FRENCH WORD-A-DAY

Joyeux Noel, tout le monde!

Kristi Darling,

Is that your sweet voice I hear on the audio file? Could you possibly also speak an entire paragraph some time so I can I can totally imerge myself into your French
accent. I wish you would put a seperate sound file of some conversation between you and Max, Jackie, and Jean-Marc. If you don't
think your readers would be interested in this, why can't you send me audio files personally. I would love this for Christmas. I would have loved hearing your conversation with Max on the stairwell.

XOXO

JULES

Ah Kristin, Welcome to the "jerry-rigged" life (is there a French equivelent for the expression "jerry-rigged?). I recently learned a phrase from the blog "L'etrangere American" that describes our household projects to a T. It is l'usine a gaz = A solution to a problem that is more complex than the problem itself. As in...This year we DID finally buy an artificial tree..simple, n'est pas. Well, we had to raise it off the floor to steady it. Could my husband simply purchase a plank of wood of the proper dimensions to fit underneath at the local hardware? Mais non! He'd rather spend 2 hrs. scouring our garage for errant pieces of wood and 'jerry -rig' them together to make a platform. Many choice curse words were exchanged...wish I had saperlipopette in my vocab that day!
Alernatly we have used pennies to steady rattling grates,quarters to hold toilet innards in place and duct tape for just about everything else. Ahlors, I can relate!

Kristin: Can we get a picture of your poor Mistral-whipped tree? Happy Holidays from Nolensville, Tennessee!

Kristin
Can you recommend a French language school in France? I would like to travel to France sometime this year specifically to study the language. Thank you.

LeAnna - back in the day, I studied in France for a year in Strasbourg. It was a program specifically for foreigners coming to learn French. Here's the link:

http://u2.u-strasbg.fr/iief/

Kristi...I love reading the comments from Jules! She is too funny. It was great to read the one from your dad as well. I agree with Jules...it would be fun to hear your whole family at once having a conversation. Or here's an idea...you could all sing a chorus of something Christmas-y. Merry Christmas to you all!

If anyone wants to study le francais in France, and is interested in the lifestyles of the French, home study programs are the way to go. 5 enrollments in 5 different home intensive study programs resulted in 4 very enriching experiences.

My present (much younger) wife of 22 years is the most visually fussy and particular person I have known. Selecting our Christmas trees began as a cooperative venture but after a number of trips involving endless rejections of my suggestions and all too long times for my Cherie to select un sapin that met her criteria, my cooperation was drasticaly reduced to putting up the tree where Nancy wanted it and turned (not once -- more like 5 0r 6 times) to satisfaction. It is not only fair but superbly deserved to add that when Nancy finishes decorating the tree plus doors, windows, tables. and furniture she has created an absolutely beautiful Christmas home. I have one more job -- rigging wires etc. to enable one switch to turn on the tree lights and as many window candle lights as possible, also putting candle lights in every window in the other rooms of house, fortunately a one story building.

Great post! At the risk of being pedantic, wouldn't a "sèche chausettes" really be a sock dryer? Dry socks would translate as "chausettes sèches", n'est-ce pas?

"Pauvre Sapin"!... long and horizontal like a Boeing 747! set for take off!? "Drôle de Sapin"!
Hit by a “coup de mistral”? ... feels a bit painful!
"Brave petit sapin"!

We've had that problem before, and here is our solution: fill up a bucket of sand -- “sharp” sand (coarse sand) from local builders merchant is the best. Fix the tree roughly in the middle of it, at a pleasing angle (!), use bits of bricks, stone, or whatever you've got to reinforce the base. Make sure it's firm all the way around it. Do anything you fancy to disguise the bucket, cover the top with pine cones or anything "local". At the bottom, we always have plenty of pine cones of all sizes... and we put the presents in between them (whether the tree is “de guingois” or not!)

What a lovely opportunity to introduce “de guingois”... more musical to my ears that the simple “de travers”, and as picturesque as "de traviole"! I was wondering whether you learned the expression when you started to restore your very old farm house. (you must surely have a few charming walls “out of square”, haven't you?..)

I know a very dear old French lady (dead now) who would have said your tree was “assis sur le quart d'onze heures!” Imagine the short hand on 11 and the long hand on 3. Got it?

I think your Xmas tree seems to belong to the nursery rhyme where a crooked man used to live in a little crooked house! It is, I am sure, a "Sapin Merveilleux", whatever its shape, worth to be celebrated as King of the Forest.
"Mon beau sapin, roi des forêts,
que j'aime ta verdure"...........

Kristin,

Thank you so much for your posts. I have your site tied to google so as soon as I click on my Internet Explorer icon, up pops a new word. I'm giving my children (ages 4 & 2) the gift of French as best I can for a gal who has had only highschool and college French so your site has definately come in handy. I was reading Fred's post above and it gave me the idea to ask for or advertise for bringing a little more French to San Diego. It is always great to have someone come stay with us for a while to share culture and speak French. This is something we normally reserve for the summer months for the EF program, but would you keep me in mind if you know of anyone or run into anyone (of high character of course) who would like to live with us for a few months, free room and board, in exchange for sharing of languages? If you can see my private e-mail, please e-mail me when you get a chance.

Thanks, Christie

P.S. I second the request in your Mother's post! :)