Dear Friends,
Sorry for not writing yesterday. We were very tired.
Wednesday was in some ways easier as we get more used to the pace of the school, but also more difficult as we covered much more material and had our first language lab. Normally we will have the language lab each day. The teacher goes through exercises with lots of repetition very very quickly, and we each respond into our own recorder. Each exercise is repeated, and she can listen to us individually the second time through. It is exhausting and embarrassing.
We are focusing a lot on pronouns as the French use them all the time, and they have many kinds and the location and type of pronoun used is very important to them. One part of our homework last night was about pronouns and the other was about formulating questions. There are very specific and numerous rules about both pronouns and questions.
On the way home from school yesterday, we did more shopping. Our first stop was the Picard for some frozen mushroom soup that we would use as the base for our dinner. We also bought some frozen avocados because they looked so good, and we did not believe that you could freeze avocados. They were pealed, cut in half and the pit removed. They were very good in our salad.
The soup was fantastic. It gives new meaning to the phrase mushroom soup. We added the leftover chicken from the night before and had a baked potato. We are eating very well and quickly. We were so tired we skipped the raspberry tart that he bought at the patisserie. We will have it tonight for sure.
Today was a difficult day, we started with a three hour lecture about French grammar, all in French and she was not speaking slowly. We will cover all of it in smaller segments in our individual classes. It was more French grammar than we have ever had, despite several years of French in high school and college. It is particularly difficult for us because neither of us remembers all the tenses and types of pronouns, etc. in English and the French have many concepts that do not exist in English. Of course, there are also the many exceptions. It was presented very well, but it was a long three hours.
We are also becoming very anxious about our exposes. Each of the students in our class must make a presentation about anything we like that is not technical, in French of course. It must last for 15 minutes, and then there are three questions from each of the other members of the class. The total time will be about 45 minutes. We are not permitted to write it out in advance or do anything more than have a few, perhaps 4 phrases as notes. We will do the first one tomorrow but our teacher will not tell us who will do their expose on which day so tomorrow afternoon at 4:00 pm we will find out who will give their expose at 4:01 pm. Jane and I each have thought of a topic. Jane prepared hers in the middle of the night last night when her french sounds much better. The biggest problem will be the lack of vocabulary. At this point we are not expected to know all the grammar, and they also know that our vocabulary is limited. The teacher says not to panic, but then she says that we will find out who is the first victim tomorrow.
Tonight our homework is supposed to be short so we may try to complete it during dinner which will be pasta with tomato sauce from the Picard Surgeles, fresh haricot vertes, salad verte, pain, tart framboise, eclair au chocolat, sorbet et vin.
More later,
Jane and the Unabashed Liberal
Sorry for not writing yesterday. We were very tired.
Wednesday was in some ways easier as we get more used to the pace of the school, but also more difficult as we covered much more material and had our first language lab. Normally we will have the language lab each day. The teacher goes through exercises with lots of repetition very very quickly, and we each respond into our own recorder. Each exercise is repeated, and she can listen to us individually the second time through. It is exhausting and embarrassing.
We are focusing a lot on pronouns as the French use them all the time, and they have many kinds and the location and type of pronoun used is very important to them. One part of our homework last night was about pronouns and the other was about formulating questions. There are very specific and numerous rules about both pronouns and questions.
On the way home from school yesterday, we did more shopping. Our first stop was the Picard for some frozen mushroom soup that we would use as the base for our dinner. We also bought some frozen avocados because they looked so good, and we did not believe that you could freeze avocados. They were pealed, cut in half and the pit removed. They were very good in our salad.
The soup was fantastic. It gives new meaning to the phrase mushroom soup. We added the leftover chicken from the night before and had a baked potato. We are eating very well and quickly. We were so tired we skipped the raspberry tart that he bought at the patisserie. We will have it tonight for sure.
Today was a difficult day, we started with a three hour lecture about French grammar, all in French and she was not speaking slowly. We will cover all of it in smaller segments in our individual classes. It was more French grammar than we have ever had, despite several years of French in high school and college. It is particularly difficult for us because neither of us remembers all the tenses and types of pronouns, etc. in English and the French have many concepts that do not exist in English. Of course, there are also the many exceptions. It was presented very well, but it was a long three hours.
We are also becoming very anxious about our exposes. Each of the students in our class must make a presentation about anything we like that is not technical, in French of course. It must last for 15 minutes, and then there are three questions from each of the other members of the class. The total time will be about 45 minutes. We are not permitted to write it out in advance or do anything more than have a few, perhaps 4 phrases as notes. We will do the first one tomorrow but our teacher will not tell us who will do their expose on which day so tomorrow afternoon at 4:00 pm we will find out who will give their expose at 4:01 pm. Jane and I each have thought of a topic. Jane prepared hers in the middle of the night last night when her french sounds much better. The biggest problem will be the lack of vocabulary. At this point we are not expected to know all the grammar, and they also know that our vocabulary is limited. The teacher says not to panic, but then she says that we will find out who is the first victim tomorrow.
Tonight our homework is supposed to be short so we may try to complete it during dinner which will be pasta with tomato sauce from the Picard Surgeles, fresh haricot vertes, salad verte, pain, tart framboise, eclair au chocolat, sorbet et vin.
More later,
Jane and the Unabashed Liberal
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Le premier jour tout en français.
Dear Friends,
Today was the first day that we had to speak only in French for the entire day. As Jane said after the end of the day, "We learned that tour meager ability to speak French is eclipsed only by our paucity of words, grammar and correct sounds."
We are in the same class which we both agreed was works very well for us. However, we both felt that we were misplaced into a class too high. We are Intermediate 4. Some of the people in our class speak very quickly which intimidated us, but throughout the day, it became clearer that being able to speak quickly did not mean you were speaking correctly.
Our class reflects the demographics of the entire class. We have two young men who have just finished college, a couple of young women who have been out of college and working for several years, a man from Sweden who refused to say what he did but looked to be in his 30s, a woman with two children 8 and 10 and another retiree who is one year older than I am and has a flat in Nice although he lives in Sweden. The nine students in our class represent Sweden (2), Bulgaria (but has lived for many years in the US), Australia, US (3), Russia (but has lived in Monaco for several years) and England.
The pace of the day is very fast so there is no chance to get bored and you do not realize how tired you are until there is a break, but even in the breaks and at lunch you must speak only French. We had only 10 minutes of homework which we have both finished.
Our primary teacher is a very nice woman who has an ageless French appearance. She corrects constantly but often with humor and demands focus and correctness in all respects.
More later,
Jane and the Unabashed Liberal
Today was the first day that we had to speak only in French for the entire day. As Jane said after the end of the day, "We learned that tour meager ability to speak French is eclipsed only by our paucity of words, grammar and correct sounds."
We are in the same class which we both agreed was works very well for us. However, we both felt that we were misplaced into a class too high. We are Intermediate 4. Some of the people in our class speak very quickly which intimidated us, but throughout the day, it became clearer that being able to speak quickly did not mean you were speaking correctly.
Our class reflects the demographics of the entire class. We have two young men who have just finished college, a couple of young women who have been out of college and working for several years, a man from Sweden who refused to say what he did but looked to be in his 30s, a woman with two children 8 and 10 and another retiree who is one year older than I am and has a flat in Nice although he lives in Sweden. The nine students in our class represent Sweden (2), Bulgaria (but has lived for many years in the US), Australia, US (3), Russia (but has lived in Monaco for several years) and England.
The pace of the day is very fast so there is no chance to get bored and you do not realize how tired you are until there is a break, but even in the breaks and at lunch you must speak only French. We had only 10 minutes of homework which we have both finished.
Our primary teacher is a very nice woman who has an ageless French appearance. She corrects constantly but often with humor and demands focus and correctness in all respects.
More later,
Jane and the Unabashed Liberal
Monday, January 6, 2014
We Survived the Test
Dear Friends,
Sunday was a beautiful sunny day here in Villefranche-sur-Mer. We ate lunch outside by the sea without the aid of a heater and then took a nice long walk along the beach. There were children playing in the water and a few adults sunbathing. It was about 60 degrees, but the sun and lack of wind made it very comfortable.
The nice lunch permitted a small dinner so we stopped at what is rapidly becoming our favorite store, the Villefranche-sur-Mer Primeurs (the small shop with fresh produce, cheese and wine). We picked up some pasta and red sauce as well as fresh broccoli and wine and had a complete dinner. We could relax in our flat with a nice dinner and only have to worry about the test the next day.
We both awoke in the middle of the night much more from from anxiety than jet lag. Why are we so nervous about this test that is only to place us in the right class?
We were ready to go to school first thing - backpacks filled with pens, pencils, notebooks, dictionaries, etc. We left on time and walked up the hill in the beautiful sun towards the school. We meet two other students on the way. We arrived 15 minutes early and much of the class was already assembled in the main salon. The group was so type A that we were ready to start at 8:20 instead of the scheduled time of 8:30. Since it only seems fair to give you wonderful readers a real sense of the hardship of going to school in Villefranche-sur-Mer, I took this picture from the balcony outside the main salon.
The entire group is about 60 people from the US, Australia, Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Nigeria, New Zealand and Russia among them, but there may be others because we did not meet everybody. One of the first people we meet lives 2 blocks from us in Minneapolis. It is a very small world. There was also a woman from Jackson Hole, about our age, who is a democrat. We could make some connection with almost everybody we met. Most people seem to be here because they just want to learn French and not because it is required by their jobs. The age range is very large from some who either have just graduated from college or are perhaps still in college to midlife crisis people late 40s and 50s to a few retirees like us. The guy from New Zealand is I think the oldest as he said he had been retired for 15 years and had taken the course each January for the last 5 years.
The TEST was not as bad as we had imagined. The main part was for the entire group where statements were made in French and we needed to comprehend what was said and sometimes respond in written French. We also had to read two paragraphs in French and respond to questions about them. After all that, each individual spent about 5 minutes with an instructor speaking in French. All the parts of the test are graded and put on various axis and a final grade given. The head teacher has all the papers and grades and will spend tonight drinking wine and making the final decisions about placement into classes. Jane and I know that we answered many questions differently so we do not think that we will be in the same class. Anyway, we will find out tomorrow.
The rest of the day today was spent in English on administrative matters and discussing the teaching philosophy of the school. The focus is on speaking not writing and at all levels you are expected to speak with ease and correctly. By the end of the day, we were very tired.
We walked into town and decided to eat in again tonight. We bought the ingredients for the meal at the Picard Surgeles (frozen food place) and added wine and salad makings from our favorite shop the Primeurs.
Tomorrow not only do we get our class placement, but the nothing but French speaking is enforced. There is a 2 Euro fine for speaking your native tongue at the Institut at any time.
More later,
Jane and the Unabashed Liberal
Sunday was a beautiful sunny day here in Villefranche-sur-Mer. We ate lunch outside by the sea without the aid of a heater and then took a nice long walk along the beach. There were children playing in the water and a few adults sunbathing. It was about 60 degrees, but the sun and lack of wind made it very comfortable.
The nice lunch permitted a small dinner so we stopped at what is rapidly becoming our favorite store, the Villefranche-sur-Mer Primeurs (the small shop with fresh produce, cheese and wine). We picked up some pasta and red sauce as well as fresh broccoli and wine and had a complete dinner. We could relax in our flat with a nice dinner and only have to worry about the test the next day.
We both awoke in the middle of the night much more from from anxiety than jet lag. Why are we so nervous about this test that is only to place us in the right class?
We were ready to go to school first thing - backpacks filled with pens, pencils, notebooks, dictionaries, etc. We left on time and walked up the hill in the beautiful sun towards the school. We meet two other students on the way. We arrived 15 minutes early and much of the class was already assembled in the main salon. The group was so type A that we were ready to start at 8:20 instead of the scheduled time of 8:30. Since it only seems fair to give you wonderful readers a real sense of the hardship of going to school in Villefranche-sur-Mer, I took this picture from the balcony outside the main salon.
The entire group is about 60 people from the US, Australia, Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Nigeria, New Zealand and Russia among them, but there may be others because we did not meet everybody. One of the first people we meet lives 2 blocks from us in Minneapolis. It is a very small world. There was also a woman from Jackson Hole, about our age, who is a democrat. We could make some connection with almost everybody we met. Most people seem to be here because they just want to learn French and not because it is required by their jobs. The age range is very large from some who either have just graduated from college or are perhaps still in college to midlife crisis people late 40s and 50s to a few retirees like us. The guy from New Zealand is I think the oldest as he said he had been retired for 15 years and had taken the course each January for the last 5 years.
The TEST was not as bad as we had imagined. The main part was for the entire group where statements were made in French and we needed to comprehend what was said and sometimes respond in written French. We also had to read two paragraphs in French and respond to questions about them. After all that, each individual spent about 5 minutes with an instructor speaking in French. All the parts of the test are graded and put on various axis and a final grade given. The head teacher has all the papers and grades and will spend tonight drinking wine and making the final decisions about placement into classes. Jane and I know that we answered many questions differently so we do not think that we will be in the same class. Anyway, we will find out tomorrow.
The rest of the day today was spent in English on administrative matters and discussing the teaching philosophy of the school. The focus is on speaking not writing and at all levels you are expected to speak with ease and correctly. By the end of the day, we were very tired.
We walked into town and decided to eat in again tonight. We bought the ingredients for the meal at the Picard Surgeles (frozen food place) and added wine and salad makings from our favorite shop the Primeurs.
Tomorrow not only do we get our class placement, but the nothing but French speaking is enforced. There is a 2 Euro fine for speaking your native tongue at the Institut at any time.
More later,
Jane and the Unabashed Liberal
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Grocery Shopping
Dear Friends,
After allowing ourselves the luxury of sleep yesterday, we were very hungry by the time we were ready to leave our flat. It was 12:30 pm and since we had yet to buy groceries, we had nothing to eat or even coffee to drink. So we prepared to go in search of lunch before grocery shopping.
It was raining quite hard as it did almost constantly all day yesterday. Since the town is built on a very steep hill, there is a considerable amount of runoff from the rain. The runoff is funneled into pathways for the water that quickly become rapidly flowing rivers. It is quite a sight and gets the water to the sea very efficiently and without causing any problems.
We donned our rain jackets and hats and grabbed our umbrellas and ventured out to find a place to eat. The trick to walking the hills in this town is to find the stairs so you do not have to walk along the roads which have very small if any sidewalks. The runoff paths for the water often parallel the stairs so it is a great adventure. We found some stairs that led us to La Belle Epoch, one of the restaurants recommended by the notebook in the flat. We started with coffee. My large espresso was fantastic and very welcome as I had not had any coffee the day before either. Jane ordered rigatoni and I ordered spaghetti carbonara. Why is that we are in France and for two lunches in a row have had Italian food? We finished our very leisurly lunch with more coffee. Later in the afternoon I felt the jittery effects of that extra caffeine, but it tasted really good at the time.
It was now after 3:00 pm so most of the stores were beginning to open again after the very civilized two to four hour break for lunch. We had accumulated quite a long shopping list and knew that we would need to visit several stores to get everything we were looking for. Based on prior experiences we also were prepared with our own shopping bags. We had three large nylon bags, and we each had a backpack. We were ready to shop.
We went first to the Villefranche Primeurs, a small shop with wonderful fresh produce of all kinds as well as the essentials of life - wine and cheese. Not coincidentally the patisserie/boulangerie was next door. We did not buy anything since it would be on our way home, and we did not want to carry the wine any further than necessary. The next stop was the pharmacy for qtips and hand lotion. We really did not need the hand lotion as just a few hours of exposure to the wonderful, humid, salt air was already curing our dry, cold Minnesota winter cracked skin.
We continued on in search of the Petit Casino (apparently a chain of small grocery stores). Along the way we passed a very uninviting store front that was set back from the street. Since we are on an adventure we went in anyway and were amazed at what we found. The store was called Picard Surgeles (deep frozen food). The interior was brand new and spotless. The room contained freezer after freezer of food of all sorts - fruits, vegetables (even avocado), meats, fish, chicken, pastries, ice cream, etc. We checked it out but did not buy anything again because it would be on our way home.
A short walk later we found the Petit Casino. It had all the essentials in a very small space, and we quickly filled our three nylon bags. We then returned to the other stores to complete our list. By now our three nylon bags and two backpacks were full and getting heavier by the minute as we trudged up the hill to our flat.
After such an adventure, we needed to relax. I tried to read Le Monde online but I really could not understand much at all. We also watched some television - BBC World News and CNN. Of course we should have been watching a French station but they were speaking very fast, and we could not understand. Our fear that we will never master French is growing along with our anxiety about going back to school.
We made our fist dinner in our flat, and it was a big success.
After allowing ourselves the luxury of sleep yesterday, we were very hungry by the time we were ready to leave our flat. It was 12:30 pm and since we had yet to buy groceries, we had nothing to eat or even coffee to drink. So we prepared to go in search of lunch before grocery shopping.
It was raining quite hard as it did almost constantly all day yesterday. Since the town is built on a very steep hill, there is a considerable amount of runoff from the rain. The runoff is funneled into pathways for the water that quickly become rapidly flowing rivers. It is quite a sight and gets the water to the sea very efficiently and without causing any problems.
We donned our rain jackets and hats and grabbed our umbrellas and ventured out to find a place to eat. The trick to walking the hills in this town is to find the stairs so you do not have to walk along the roads which have very small if any sidewalks. The runoff paths for the water often parallel the stairs so it is a great adventure. We found some stairs that led us to La Belle Epoch, one of the restaurants recommended by the notebook in the flat. We started with coffee. My large espresso was fantastic and very welcome as I had not had any coffee the day before either. Jane ordered rigatoni and I ordered spaghetti carbonara. Why is that we are in France and for two lunches in a row have had Italian food? We finished our very leisurly lunch with more coffee. Later in the afternoon I felt the jittery effects of that extra caffeine, but it tasted really good at the time.
It was now after 3:00 pm so most of the stores were beginning to open again after the very civilized two to four hour break for lunch. We had accumulated quite a long shopping list and knew that we would need to visit several stores to get everything we were looking for. Based on prior experiences we also were prepared with our own shopping bags. We had three large nylon bags, and we each had a backpack. We were ready to shop.
We went first to the Villefranche Primeurs, a small shop with wonderful fresh produce of all kinds as well as the essentials of life - wine and cheese. Not coincidentally the patisserie/boulangerie was next door. We did not buy anything since it would be on our way home, and we did not want to carry the wine any further than necessary. The next stop was the pharmacy for qtips and hand lotion. We really did not need the hand lotion as just a few hours of exposure to the wonderful, humid, salt air was already curing our dry, cold Minnesota winter cracked skin.
We continued on in search of the Petit Casino (apparently a chain of small grocery stores). Along the way we passed a very uninviting store front that was set back from the street. Since we are on an adventure we went in anyway and were amazed at what we found. The store was called Picard Surgeles (deep frozen food). The interior was brand new and spotless. The room contained freezer after freezer of food of all sorts - fruits, vegetables (even avocado), meats, fish, chicken, pastries, ice cream, etc. We checked it out but did not buy anything again because it would be on our way home.
A short walk later we found the Petit Casino. It had all the essentials in a very small space, and we quickly filled our three nylon bags. We then returned to the other stores to complete our list. By now our three nylon bags and two backpacks were full and getting heavier by the minute as we trudged up the hill to our flat.
After such an adventure, we needed to relax. I tried to read Le Monde online but I really could not understand much at all. We also watched some television - BBC World News and CNN. Of course we should have been watching a French station but they were speaking very fast, and we could not understand. Our fear that we will never master French is growing along with our anxiety about going back to school.
We made our fist dinner in our flat, and it was a big success.
That is cheese pasta with mustard/yogurt sauce, hard salami, haricot vert, bread, water and white wine.
After dinner we discovered that Netflix and Xfinity were not available in France, so we were thwarted in our attempt to continue to catch up on Foyle's War.
Sleep did not come easy as the combination of jet lag and anxiety about school and the test on Monday conspired to keep us awake. The jet lag will resolve itself over the next few days and the school anxiety will either decrease or increase as we start school.
Today the rain has stopped, and it is trying to clear. We need to locate the school which will probably only increase our anxiety. Wish us luck.
More later,
Jane and the Unabashed Liberal
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