Category Archives: French

up, up and away

Posted in foreign food festival, French, travel by

new york to paris

Yesterday, within the space of ten minutes, I checked my Delta balance, found my 50,000 miles had been deposited, and booked a 10-day trip to Paris. While I was going through those motions, the rational part of me kept saying to myself, “Maybe this is worth thinking through a little more?” But the part of me that knows how often I paralyze myself by overthinking made a “talk to the hand” gesture and continued on its way.

So now I’m heading to France in mid-January, rather inexplicably. Originally I was going to jet off for the weekend but then I realized that if I’m going somewhere I may never return to, and using valuable miles to get there, I should make the most of it. I decided to tack on an additional weekend to go anywhere in France that my heart desired. I thought about heading south to try to get some sun but that seemed like a fool’s errand. Even the Riviera won’t be able to deliver in January. So I decided to choose my destination based on whichever place has the best food, because really all I want to do is eat as many fatty dishes and patisserie treats as humanly possible, wander beautiful streets aimlessly, and speak a ton of French.

That’s how I concluded that I should go to Alsace, home of choucroute, which appears to be the best invention in the history of gastronomy. According to this handy Buzzfeed article on the 44 French foods you must try before you die, it also boasts the origin of raclette, pot au feu, coq au vin, and boeuf bourguignon. (And now my mouth is watering.) None of the other regions of France look nearly as gluttonous.

This is probably because Alsace also appears to be the coldest region of the country. They have to eat all that fat to prevent frostbite. It’s rather counterintuitive of me to have misgivings about heading to a cold city for vacation only to beeline from there to the very coldest part of the country it belongs to, but I have decided that if you’re going to do winter, you may as well do winter. And look how beautiful winter in Alsace looks!

Marché_de_Noël_de_Colmar,_2005

a record-setting week

Posted in French, le week-end, learning tools by

taboo francais

Last night I left my work holiday party early to head back to FIAF for the second time in one week. This time it was for “Faites Vos Jeux” – game playing in French.

My love for board games knows no bounds. It is extreme and borderline obsessive. (When my sister introduced me to Carcassonne this summer I played so many times in a row that I started dreaming about tile placement and had to go cold turkey.) So the moment I heard about this monthly event I put it firmly on my calendar as a recurring appointment, though I wasn’t sure whether it would be more fun or work to play Taboo in French. It turned out to be both. I loved it.

So that’s four days out of five that I have spoken French – my best week yet. As I was walking home last night, a man moved out of my way on the sidewalk and without thinking I said to him, “Merci.” That’s immersion, baby!

On that note, the weekend feels well-earned. Have a good one! Til next week, I leave you with links:

I’m on an Argentine travel company’s mailing list and they sent me this delicious-looking traditional recipe.

Revamping the Louvre to lose that lost feeling

The New Japanese Masters of French Cuisine

français three ways

Posted in French, movies & tv by

CANARDCOUSCOUSETCETCETC

SUNDAY: At any given time, my ease with French varies wildly, with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Sometimes I’m faltering and incomprehensible, other times I’m confident and zippy. During my weekly Skype conversation with Philippe on Sunday, I was in my better mode, which I took as an encouraging sign (even though historically it has not indicated anything like linear progress).

MONDAY: The next day, I went to my weekly French Meetup and again, found myself able to warm up quickly and understand and speak a lot. I had what is probably my most high level, esoteric and interesting French conversation ever, with a neuroscientist from Nancy (in northeastern France), who is in New York to do a post-doc focusing on memory. I told him, fully in French, about an experimental film I had seen at the Whitney Biennial and then again at MOMA* that is actually more like a performance. The film is about a man who, as a result of a botched operation to relieve his epilepsy, lost all his long-term memory and can only remember the last 20 seconds of his life. Kerry Tribe specially designed the documentary to be screened through two side by side projectors. One reel of film runs on a loop between the two projectors so that the first screen shows the “present” moment in the film and the second screen shows the moment in the film 20 seconds prior. It’s such a creative and impactful way to tell the man’s story and beyond that, to convey a little bit of what it was like to live in his head.

The neuroscientist knew exactly who I was talking about even though I couldn’t remember his name (speaking of bad memory). He is Henry Molaison and apparently he is the most studied patient in the history of neuroscience.

He then told me, again fully in French, a rather tragic tale about another person whose brain injury was the first proof that damage to the frontal lobe can affect personality. Phineas Gage was a kind and upstanding guy until a freak accident blasted a piece of iron through his skull. He miraculously lived and at first seemed to make a full mental recovery, but then he started becoming a bit of a dick, to put it bluntly. His wife left him, he lost his job and he died penniless and alone. A sad story for Phineas, but a happy one for me because I actually understood it.

TUESDAY: I went to see Truffaut’s “The Man Who Loved Women” at the French Institute. It was the last of their CineSalon series, “The Art of Sex and Seduction,” and I liked it a lot…. though I tried to go “off-subtitle” and failed miserably. I gave up averting my eyes from the titles at about twenty minutes in and allowed myself to just enjoy the film without treating it as a learning exercise, but it was a little dejecting after two days of thinking I was actually getting somewhere.

Oh well, if it’s got to be this way I hope it’s at least two steps forward, one step back instead of the other way around.

*(where it is in the permanent collection – go see it!)

[Photo: Lisa T.]

 

the catchiest song ever

Posted in French, music by

Care of my brother, who plays it for my niece. I can’t wait til the day she attempts to sing along.

j’ai fait ma décision

Posted in French, le week-end by

rainforest

Got my new credit card in the mail, registered for the NYU Spanish class as my first purchase, and last night crossed the $1000 spending threshold that will trigger 50,000 miles to go into my Delta account some time in the next two to four weeks. That’ll bring me to just under 70,000 miles, enough to book a trip to Paris, should it still be available. (As of this morning there are plenty of seats left, because who in their right mind goes to France in January?) So now it’s a waiting game, and the cliffhanger remains… Will I or won’t I be eating crème caramel by the Seine in a month? Only time will tell.

As for this weekend… Some interesting reading and watching:

Trailer for the animated movie version of my favorite book, The Little Prince 

(I tend to think that children’s books all about the magic of imagination should not be turned into movies that do much of the imagining for you, but it does look beautiful.)

The White House turns an eye to study abroad

Completely unrelated to this blog, but awesome nevertheless – a 2014 mix tape!

Leadership skills multiply with language skills

This beautifully sums up the foreign language learning experience

And now I’m off to get a dose of greenhouse tropics at the botanic gardens – a kind of faux immersion in foreign climates, which I’ve come to find crucial to my sanity as winter descends. Have a good weekend!

[Photo: Ben Britten. Thanks also to Randy for the NPR tip and Jenny for The Little Prince tip!]

mon oreille

Posted in French, Spanish, travel by

ear sculpture

Tonight during my weekly French Skype conversation with Philippe, I said that if I did come to Paris this January, I would probably want to take a side trip to Alsace. He kept asking me to repeat myself because he had no idea what I meant. I said over and over again, “Alsace. Alsace. Alsace.” Finally he exclaimed, “Oh, Alsace!” I asked, “Isn’t that what I said?” Apparently the s in Alsace should be pronounced more like a z.

Immediately after my call, I headed to the laundromat to pick up my wash. I told Millie, the Latina woman who works there, that I was thinking about taking a Spanish class this spring and that if I did I’d start talking to her only in Spanish. Forgetting all about actual conjugation, I added, “Tratar,” which means, “to try,” though I intended to tell her, “I’ll try.” Millie kept asking me to repeat myself. I said over and over again, “Tratar. Tratar. Tratar.” Finally she exclaimed, “Oh, tratar!”

So there you have it. I can learn all the French and Spanish in the world but people are still going to have no idea what I am saying because my ear and my accent are so terrible.

Merde! (Another word I cannot pronounce correctly.)

(Photo: Colin Mutchler)

My own personal not-very-dramatic cliffhanger

Posted in French, Spanish, travel by

selfie in the parkMy new miles credit card arrived in the mail and I was thisclose to registering for the NYU Spanish class with it, but nagging doubts held me back. Is it completely stupid to begin studying one language when you are just getting the hang of another one? Will it confuse my brain and ensure I learn neither French nor Spanish effectively? Wouldn’t it be a more satisfying use of $500 to go on a vacation somewhere Spanish-speaking instead? Or to put the money into my savings account towards my immersion sabbatical? Do I have the discipline to attend three hours of class each week after eight hours at work? And will I actually put in the time to do any of the homework when I already spend two nights a week practicing French?

Then there are the misgivings about my nascent plan to spend my winter vacation in Paris. Why on earth would someone with seasonal affective disorder go to a place that’s even grayer and damper than the one where she lives? Shouldn’t sunshine and heat be on my agenda instead? Why would someone with limited funds go somewhere she has been before and did not feel the need to ever go back to? Is it not silly to spend my one week out of town in another humongous town, doing things that are the French equivalent of the same things I do back home?

Both decisions seem like they come down to one central question: Will I allow myself to embrace plans that are completely illogical simply because I really want to do them?

Stay tuned to find out…

(Photo: my most contented moment in Argentina, posted here to remind me that sometimes the best decisions are also the most random ones, made by an inscrutable heart.)

Post-thanksgiving Paris-centric links…

Posted in French, le week-end, travel by

French turkey

…because even on the most American of days I still had Paris on my mind:

A secret apartment in the Eiffel Tower

A fake Paris built to protect the real Paris

I googled “Paris January weather,” sure that the results would discourage me. Instead, I’m totally sold.

Avoir un merveilleux week-end, mes amis!

I love it when a plan comes together

Posted in French, travel by

blurred stars in parisAfter I went to see one of my favorite bands play in Williamsburg a couple of weeks ago, I told Philippe he should see them when they come to Paris in January. He had recommended Agnes Obel to me, and I liked her music a lot, so I thought I’d return the favor.

Well, somehow or other I started joking about jetting off to Paris for the weekend just to see the Stars show. And then somehow or another I started seriously considering it… And then I looked up the price of flights, reality checked myself, and went back to figuring out how to put my real January plan to take a Spanish class into action. I had heard about a 5-week course offered by Instituto Cervantes that would have been perfect in many ways, except that the 6pm start time would butt up against my work hours. I was searching for better options but I hadn’t found any.

Then today I came home to two pieces of mail that serendipitously fit together like pieces of a puzzle: the NYU Continuing Education course catalog, and the same Delta miles credit card offer I get on a monthly basis. I noted that NYU has a February – April intensive beginner’s Spanish class that starts at 6:45, costs less per hour than Cervantes, covers two semesters of Spanish in one, and provides a reason to leave the house all winter. Perfect.

I read the terms of the credit card offer and realized that if I put the class on my new card I’d be halfway towards earning the 50,000 miles they promise you’ll get after spending $1,000 on it within the first three months. If I hope and pray and wait for a post-holiday fare sale and then put a $500 Paris flight on the card (do $500 NYC-Paris flights still exist?), I’d get a $50 credit and end up with almost 70,000 Delta miles to my name, enough to go almost anywhere in the world for free for my next trip. Which would be really convenient in April, after I finish the Spanish class and want to reward myself with a week of immersion somewhere like Mexico City, or Valparaiso, or Southern Spain. Two trips for the price of one. Mucho perfecto!

I signed up for the card and I’m already fantasy packing my suitcase…

And listening to the people who inspired it all, on repeat:

(Photo by Ilhan Gendron of “blurry stars in Paris” – an appropriate choice for this post about my blurry plan to see Stars in Paris.)

Albertine

Posted in French by

Albertine bookstoreI visited the new bookstore in the French Embassy because a. it looked like a beautiful space – cozy and snug and perfect for escaping the frigid temperatures last week, and b. because I want to read in French for 15 minutes a day as a way to review grammar and vocabulary without opening up a textbook.

I asked the bookseller for a beach read because I figured I need simple language and an easy but engaging plot to overcome the boredom I’ll inevitably feel at moments when I lose the thread of what’s going on. Somehow I ended up instead with a translation of a Patti Smith short story collection. I understand every third word. Good thing the stories are about three pages each, so that by the time I get exasperated enough to abandon one, I’m already on to the next.

Once I’m done “reading” this book, I’m excited to go back to Albertine. It’s such a gorgeous space, and I already have my next book picked out: a young adult novel called “Dentiste Diabolique” that I spotted on my way out. Promises to be a much easier read. 🙂

(Photo: Albertine interior)