This Week in French

Instead of writing 50 postings this week about all my French Excitement, I decided to just save it all up in one ignorable posting.

* At the library, remembered they have an ongoing book sale, and there's always some French books. I was sorely tempted by a poetry book about the astral-plane life of cats.

* Continued watching the series Toute la vérité. I hope the CBC shows it one day with English subtitles, like they did Fortier, cause it's SO GOOD. The best show I'm watching right now. Thanks Swiss Girl! It's about Quebec Crown prosecutors.

 One day I watched 7 episodes in a row, and my French really improved--in the sense that I started thinking in French. So that encouraged me to keep listening to French radio, and keep watching lots of TV. (TV as homework! Woo!)

I believe this is supposed to be very good:


And I started watching this, but... not sure yet, though it has all my favorite actors in it. (Well I love most Quebec actors. It's like the British film industry, full of all these amazing actors who pop up over and over, and you just love them every time.)



* Got some grammar and spelling books to start playing with--wee toys!

* Thanks to an amazon reviewer, finally found an online course.



* I mostly listen to Radio Canada now. Fave program this week: "Une enfance pour la vie" which included an interview with one of the Passe Partout stars. She had a farm for troubled children, and talked about helping a kid who'd tried to kill himself four times.

* Recently a Videotron technician came to fix my cable. We spoke French the whole time, so yay! I'm preparing for my headache doctor in April, because I've always suspected she wants me to try speaking in French. She has the eye of a French teacher. A nice one, though. Like... she just wants me to TRY.

* The French book I'm reading is great. Dompierre's one of my new fave authors and I SO regret giving away the pirate book!! This book--Un petit pas pour l'homme--would fit in the Nick Hornby genre, High Fidelity-esque, they really should translate it. But funnier, and the character is more likable. And the pirate book wasn't Hornby-ish at all, and definitely funnier. ("He's going to kill us with apples!")

But I don't like to stop and look up words, so I'm just marking them with a pencil for later. When I watch TV I write the words down on paper. Except "Toute la vérité" is so good I don't even want to stop between episodes and look up words. As an early birthday present I'm buying myself an electronic dictionary, which my lovely parental units are chipping in for as well. :-)

Expanding my vocabulary is one my main goals, cause not being able to fully express myself is the main thing that frustrates me when I speak French.

* The only thing missing is the chance to speak French, so I talk French to the cats. "Behn, apporte-moi donc ton stick--je veux dire, ton bâton, que je joue au mur avec toi Diablotine!" And I'm trying to think to myself in French, and then think out loud to myself in French. "Okay là, là, c'est 5 cinq heures du matin, alors fermer l'ordinateur, faut que tu fasses dodo maintenant, hein?"

* In other news... I need to share with you how useless my French dictionary widget is. (And there are no others, I looked.)

Here are my widgets, the French dictionary is upper right:

 Here is the word "mèche" when I take the widget and make it full screen:

I'm supposed to read 2.5 screens worth of information every time I need to learn a new word?