An Unfortunate Translation

One insult that we have in American English is to call someone a "douchebag," which comes from the fact that a douche in the United States is a feminine hygiene product. Unfortunately the word "doucher" is also the French verb for "to bathe," but I find that I never feel entirely comfortable using that verb as a description of something I do every day.

So I suppose it's incredibly immature, but we Americans always have to suppress a giggle when someone says during a class discussion about daily activities, "D'abord, je me douche." (Literal translation: First, I take a shower. Yet somehow that's not quite what I picture in my head!). Even more funny when a guy says it.

Email is down

Unfortunately, our gmail accounts have been (and still are) inaccessible for the past 3 days, so if anyone has been trying to contact us, that is why we have not yet responded.

In the meantime, there isn't too much to report here. We've both been studying quite a bit lately, although Ilia a bit more than me. Ilia is moving up to a higher level next week, and I may do so as well (she is already at a higher level, so we would still be in different classes). Ilia really likes her current teacher, and is jealous that I may get her next week. Although, I think that teacher gives too much homework -- Ilia spent quite a while yesterday working on an oral presentation, and she has quizzes every morning. I like my free time approach where I can read about stuff I like (i.e. le foot).

All in all, we are actually making really good progress right now. I finally feel like I can communicate most basic ideas, and hold a real conversation.

Buffy la Executrice du Vampire

I think we might have found the very best method possible for improving my comprehension--episodes of Buffy en francais. Since I practically know every episode word for word (in English of course), it's been very beneficial to watch the same episodes in French, which helps me get a better sense for how the French would say the same kinds of ideas. It's definitely not a word for word translation, but I'm starting to get an idea as to how people talk in certain situations--mostly those among the main characters of course. I doubt that it's really going to help me very much to know how one might interact with a vampire or an Incan mummy brought back to life.

We've also started renting the Star Wars movies and watching them in French as well, which has been equally helpful for both John and I. Interestingly enough, the dialogue in the first three prequels is actually less painful to hear in French than in English, perhaps because when they translated it to French they did so in a way that didn't sound completely forced and ridiculous (esp the scene in Sith: "It's only because I'm so in love with you." "No, no, it's only because I'm so in love with you!") Even the voice guy who did Jar Jar Binks wasn't nearly as annoying as the English version, which goes a long way toward making the first prequel much easier to watch. Actually the most impressive thing was that either James Earl Jones can speak a little French, or the French voice guy they found for Vader's voice in Sith is the French equivalent of James Earl Jones.

On a side note, French cell phones apparently don't automatically adjust to daylight savings time like American phones do, which John and I found out the hard way when we arrived to school this morning thinking we were right on time, when we were actually an hour late.

Que la force soit avec toi (May the force be with you).

Misc. stuff

Yesterday I finally found a free, downloadable french dictionary. For the mac. Here is the link for reference sake:
http://mac.softpedia.com/progDownload/MDict-Download-21370.html

Since we don't have internet at home, we are forced to use a real dictionary to look up words during our daily newspaper read. This tends to get extremely tedious for a beginner. The ability to have the laptop open, type in a word, and get an immediate definition is priceless. In addition, you can type in a french OR an english word, and it will give you the correct direction of translation. I think I may use this application even when I have internet, since it is lightning fast!

In other non-news, we've started using our kitchen a bit more now. We have been trying some of the great french produce, and so far it has been up to expectation. In particular, we liked the tomatoes, zucchini, bell peppers, and shallots. Also, the mache lettuce is very easy to find - not always the case in the states.

We need to start trying some of the fruits too!

Misunderstanding the French Language #1

Store Clerk: "Si vous achetez un gateau, le deuxieme est gratuit, et si vous achetez trois patisseries, la quatrieme est aussi gratuite."

What John thought: "There was a cat that touched all these pastries, so they're kind of gross but you can have them for free if you want."

Ilia: "Merci, mais nous voudrions juste une patisserie si'il vous plait."

John: "What was she saying about a cat?"

Ilia: "A cat...?"

John: "She was saying something about a gateau..."

Ilia: "Gateau means 'cake' not 'cat.'"

Actual translation: "If you buy one cake the second is free, and if you buy three pastries, the fourth is also free."

More Pictures

I've finally got some more pictures up. There are some of us eating, sites in Montpellier, trip to the beach, nightlife, and more!

More Photos

Soccer on the Beach

One of the big downsides of this language program is that students are constantly coming and going--some stay for a year, some for just a few months, and many just for a few weeks. So you make friends with all these people, and every week one or two of them take off back to their home country. It's really sad to say goodbye because you may never see this person again, after having had such a good time with him/her for the past several weeks. Such was the case with Benno, the first student whom we met when we got here, who had to return to Germany on Saturday. His last full day was Friday, and we made sure that it was a fun one.

After classes, we all headed off to the beach, which is only a half hour trip by tram and then bus. The water is way too cold to swim in during this time of year, but unlike the bay area water it actually heats up to a pleasant degree later in the summer. We were just getting ready to play some 4 on 4 soccer, when these random french guys (in really, really, ridiculously tight shorts) showed up and wanted to play as well. It turned out to be a pretty good game aside from the death shells which were scattered around the beach and caused a few minor injuries here and there. All in all in was pretty good exercise, because aside from walking absolutely everywhere we haven't been doing any real exercising. After the game we all sat on the beach drinking a few beers.

That night we all had dinner at a french (of course) restaurant in town. I had my "maigret du canard" which I've been dying to eat since we got here. Although to my complete dismay, they didn't have any creme brulee, and neither has any other restaurant that we've been to in France. I wonder if it's actually more common in the US than in France--I really hope not! After several hours at various clubs, we finally said goodbye at 4am, and then proceeded to sleep our entire Saturday away. It was definitely very sad saying goodbye to Benno, and I really hope that at some point in the future we'll have an opportunity to see him again. I am really glad that John and I are staying here for two months, but it is going to be hard saying goodbye to people all the time. Anyway, so long Benno, you will definitely be missed around here.

Pub Soccer

Last night we went to an Irish pub to watch some soccer. PSG, the team from Paris, was playing in a european tournament and the most obvious place to watch a game over here is at pubs. Most of the games are on premium channels, so you can't really avoid the smokey bar thing if you want to watch soccer. It's funny how almost every city in europe has an Irish pub - although people appreciate this particular ubiquity, unlike mcdonalds!
Anyhow, it is friday afternoon, class is out, and we are going to the beach! We will definitely post pics soon, from last week and this coming weekend.
-- One last thing: there is pretty much no way for us to watch march madness... however I suppose not much has changed for Stanford, as we managed to give up 46 points in the first half of our defeat yesterday.

All the way up to 30 degrees!

I think if you want to learn a foreign language, total submersion is definitely the way to go. I can't recall actually enjoying studying french in school as much as I am right now, what with the vibrant social nightlife among the other students, and the learning of all these French customs (both the good and the bad), along with being on what feels like an extremely extended vacation--I'm almost starting to think that we should have planned to stay in Montpellier for the entire 6 months. One thing that I've finally gotten used to is the 24-hour clock that they use over here, although I haven't gotten used to the whole celcius thing yet. Everytime someone enthusiastically talks about it getting up to the 30's I want to look at them like they're crazy or something. 30 degrees sounds pretty freakin cold to me, but it corresponds to something "really hot" in fahrenheit. I don't even want to get started on kilos vs. pounds, etc... No clue there.

One adjustment that both John and I have easily picked up, however, is the legality of drinking beers in the street. We're loving this total lack of an open container law, although the first night John walked out of our apartment with a beer I was certain he was going to be arrested (he wasn't).

Our french is getting much better, we can now almost have simple conversations with each other, and there's much less "uhhh....uhhhh..." going on when we speak. My instructor has taken to calling me "La Dictionaire," which is good from the standpoint that I'm getting better at French, but I'm not sure I like being the goody-two-shoes of the class.

Verbs in Python

The French language has 46 irregular verbs. For some reason I think this number is much higher than in Italian and Spanish, but I could be wrong. Regardless, I asked my teacher why so many seemingly important verbs (i.e. to be, to go, to have, etc.) are irregular, and his answer was that irregularity was caused by verbs being used all them time.

A light came on in my head - perhaps the irregular verbs, the ones beginners tend to avoid, are the best verbs to start with since they are the most commonly used -- normally I would want to stick to the easily conjugatable 'regular' verbs, and handle the exceptions later on. Realizing that French has 46 irregular verbs, I figured this would be a chance to use my ability to talk to computers to improve my ability to talk to French people. The following code snippet is part of my quiz program which should invoke a smile in all those python lovers out there (non-techies: python is a programming language):

verbEndings = [
['ais', 'ais', 'ait', 'ions', 'iez', 'aient'], # imparfait
['ai', 'as', 'a', 'ons', 'ez', 'ont'], # future
['ais', 'ais', 'ait', 'ions', 'iez', 'aient'], # conditional
['e','es','e','ions', 'iez', 'ent'], # subj
['sse', 'sses', 't', 'ssions', 'ssiez', 'ssent'], # imparfait subj
]
verbData = {
'avoir':
[
'to have',
['ai', 'as', 'a', 'avons', 'avez', 'ont'],
['eu', 'avoir'],
'av',
'aur',
'eur',
['aie', 'aies', 'ait', 'ayons', 'ayez', 'aient'],
'eu',
],
'etre':
[
'to be',
['suis', 'es', 'est', 'sommes', 'etes', 'sont'],
['ete', 'avoir'],
'et',
'ser',
'ser',
['sois', 'sois', 'soit', 'soyons', 'soyez', 'soient'],
'fu',
],
...

I've actually stemmed all 46 irregular verbs, which the program can conjugate into:

- present
- past participle
- imperfect
- future
- conditional
- present subjunctive
- imperfect subjunctive

I just realized that I left out the imperative tense. I had assumed this was a clone of the subjunctive, but I should have known better. Sigh, more work to do.

Internet

Life is hard without it. Right now, our only access to the internet is:

a) at the school
b) internet cafe
c) real cafe

The school is the best setup. They have a wireless network in the building with a very guessable password that they tell you. We are now eating our lunches in an empty classroom so we can check email and blog regularly. On weekends (and friday afternoons unfortunately) we are forced to venture elsewhere for internet -- I was wondering if we could just hover outside the closed school building, but our friend Benno said he tried that and it didn't work. This brings us to the next best option, the internet cafe. At 1 euro per hour, it's actually a pretty good deal. However, there our 2 major problems:

1) The French keyboard. Terrible. You have to use the shift key to type a period. M is somewhere weird, so you find 2 exceptions in typing '.com'
2) There's no way I am going to log into a bank account on a public computer. Bad Idea.

The third option is actually quite nice, albeit expensive. Many cafes in public squares offer internet access for their patrons. Downside is that you have to buy a drink, which is at least 3 euros. Not a bad thing if you were going to go cafe-ing regardless, but in terms of internet alone it is expensive.

Les SDF

One of the problems we've been encountering in Montpellier over this past week has been the constant need to watch the ground when we walk down the street in order to avoid stepping in the many piles of dog poo (or as the French refer to it, "les dejections canines" which sounds much more civilized). Apparently there is a 100 Euro fine if the police catch you failing to clean up after your dog, so I have been wondering why there could possibly be so much poo all over the streets if there is such a hefty fine.

The other thing that I have noticed in Montpellier is that for a city of such small size, there is a disproportionately large number of homeless people, especially compared to San Francisco which has no shortage of homeless. The difference is that SF has about just under a milion inhabitants, whereas Montpellier has somewhere around 240,000 people. I think without exception, every single homeless person that I have seen in Montpellier has been accompanied by a dog and sometimes several dogs. Given the large number of homeless people (or the SDF--personnes Sans Domicile Fixe as the French refer to them--in the US we call them BUMS), who obviously cannot pay a 100 Euro fine when the police see them with their dog droppings, it finally dawned on me that all the poo in the streets is from all the SDF dogs.

Apparently the reason there are so many SDF in Montpellier is because it is the only city in the south of France to have a law that if someone has a dog with them, they cannot be arrested. Dogs cannot be left unattended, so all of the SDF get dogs (and subsequently leave their poo in the street) so that they can carry drugs or whatever without fear of being arrested by the police. In essence, Montpellier has all the bums from Nice, Marseille, Toulouse, etc... so needless to say there is quite a lot of dog poo that one has to watch out for.

Many cities in Europe have had this same law in the past, but few still have it. John commented that he recalled seeing many dogs with bums in Italy (esp. of the rotweiller looking type), even though they probably don't have this law. Even though this law no longer exists (except in Montpellier), many European bums still own dogs as it has now become part of their "culture."

Anyway, I'm just wondering how long it is going to be before I accidentally step in a big pile of "merde."

Working the Brain

We didn't have much to add on Thursday, just the usual school and such, which has been sucking out most of our energy lately. The early phase of learning a new language is very demanding and you have to think hard to say just about anything. Neither of us are anti social, but it can be quite annoying when another student tries to speak to us in French during one of our breaks--it's kind of like someone walks up to you and politely asks, "Hey, what's the square root of 655?" You literally feel physically exhausted after these lessons sometimes.

Trying to fit in with our 20-year old friends, we did go to another house party last night, although came home before midnight this time. There's definitely a group forming here of german, mexican, swedish, italian, and swiss. At one point in the night it was literally a cacaphony of english, spanish, italian, german, and swedish echoing through this tiny apartment. Ironic that no french could be heard, despite the fact that we're all here to learn it.

On the food front, we're pretty much eating stuff from grocery stores and haven't hit any restaurants yet. Perhaps this weekend would be a good time!

Avec le Smile

We started off last night with dinner at Josienne's, where we were treated to an authentic home cooked French meal. I still have a lot of trouble understanding Jean-Jacque, but John impressed everyone with his ability to string together several complete sentences as opposed to absolutely nothing two days ago.

One of my homework assignments earlier this week was to list three cultural differences between the US and France, and I think after going to the Australian bar last night I should have enough material to complete my assignment and then some. John and I were expecting the Austrialian bar to be full of Austrialians, but apparently it's just the theme of the place. We definitely felt extremely American, as it was evident that our "going out" clothes were not nearly as chic as the European styles--more so in John's case, as it seems that he will have to start buying clothes two sizes smaller in order to fit in properly. Other than the clothes, however, we almost could have been in any American bar circa 1970/1980. Apparently music from the 70's and 80's is very popular over here--and going out on a Tuesday night is very popular over here as well considering how packed this place got. I was very impressed, actually, that everyone can go out until 2am on a Tuesday night. I guess Montpellier really is a college town! I found it amusing that we went from 70's/80's music to contemporary American rap, to classic American rock, and then to some pretty hard core techno. The bar was closed out to Frank Sinatra's New York, New York, and by 3am we were finally back at our apartment.

More Photos Here

John had some misgivings about the men's bathroom, however:



Don't get too close to that wall!

Also, if anyone is interested, you can dress up like a superhero and come to the Australian bar on March 14... avec le smile (with a smile):

Pictures up

We've posted some pictures of our apartment as well as some from the city center.

Apartment

City

Tonight we are having dinner at Josienne's house with Jean-Jacque and Benno. Afterwards we are going to some australian bar with a bunch of other students, where we will hopefully see some champions league soccer.

Our french is getting better, enough so that we can now understand our teachers, although buying our cell phone yesterday proved to be quite a challenge, involving a lot of pointing and "pardon?". It is difficult because French has a lot of words that are strung together for phonetic reasons, and it takes some time to get used to decoding these continuous sounds into individual words.

Fresh Eggs and Choc'n Crisp

Last night we got to know our landlords, Mr. Martorell and Josienne, as well as another ILP student Benoh (sp??) from Germany. Mr. Martorell doesn't speak any English at all, so most of our conversations with him consist of rapid-fire French followed by us nodding our heads as though we understand. In fact, in one of our first conversations with him, we were able to divine that he is from Algeria but has lived in Montpellier since 1993--we're not sure if he left because two Algerians tried to kill him or whether he killed two Algerians. We like the former better. Anyway, he brought us fresh eggs in the morning from some chickens that he keeps, although we have no idea where he keeps these chickens. Either way, this morning we ate Choc'n Crisp cereal instead. We also bought our first bottle of French wine, for a mere 4 euros. It's from the Languedoc region, which is where Montpellier is.

Our first class went well--John and I are in different levels but both of our classes are very small. He only has one other student in his class, so he gets a lot of one on one time with his instructor. I have five other students in my level, and we all seem to understand about 50% of what our instructor says as the class is entirely in French, but both John and I were pleased with our first day and feel that the classes are going to be extremely beneficial. We've made friends with a group of students from several different levels and several different countries. I guess not surprisingly they all speak English, so we haven't been conversing with them in French so far. Although since English is the only common language among all of us, I suppose it's the easiest to use for everyone. We all ate lunch together at the University cafeteria (the real university, not ILP), which is only 5 euros but the food was not as exquisite as I had imagined all French food to be. Still, it was fun to see a french college lunch.

So far John has been finding the pronunciation and the adjoining of certain words to be a major obstacle for both speaking and comprehension, but I think he is doing better than he thinks. He can read French pretty well, and I don't think it will take him long to figure out the pronunciation once he gets used to it after a few weeks. Starting next week, we're going to try to speak to each other only in French as much as possible (but we'll keep blogging in English).

John is going to set up a slideshow online for us to post all our pictures, so tomorrow after class we will post a link to that.

A bientot!

Arrival in Montpellier

Ilia and I with our new landlords (Josienne and Jean-Jacque) and a german student.

Posting from the school where we have finally found a wireless internet connection.
More after class.