Last week was busy with school, which I'm still finding difficult but good. We discuss French culture and our own cultures - in the class now we have a Norwegian, Korean, Chinese and Swiss, and the English Lily and me. We talked quite a bit about French music last week, and then listened to a Serge Gainsbourg song to try and decipher some of the words. We do that exercise most days to help our listening - sometimes it's beyond frustrating, and I have to remind myself that I often fail to understand what singers in English are on about. We got a bit of Gainsbourg history, how important he is here. There's an exhibition on at the moment all about him, which I'd like to go and see.
There is often an environmental/social slant to our lessons. Our teacher plays us quite a lot of songs about the deterioration of the environment which paint bleak portraits of our future world, with devastation by rampant "les ouracanes" and "les tremblements de terre". Today we discussed the dangers of mobile phones, and I learned a lot about what I'm doing wrong with them. So my alarmist vocab is coming on a pace - if you need a dire warning about something in French, look no further than moi!
Yesterday I had a very French day. After school we had a visit to see a French film called "Musee haut, musee bas" at a cinema in Bastille. The film was about a day in a museum, the different visitors and people working there, and things going wrong... I think. Our teacher had said the cast was a role call of all the famous French actors at the moment, and indeed I recognised four, three from having seen Amelie. It appeared to be a comedy, but I only know this because the very full audience was absolutely cracking up every three minutes. Watching or listening to comedy you can't understand is a weird feeling.
I had to slip out 5 minutes early in order to have a French haircut! This is very similar to our English haircuts, except you have to explain what you want in French. Since I'm utterly quivering in every hairdresser and usually only nod mutely when they affirm that what would suit me would be 'the wet look' or 'bigger' this actually didn't make much difference to me in the end. I'd looked up the words for 'shorter', 'darker' and 'frizzy - bad', and I'm very happy with the result! A new haircut was just what I needed.
This area has some illustrious past inhabitants. Descartes lived a few doors down from us, and further along Hemingway had a flat. So this is a pretty sharp road to be on. We also went for a short walk to find the house where Gertrude Stein lived, and Richard has ordered her cookbook from Amazon.
On Saturday we found a super local supermarket, a Champion, and learned that Saturday is seriously not the day to go food shopping. Many, perhaps most, supermarkets are shut on Sundays and Mondays, so there was a bit of a siege feeling. Next to the fruit and veg section there was a speaker playing loud soothing sounds of birds in the rainforest. Perhaps that is where people get the most mental - also the leafy vegetables maybe help you believe you are really in the depths of the jungle.
**Thoughts about French celebrities**
A phenomenon, if that's not too strong a word, has been dawning on me during the last month. I kept noticing posters advertising French films and plays and comedies and thinking "he looks exactly like a thin hairless Robin Williams" or "that man is the spitting image of Jeremy Irons (shudder)" or "but for the teeth that would be Billy Bob Thornton". I wondered before in the UK, what if you are a great actor but look just like Kate Winslet, for example, will you get anywhere, or is there no place for you? And I think if you are British but look like a famous American actor, say Tom Cruise, that still might rule you out. But perhaps here, where the films are mostly going to reach a different audience, you can have a whole other set of Winslets and Cruises and it doesn't matter! Or, from a more Francophile point of view, the Winslets and Cruises are in fact just copies of famous French actors. It's been really noticeable.
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3 comments:
What an interesting blog - really enjoyed it, although it hardly seems worth learning French if all words are as easily identifiable as 'les orricanes' and 'les tremblement de terres'! It sounds very intensive and good - I do suggest going to see movies - perhaps not comedy and perhaps dubbed American - it helped me learn Italian in a pleasurable way all those years ago. On the other hand, it sounds as though the course keeps you too busy - you are getting your money's worth! Please tell Richard I expect him to perfect the art of Hash Cookies of Alice B Toklas, which I assume are in the cookbook he has ordered. Xmas is coming up hint hint. It feels as though you are definitely getting into the culture, with your observations about similarities and different focuses. Do you get the feeling yet that French people are more intellectual - they are not embarrassed to discuss intellectual things, in fact they pride themselves on it. Well, that is my observation from the very outside. The interesting thing about living in America when I was in my late twenties was that I was able to observe a very foreign culture - perhaps more foreign than France - but could speak the language. On the other hand, if I'd been in France I would have had to learn the language as you are doing and which seems such a good thing. It makes one feel floppy to think of you doing something as rigorous as you are doing - will you write an exam at the end? Loved your description of having a French haircut and it would be lovely to see a pic! Thanks for super blog!
PS Are you dreaming in French yet?
i am enjoying your stories and drawings very much!
and oui! show me your french hair cut!
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