Our classmates this week were the same group as week 2--sweet woman from Japan (Eri), a quiet man from Japan (Hiroyshi), an earnest woman from Germany (Marion), and a fun loving German man currently living in Switzerland (Tomas)--plus the first other American we've seen (Lisa), and a studious Korean girl ().
In class at the French in Normandy school, we studied:
- review of comparisons for nouns, adverbs, adjectives (more than, less than, better): plus...que, moins de..que, mieux, etc
- construction of conditional phrases (If...)
- vocabulary for housing terms, including rental abbreviations
- sentences with present tense plus future simple constructions
- how to do superlatives (the best, the worst, etc)
- listening for numbers, dates..and to "La-bás"
Instruction is all in French. In class, we joke around in French...or in whatever language is lying around. Sometimes it's pantomime. In any case, we all like to laugh...especially to the point to where teachers from other classes come by to find out what all the ruckus is about....
- We were going over the French words for the fingers on the hand (thumb, index, etc): Tomas demonstrated the difference between the pinky finder and "der stinky finger". Unfortunately, he also demonstrated it to the class next door, who had no idea what was going on.
- When asked if she had any children, Lisa said no because she wanted to learn French first. I replied it wasn't necessary to know French to make a baby ("N'est pas nécessaire de parler français pour faire un bébé"); she got satisfyingly pink!
- Our teacher was fond of saying "merde" and our classmates demonstrated how to say it in their respective languages-Japanese, Korean, and German. It sounds suprisingly sweet coming from a little Japanese woman...
- During break, I described a little about "Drink and Sing" to my Dutch classmate: we agreed that a little Jameson's "scrubbed the throat" to make singing sound better...
- After hearing the song "La-bás" by Jean-Jacques Goldman (YouTube) in an exercise where we had to listen to the song and fill in missing words, David and I began singing "Blah blah. Le chanteur, il a chanté blah blah..." (Blah blah. The singer, he sang blah blah....)
- For superlatives, I created a photo slideshow to demonstrate what Seattle was famous for...including the worlds longest floating bridge, the 2009 record number for most zombies, and the 2000 implosion of the world's largest thin-shelled dome (Kingdome) to create the worlds largest structure implosion by volume
- We briefly discussed eating dog in Korea, and horse in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Japan
Pretty similar to week 2. Class, eat, nap, errands and/or walking around, studying, sleep!
When looking at a French menu, you might see the following:
- steak à cheval
- steak de cheval
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