I'm at SHAPE today, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, were in the bowling alley. It's really fun to listen to all the different languages and try to figure where everyone is from. The girl serving us, I guessed Romania, no Poland. Then there is this large group having a birthday party, I listen, they are all speaking Spanish, ok what NATO country speaks Spanish?
Americans of course.

French Logic is like Military Intelligence

I have to start thinking French to speak French. Language is like music, when I play it I don't think about it. A song is like one thing, it just flows out. A friend told me you learn phrases, I do that is music. It has to be like that because French is French it has nothing to do with English, you can't think English and translate to French, you have to think French.
So don't think logic, French and logic have nothing to do with each other, just like military and intelligence. In French "intelligence militaire" they also say "d'oxymore".

French class today was about the infinitive, they have some kind of "logique" for this but I can't figure it out. You just have to think French. The cheese is "le fromage" cheese is "du fromage", more than two cheeses would be "des fromage" but you don't use this formula with everything
One beer or many beers, is "de la biere" singular feminine, also used for plural. In begium there is no such sentance as, " J'ai trop de biere" I have too much beer.

We had a nice visit from a retired Greek General. An old friend of Anne. I thought it would be interesting to hear something about what it was like at NATO back in the 70's. He speaks Greek and English, his friends that came along spoke French and Greek, so for the first time Anne and I both couldn't understand at least some of the conversation, but Anne to talk to everyone.

I asked the General if it was hard to get everyone to understand what people were trying to say at NATO, when English was not the mother tongue of most of the nations. He told me the funny thing was, the Americans and the English had the most problems with understanding each other.

I love my French class. If you are stupid and you only know one language English is the one to know. Everyone in my French class speaks at least two, so someone can help them out in some language.
The Italian guy is helping the Indian guy in English, and the Mexican guy is helping the Brazilian guy in Italian. It makes me laugh. The teacher starts telling us all this stuff and all I can think is "if I understood what she was saying would I be here?"

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?