The Trail's Our Thing

This week each of the five of us are to make a short presentation to the rest of the class on some subject that interests us. We’ve each taken a day. Karl-Heinz led off the week and talked about the area in western Germany where he is from. He talked for about five minutes and then we all asked questions. He did well. I could understand about half of what he had to say; I have no idea whether the half I missed was due to his speaking or my understanding. Tomorrow Lydia will talk. We aren’t allowed to write a speech and read it, but we can organize notes and speak from notes. Lydia said she started working on hers over the weekend. I’m going on Thursday, and I plan to talk about the Luberon. I’ve asked if I can show some photos too.

Our class worked hard today. We spent the first half hour talking about what we did over the weekend. Christine, our teacher, told about her weekend too. Then we went over our homework. The homework involved some exercises using the imparfait—a type of verb tense to use with a description or to apply to something that happened over an extended period of time. So we read and talked about sentences like this: “Maintenant, je parle beaucoup, mais avant je parlais très peu.” (Translation: Now, I talk a lot, but before I talked very little.) We divided into two groups and wrote captions to go with a series of cartoons about a man whose wife had just left him. For each picture, we were supposed to write one sentence about what the man did and one sentence about how he felt, demonstrating the use of the passé compose and the imparfait. I worked with Karl-Heinz. Here's what we wrote about one of the pictures: “Pierre s’a broussé les dents. Il etait très fatigué.”

Christine gave us a list of 14 questions related to travel (voyages). We read all the questions, which included a lot of new vocabulary. Then we each had to choose a question and discuss our answer with the class. I talked about my dream trip if time and money weren’t any object. (I talked about our family’s grand tour of Europe, a dream that we’ve already had.) The others—all European—didn’t have the same dream trip as me. Europe isn’t a dream trip for them. They want to go places like Thailand, Tahiti, Morocco, and Alaska.

We also finished our last vocabulary assignment related to careers and professions. How do you ask people about their work? How do you answer questions describing what you do? For example, I learned that I don’t say “Je suis un professeur.” (I am a professor.) Instead I say “Je suis professeure.” I don’t know why exactly you leave out the “un” (“a”), but you do. And like most jobs, professor has a male and feminine version, so I’m “professeure” instead of “professor.” Voilà!

I found the vocabulary work on careers and professions very interesting as there seem to be very distinct classifications here in France. There were lots of examples relatd to “artisans” and “commerçants.” These are skilled trades and small business owners. There’s the male boulanger and his female equivalent, the boulangère. We talked about butchers and people who run bookshops and those who own little grocery stores, farmers and winemakers, doctors and hair stylists… the types of people I saw at the party in Bonnieux last night. Although there are many large corporations in France and of course the dreaded government workers (“les fonctionnaires”), some part of France still seems to revolve around the small businesses that support daily life in the cities, towns and villages. This is an aspect of the French culture that I like very much. At home I don’t think at all really about the butchers and bakers and farmers. I don’t even know any. And most of the waiters and waitresses I come in contact with are students passing through—not people who are waiting tables as a career. Here in France I feel much more connected to the heartbeat of the community.

This week and next week I’m going to take some private lessons. I want to make more progress in my French in the time I have, and I really need this more than time for sightseeing, excursions and enjoying the leisurely life at the Carrefour Bar. I told the woman at the office at the IS school that I felt like I was behind most of the rest of my class, that there was so much I couldn’t understand. I felt better when she said, “Everyone feels that way. They all feel that everyone else understands and they don’t.” But I do want to work harder and to have the one-on-one coaching from a teacher.

My afternoon lessons are Wednesday and Thursday. So I'll savor my leisure times the next two days, here at the Carrefour Bar.