Perdu?

Lost? Oui! I am always "perdu" whether I'm driving, walking around or listening to someone talk.
So French fries aren't French, they are Belgian as posted on my June 13th blog, what about French toast? Today I found out this is called "Pain perdu" or bread lost. When your bread is old and stale you soak it in milk and egg. Why would someone do this to perfectly good bread what are we thinking? They must think it is really strange that we do this with fresh bread.

Brussels closed the streets to car traffic for the day so we rode bikes downtown. People brought there horses and walked as well, but a lot of bikes. It was really nice to take your time riding around these beautiful streets on a sunny day without the cars Perot, Seb, and Me

Amelie's school "La Cambre"

Stephen Stills "Four and Twenty Years Ago" might have been inspired by his French class. This was written I think before he met his French wife but in french 80 is "quatre-vingt" four twenty. The Belgians say a few numbers differently from the French. 70 in French is "soixante-dix" sixty ten, the Belgians say "septante" more equivalent to seventy.




Now in French class the books have pictures to help you understand what they are saying, there is a page of people in a town, you are supposed to figure out who is discribed by each paragraph.



Freddy Cuvelier, Il travaille dans l'immobilier. This guy is a realtor, no clue in the pictures for this. Il a quarante-quatre ans. Ok that 44 years could be one of 4 guys. Tres ambitieux. Very ambitious, not really seen in the pictures. Il fait de escalade. He mountain climbs. That's the guy wearing the climbing harness. Il est dynamique, travailler. Yeh a guy that rock climbs is going to be a dynamic traveller, he'll go all sorts of places, WRONG. He's a dynamic worker, they faked me out, why would a guy that has better things to do be a dynamic worker? I'd never seen travail, used except as the verb for work, why would I think that?

So, Chinese is "Chinios" so"Chenois" the village we live in, "Chen" is dog so Dogese? Well I was told it might have something to do with oak trees, nice try Ed.

As we are learning to conjugate verbs. "Est" is seen again. meaning "is" . So how do you say "it's east"? "Est est" ? No "c'est l'est" sounds nice. In a sentence, "Oui Celeste, c'est l'est". Kinda fun.

The Roman languages all have a formal form of "you", in French "tu" is "vous" for the formal. It is also the plural or "they". My instructor pointed out English does not have this formal form. I started to think about being in Texas where someone might say to you, "Ya all need anything?". this could be said to a single person, or a group. We wondered if this being the south if maybe this came from the French?

Sebs summer job

Seb worked at "B.D. World "for his summer break. They had an event downtown where all the shops had promotions. Seb and another employee wearing costumes of famous cartoon characters handed out discount coupons. B.D. as they say in french stands for "bande desinee" or strip drawing. The Smurfs, and Tin Tin are Belgian.

http://www.2daysinparisthefilm.com/
This is a pretty funny film, Anne and I really related to all the misunderstanding between language and culture. If your a Woody Allen fan, this is a french female version of him.

Chez Moi

"Chez moi," my house. Easy enough. I've heard this for years. "Moi" is my, "chez" must be house. The judges say wrong. "Chez" translates as "at". Figure that one out. Classes start next Saturday. I'll be going to a Flemish school to learn French, this should be interesting. GLTT is in the next town over. I can take the train very easily.

Amelie's new school, La Cambre, she will go to GLTT on Saturdays with me for German