J’ai passé un examen français

Oui, c’est vrai. Il y a quatre jours, samedi matin, j’ai pris mon examen de français à Wayville Showgrounds. Je pense que j’ai fait bien. Ce n’était pas trop difficile pour moi et je suis très heureux que ce soit fini.

Plutôt la semaine prochaine, mercredi, j’ai pris mon examen oral de français. C’était un peu plus difficile. Cet oral est un dialogue entre deux étudiants qui peuvent l’écrire et le pratiquent avant l’examen. Mais, parce que il y a un nombre impair d’étudiants dans ma classe, j’ai choisi de passer mon oral avec mon professeur seul. Je ne l’ai pas écrit et ne l’ai pas pratiqué. Ainsi, l’oral était plus difficile que pour les autres étudiants. J’ai dû improviser l’exercice et c’était une expérience angoissante. Mais je pense que j’ai fait assez bien aussi. J’attends mon résulte avec plaisir anticipé.

And in that other language:

Four days ago, Saturday morning, I took my exam for French. I think I did rather well. The test wasn’t very difficult for my level and I’m pretty happy that it’s done. I also just looked up what a subjunctive is for that last sentence in French to find out that I needed ce soit in place of c’est after the que. That’s interesting.

Earlier last week, Wednesday, I had my oral exam for French. That was a bit more nerve racking than the written exam. This oral is a dialog between two students who can pre-write and practice it before the exam. But as there are an odd number of students in my class, I chose to take my oral just with the teacher. So I did not have to opportunity to pre-write or practice, making the test harder than for the other students. I had to improvise the whole test as I only had a sheet of vague notes of what I was going to talk about that I handed to the teacher just before we started. However, I think that I did rather well for that one also. I’m waiting for the results to be rather good, I hope.

J’ai quelque chose à dire ?

Bonjour tout le monde. Depuis environ deux ans j’étais enseignant moi-même le français et il y a quatre mois je commençais l’étudier à la université. Alors, je décidais commencer écrire en français en mon blog. C’est le premier post et je ne sais pas ce que je veux écrire. Peut-être salut seulement ! Au revoir et à bientôt.

Aussi, si quelqu’un peux me corriger quand je commette une faute, je vous en prie.

A farewell and a re-acquaintance

Today we got up early and to head off to Adelaide airport. No, no, we weren’t getting onto a plane ourselves, though it was tempting. We were there to see my Mum off on her three month world tour. Yes indeed, she is going round the world in probably just a bit more than eighty days.

So we were down at the airport. The weather was grey, chilly and slightly wet, so of course, being in an airport in that weather, I thought of Scotland. And England. Having been to airports in both countries and almost always in that kind of weather, the parallel practically drew itself.

An interesting thing about the Adelaide airport is just how much many people we know don’t like it. When it was built there seems to have been quite a lot of complaints about the style and facilities. I would have to say though, speaking as a seasoned international traveller, the airport is really quite nice. It’s definitely on par to most of the modern airports I’ve been through recently. Stansted, Hong Kong, Charles-de-Gaul, Glasgow International. They all have the same cool but not cold, high and airy feel that is never claustrophobic.

The only criticism I would put forward is that it’s perhaps a bit small. For a city of around 1.5 million people, and one that wants to attract more direct international flights, it was, I believe, built to only handle the capacity it was already managing. But that is a small point really. Well, that and the fact that the facilities only accept Australian dollars. I wouldn’t mind being able to spend my spare euros/pounds/yen that I have left over from my travels there and I’m sure others would too. But still, a minor point as well.

So anyway, we sat at the airport with my Mum and my brother Joseph and had a chat for a while, had coffee and cake and things from Cocolat, a very nice chocolate, cake and other things shop with branches around Adelaide. We chatted about the upcoming trip and where she would be staying. She’s heading off to a stopover in Singapore first, then to London for a week or so, then to Paris, then Lourdes, then somewhere north of Paris, back to London, to Scotland (in and around Glasgow) then to Seattle to visit my brother Peter, another stopover somewhere or other in the Pacific, then back home to Adelaide. Whew! All up, just under three months.

When she finally set off to get ready to board and we did the traditional looking at planes with the kids bit, we headed off out. Since we were all the way out at the Airport, a not too small deal for people without cars, we thought we’d notch up another bird by heading out to see … IKEA!

Well it was not quite the massive excitement it must have been for the others, because I had come down to see it in the first few weeks we were back. I went down with Joe to look at shelves or something. Well to tell you the truth, the others didn’t really have quite the enormous thrill I may have indicated either. It is just Ikea after all.

Don’t get me wrong though, Ikea is rather great. It is probably somewhere I imagine we will be buying all sorts of stuff from in the future. What is rather impressive about it though, is that all the stores, within some small margin, are rather identical. Plus I really like their meatballs and their coffee is good. Not to mention the fact that they stock all kinds of cool northern European snacks and Diam Chocolate!

So we wandered and wondered at the sameness of it all. We bought a small present for a friends two year old whose birthday we were going to on the weekend. We bought a small, ceramic, kids crockery set (very cute, we have one for our own guys). Then we had some food at their restaurant, got some snacks to go (and I got a one dollar hotdog!!) and then we headed home.

Rain, chill and grey. Airports and Ikea. Hmm, I really do miss Scotland!

Pleasant wanderings

Yesterday was a nice day. Since it was pay day, a glorious day when you’re on a lower income, we went into town and bought a fresh juice from Boost Juice (we’re VIP members) then we went to an appointment for Annmarie and then off to Glenelg. Glenelg is a nice beach spot in Adelaide that I think I’ve mentioned before.

We then went and had lunch at my Mum’s house. I made some home made a couple of pizzas using pre-made organic dough from a company called Riviera which we bought from a local supermarket. I must humbly say that the pizzas were rather fantastic, especially now that we’ve learned that ideally the dough should be left to rise before use, something they should probably put on the label (and which hopefully they haven’t and I just didn’t notice it, which would make this statement rather embarrassing for me).

We had a nice lunch out under mum’s back pergola and chatted about her upcoming trip to Paris and Parisian markets. She has bought a rather good book on it called Paris in a Basket. This lists by arrondissement many of the better street and covered markets both food and flea. We had a look through it and found the markets we had visited while we were there.

After lunch we went for a walk down to the beach and on the way we stopped at our favourite organic shop in Adelaide, The Organik Store on Broadway. The people there are always really nice and friendly and they have good range of organic products. A lot of it is imported so it can be a bit pricy, but the products they stock are very good so usually if we can afford it, it’s worth it. We picked up some of the essentials we had run out of and continued down the beach and back to Glenelg.

At Glenelg we stopped off at a cafe (Cibo of course, where else would one go) and had a coffee while the sun set over Mosley Square. You can see a photo of it over on the right. The photo is from the Cibo tables looking back over the square back towards the beach.  Very nice day. Now back to study…

Pique-nique de Pâque dans le Parc

Hello all. We finally have our own Internet connection, so now maybe posting regularly could be a reality. Of course I am very busy with study and my “crazy projects” so I’ll just have to see what happens. Unfortunately we only have dial-up, so I now have to come to terms with being back in the slow lane after hitching a high speed ride with my brother for several months while we were staying at my Mum’s house. Thanks for that by the way mon frère.

We’ve settled into the new house nicely in the main. The wiring is a bit dodgy and the light bulbs seem to blow far too often and the plumbing has needed a bit of a look at as well as a couple of other little things. But other than these small issues, it is quite a nice house a good price. Two bedroom and two story, although I think I have already mentioned that. Nice small back yard with some big trees and some big trees out the front too.

Over the summer, which hasn’t been too hot, though the temperature did bump up a wee bit, the house has stayed very cool indeed. This is in part because of the house being made from proper solid brick instead of the paper thin varieties of plaster board and thin brick veneers that most houses these days seem to be made from. So the house has retained a cool, fresher air than one of those houses. It’s quite a relief when one gets back in from a warm day to meet that natural coolness. We’ll have to see if the house keeps warm in the winter though, that can sometimes be a problem with these houses where they feel like an ice box in winter and need constant heating.

I’ve especially been enjoying having an upstairs mini-balcony just off the main bedroom. We have developed a tendency to sleep with the main door open and the screen door locked. It’s quite nice to fall asleep hearing the wind in the branches, very relaxing. Some might say Zen.

Anyway, I might just pop up a few details of what’s been going on recently. The most obvious for today is of course Easter (la Fête de Pâque) and we actually went out and spent it with other human beings. French human beings.

The French Benevolent Association of SA held a pique-nique at Hazelwood Park, a lovely park over in the east of Adelaide. This was of course full of francophonic type people as well as francophilic type people. As much as I would love to count myself in the former group, we all mostly fit into the latter. Despite this, the pique-nique was very enjoyable. We got there with our rather French assortment of goodies (well I thought so anyway) consisting of crusty bread, a brie from Normandy called St Siméon (seems to be somewhat similar to a coulommier, but that may not be quite right), some salad and some muffins and stuff. My Mum had come with Joseph and my foster sister Erin, and Annmarie’s Mum and Brother Justin had come along as well. We all tried to keep with the French and Easter themes.

The day was very nice, warm and bright so everyone had a good time. There was an Easter egg hunt pour les enfants, Willow and Gabriel enjoyed that very much. We enjoyed being amongst the French speakers but were a bit shy about trying to speak to too many people earlier in the day. Some of the members of the Association came around and chatted-in English-but we mostly kept to ourselves unfortunately.

Later when we had all eaten and packed up our stuff, we played some football (European, not Aussie) and then we started thinking of heading off. Willow had wanted to get some phone numbers of some of the French children and I went along to hold the pen and tell her our number so she could write it. After she had swapped numbers with one of the other families, I dove in and started a chat in French.

Considering my skill level and volume of real experience, I think it went quite well. I went through the basics of introduction and greeting. Was introduced to another, described my Family and my current state of French studies and how much Annmarie had studied. I even added that that we had stayed in Paris for a couple of months last year. This was my only downfall in maintaining the conversation.

I just completely misheard, “Est-ce que vous l’aimez?” after saying we had stayed in Paris. This translates into “Did you like it?”. Seeing that I was trying to decipher it, she rephrased to “Est-ce que vous amiez Paris?” or something like that, referring to Paris directly, but I was already lost. She put it in English and the penny dropped and I had one of those moments of “Oh! l’aimez!” and then we continued in French again.

Overall I was quite pleased with my efforts, I was even complemented on my French-and quite forgot to reply with my trained light-hearted rejoinder to downplay the compliment, apparently very common in France. I went through all the basics that we have covered in my Uni course and then added some more. Describing other people, describing the past and other places. It was quite exciting to converse in another language. I could feel my brain rebelling against the fluency concept though and desperately wanting to slow down and translate. Having a person there waiting for an answer does help to spur on the brain though.

So, the rest of today has been eating Easter chocolate (Lindt and Haighs mostly, we do like nice chocolate) and generally getting ready for tomorrow when Annmarie’s brother is turning up with his four kids, so there will be much activity then.

As said before, I am looking to keep this blog up-to-date™ from now on.

Cheers.