Les Exposés Finnissent

Dear Friends,

Friday was a red-letter day.  Jane gave her exposé, and it was great.  She talked about the party for the 50^th wedding anniversary of her sister, but included a lot of information about her family. The focus was the fact that for important (and sometimes not so important occasions) a new song is written using a familiar tune.  The other students were fascinated with the idea that Jane made up a song (with much help from another sister) just for the party and that her brother had written many songs for occasions and that many of them are now archived.  After our two exposés, I think that they believe that we have the most musical family in the world.  It was great to get it done since now she does not have to worry about it over the weekend.

We would have posted this good news last night but the internet was down.  It started raining on Thursday night and has been raining non-stop since, and when I say non-stop, I mean literally non-stop.  The driest possible is damp.  The rain caused a rock slide closing the road for awhile on Friday morning and I am quite sure that it is impacting the internet.  In fact the internet was out all of last night and has stopped and started a few times since we got back to our flat from an excursion (to be described below) about 1.5 hours ago.  As I write this post, there is no internet, but I have faith that it will return.

While Jane’s exposé is the most important thing, we have had several other experiences that we should mention.  As we indicated in the last post, the school arranged a dinner at a local restaurant for the advanced students and the Intermediate 4s (our group) for Thursday night.  Most of the students went.  It was really fun.  It was a very nice restaurant.  We sat with some advanced students and some Intermediate 4s.  It was a complete Franglais night.  

The group of students is very diverse in many ways - age, nationality and ethnicity.  But the school is also self-selecting so all want to be at the school to learn another language and hence about another culture.  I am not sure there is a country in the world that has not been visited by at least one of the students.  We are, of course, also a very privileged group of people.  I was very touched by one young man whose family was from India but who was born and raised in Australia.  He comes from a wealthy family and is an only child.  He is brilliant, very funny and very nice.  He described his career path.  It leads to working to help the poor in India.  He has had many incredible opportunities and has taken full advantage of them, and the poor of India will benefit.

Unfortunately the dinner went on until almost midnight.  We walked up the hill from the sea to our flat in the rain and did not get to bed until 12:30.  The students, including us, were not at their best for the first few of hours in the morning.  But by the time of our practical french lesson that comes after lunch, everybody seemed fine which was good because the lesson was about the cheeses of France.  There are about 600 types of cheeses in France but only 7 families of cheese.  Of course when you are in France you cannot have a lesson about cheeses without tasting them and you cannot properly taste cheeses without having bread and wine.  So it was a very fun and interesting session and great preparation for Jane's exposé which immediately followed it.

Today the school arranged an excursion to visit St. Paul de Vence, Vence and Tourrettes sur Loup.  We started at the Maeght Foundation museum in St. Paul de Vence.  We love it and have visited it several times before but we never tire of it.  It was of course raining today when we visited and very foggy.  Since many of the objets d’arts are outside, the fog gave them all (even the familiar ones) a wonderfully new feeling.  They had a new fountain with about 7 green men in it.  We loved it.  They have water coming out of every possible orifice and then some.  Here is a photo.

We did not particularly like the special exhibit that they had, but we love the permanent collection and all things Miro of which there are always many.

We then had time to walk around the medieval town of St. Paul de Vence.  It has tons of touristy shops but is still very beautiful.  We had lunch at the same restaurant we had lunch at a few years ago when we visited.  It was a great lunch.

We then visited the Matisse Chapel.  We have been there several times before, but you cannot help but being impressed and touched by its beauty.  The last stop on the excursion was another medieval town, Tourrette sur loup.  It is even more beautiful than St. Paul de Vence and far less touristy. 

Today was also sort of a break through.  One of the people at our table at lunch is from Switzerland, his first language is German, and he is much better in French than in English.  Consequently we spoke almost exclusively in French, and we seemed to be able to have a very fun and interesting discussion.  Normally by the time we have lunch at school my brain is so fried that I need the time to just zone out but today both of us felt good about our conversation.  We even continued to speak in French after lunch and on the bus ride home.  That was in part because the instructor who was with us sat near us.

Tomorrow, we are going to organize our class notes, do our homework and try to absorb what we have learned.  Since it is suppose to rain all day tomorrow as well, we will not be missing an opportunity to go on an adventure walk. 

More later,
Jane and the Unabashed Liberal

La lune au-dessus Villefranche-sur-Mer

Dear Friends,

There is not much to report today except that we are constantly reminded how beautiful it is here.  Today was slightly colder than yesterday since it only got up to about 56 degrees, but the sun was bright, strong and beautiful.  After school we went for a walk along the coast with a new friend.  Here is the view we got.

After the walk, we went shopping for dinner which resulted in a great dinner of carrots, fresh artichokes, mashed potatoes with mozzarella and tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, steak and wine.  Not a bad dinner for a Wednesday night.

Tomorrow we go to a nice restaurant with the Intermediate Fours and the Advanced groups.  We will try to sit with the other Intermediate Fours for obvious reasons.  It should be fun because we can lapse into English and hence really learn more about the other students.  They are fascinating.  

More later,

Jane and the Unabashed Liberal

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

Quelque chose intéressant

Dear Friends,

You would think that we would have had time to write on the weekend, but we were very busy and tired.

We left off looking forward to dinner at the school.  It was a very fun night, and we achieved celebrity status with many of the younger students and perhaps even some of the older ones.  As we all had anticipated, the buffet dinner was fantastic as you can surmise from these photos.

After dinner, the teacher in charge of the evening announced that the dancing would begin with some games.  Needless to say, that did not sound very good to us.  We did not participate much in the games but the young people seemed to have a good time, and they served their purpose of breaking the ice.  The music that was chosen was awful and one of the young people said about the music that "they managed to disappoint everyone".  Anyway we danced and a couple of the young people asked if we had taken dance lessons.  After a while it was dancing as a group and the group consisted mainly of the people that were in our section (the "Intermediate Fours").  We were of course the oldest by many years but even when it came time for each person to do a dance in the middle of the circle, we took our turns and the youngsters were really impressed.  It was as much that we would/could do it as what we did.  The Intermediate Fours declared themselves to be the best section in the school in all respects, and our teacher upon hearing our explanation of the evening (in French of course) this morning agreed with us.  In truth our shoulders were sore the next day.

Saturday, we took a tour of Villefranche-sur-mer arranged by the school.  It was a large group so it was split in two parts.  The real guide took the people who wanted to try the tour only in French.  We decided to stay in the other group that would hear the tour in some French and some English, since we wanted to actually learn something.  It was a great tour.  One of the highlights was a sculpture by Volti.  He lost his mother when he was very young, he was imprisoned for five years during World War II and his work thereafter is devoted to his mother and the importance of mothers.  

Since Villefranche-sur-mer is not Minnesota, we had lunch outside by the bay once again with eight of the other students.  Some were almost as old as we are and some were in their 30s and 40s.  Eating outside in the sun when it is 60 degrees and there is a little breeze is perfect.  The food was great also.  

Even with the wine at lunch, we spent part of the afternoon studying.  The intensity and pace of the course is very difficult for us.  The younger people can absorb material much faster than we can.  Reviewing, rewriting and organizing our notes was helpful.  We also quizzed each other.  

Since we had a big lunch as we do everyday, we eat in our flat and began our viewing of the first episode of the new season of Downton Abbey.  Since we had recorded it on our television at home we could replay it on our computer using Slingbox.  It seems like a miracle.  It takes quite awhile for the controls (pause, fast forward, etc.) to react and the picture is not the best but it works.  We were too tired to watch the full 2 hours so we stopped after about an hour.  We watched the other hour on Sunday night.  Slingbox is also permitting us to keep up with the news with Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow and starting tomorrow with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.  However, given that during the week we will be lucky if we have 30 or 45 minutes for the television, we will have to be disciplined about what we watch.  

On Sunday, we joined two classmates for a walk to the old Rothschild mansion that is now a museum with many gardens.  In reality it is about an hour walk but we took longer going because we kept meeting other students and would stop to talk (usually in English).  On the way back it took longer because we tried a new route to be closer to the sea (suggested by Dobby based on what one of our teachers had said).  It was a great route but it involved a part that was on a very rocky stretch of shore which then ran into a dead end and required us to retrace our step  (unsure as they were) over the rocky shore.  

The Rothschild mansion was built in the 30s as were the original gardens, both are spectacular.  We had lunch in the museum.  It was very leisurely and fantastic.

By the time we got home, it was time for dinner.  We did our homework, made our dinner and watched Downton Abbey before falling into bed worrying once again about our exposes.  As soon as we awoke this morning, we each began to look up words and write down phrases.  Jane had one of her back to school dreams.

Getting back into all French today was difficult.  First thing this morning, we listened to part of the morning news cast and then were supposed to discuss it.  We understood nothing except about the rumors of an affair by President Francois Hollande had caused his partner to be hospitalized.  Perhaps next weekend we will speak more French and less English.

Our teacher is very good.  She seems to know where each student is and challenges them where they are.  The younger students can progress as fast as they want and she gives them more complicated questions, etc. than she give us.  Her system works very well and everybody is getting better.

We had another expose today.  Rene, a young woman born and partially raised in Bulgaria and partially raised in Seattle who worked for a United States agency in Bosnia for four years, gave us a short history of the aftermath of the Bosnia war and her insights into how things are going now and what the future there holds.  It was very interesting.  She is not yet 40 and has done a lot of incredible things.

Tonight was not the pinnacle of our culinary exploits, we used up our leftovers by adding them to a cream of mushroom soup from Picard Surgeles.

  

We will leave you with that. 

More later,

Jane and the Unabashed Liberal