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