Today I gave a French-English exchange group a second try. The first try didn’t really go the way I’d expected. Not because my French was so lacking, but because the group I ended up in was steered by a woman with a big French-English dictionary and a bunch of grammar questions. BOOR-ING. I can do that in my French lesson.
I want to talk.. to converse… to try to carry on something that resembles a conversation in French, even if the sentences are lucky to contain verbs and the subject matter is what foods I like.
I returned today, determined to get into a group that had the same goals as I did. At least, I avoided the grammar woman. I mean, I’m obsessed with grammar but if you don’t know any of the words to say well the grammar doesn’t mean merde.
There were four of us: two Americans and two French. Well, one woman is Swiss but from the French speaking part and she has lived in France for something like 20 years. So for the purpose of dividing up by language, she’s French.
The topic was simple enough: Qu’ais tu fait ce week-end?
The other American tended to a sick child.
The Swiss woman just worked around the house.
I wowed everyone with my tales of skiing. Je suis tombe, je suis tombe, je suis tombe. Then they told me how to say I am sore. I can’t remember. Too bad, it’s a useful thing to know. J’ai un corps something… ah I have to look it up. (endolori, according to google is sore.) I told them that I think there is ice on top of the snow at Chamrousse. (not below the snow. The two words sound similar, so this was a big accomplishment) And I explained how my husband went both days and he said there were plus de personnes dimache que samedi. That one earned me a correction on the pronunciation of plus. Sometimes you say the s, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you feel like you can speak some French, sometimes you don’t.
The French woman had the best story. Remember, she told us all this in French and I understood. She threw a party for 50 guests at her home Saturday because her husband who is in the medical branch/field/area of the military was just promoted to general. Her friends couldn’t believe it because her husband never talks about work. He is a researcher. He is researching bio-terrorism. Preventions and cures. She explained the lengths they go to to keep the germs contained. Still, should I be at all concerned that this research is going on so close to Carrefour?
Je ne sais pas.