Exposing Myself to French

So I’m currently sitting in bed blogging (god bless wireless modems), watching ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and eating some delicious chocolate cake that I baked the other night...

...No I was never actually tested for ADD…

So the trouble all started when my ‘friends’ at ImpaQt decided that I needed to listen to more French. It’s all fine and good to spend 2 or 3 days a week there, but in all honesty I wasn’t doing much outside of class time to move the learning process along.

A list was made of things I could do to expose myself to French (expose myself TO French not TO THE French…pay attention there.) more regularly and taking the wine class was one of those things since it was something I wanted to do anyway. Other suggestions were to spend more time out in the city maybe sitting at Café’s (ho hum, if I have to) to listen to the language around me, to watch French TV and to visit the museums of Toulouse and take the commentated tours. (Yes La, Toulouse has several museums…who knew?).

So first, the wine class. Well, it was interesting and a little fun. The teacher is a woman who is actually an Oenolog? Oenologist? Um…she has a degree in Oenologie. Anyway, the rest of the group consists of 9 Frenchmen who I think, judging by the way they were giggling and horsing around like adolescents, were swallowing instead of spitting.

During the obligatory give-your-name-reason-for-being-here-and-your-favorite-wine introductory phase of the class I explained that I was there for the dual purpose of listening to more French and learning about French wine. This was well received though not a single one of them speaks a word of English. They all spoke slowly and clearly so that I could understand them. Well all except for this one snooty guy near the front who was all about the wine. He was that person, you know the one I mean? There’s one in every class, he’s there to mostly show off what he knows instead of learn anything new. Very annoying!

It all went rather smoothly except for the actual wine tasting part. The first nights tasting was of ‘apéritif’ wines or sweet wines. (La, remember those sweet wines in Bordeaux? ::shudders::) So 8 very sweet wines; one red and seven white. Sniffing (1st nose, 2nd nose), swirling, tasting, spitting, tasting, spitting have some bread and cheese and start again.

I have pages full of notes. By 11:00 we were only on the 3rd of 8 wines and I was tired of listening. I think I caught maybe 75% of it. I had trouble when they would start discussing the wine if they mentioned a proper name. Were they talking about a label, a town, a region, a grape, a vineyard? It was hard to glean any info from those conversations because I’m not familiar with wine regions, towns or geography of the country in general. Though I’m sure these were important bits I was missing it can’t be helped. At least I’ll get a feel for what’s good and how to tell. Through the next three sessions we’ll be tasting wines from specific regions so that should alleviate some of that confusion.

And then there were the museums. Since Toulouse can date its history as far back as the first century AD (and maybe further…), there are a lot of long buried Roman ruins under the city. This is interesting to me. There are several major cathedrals and churches in the city many of which have served the Catholics, the Arians and the Cathares over periods of their history. All are now Catholic of course but they have great histories.

One of the churches I visited was expanded and re-configured many times and during the Napoleonic war it served to stable horses and garrison soldiers. The tour guide very colorfully described how many of the beautiful murals came to be destroyed by horses peeing as high as 5 feet up the walls. She also said, though I find it difficult to believe, that on very warm and humid days you can still smell horse poop in the cloister.

The longest tour, which was of course the most boring, was about the Visigoths and the Francs. Dates and migratory maps and blah, blah, blah blah blah (“to me you are the teacher on the Charley Brown cartoon”) blah blah…

Though I did understand most of it, I really didn’t care. The young woman giving the 2 hour tour (more like lecture) was very enthusiastic though and seemed to have a real grasp and love of the subject. So I nodded in the appropriate places and made occasional eye contact, smiling briefly to show I was listening, luckily I wasn’t touring alone and could from time to time just stare of into space for a bit of relief.

I spent a lot of time this week just walking all over Toulouse. It’s been fun. Plus I don’t know if I mentioned that I’m taking care of my neighbors 3 ½ year old little girl a few afternoons a week. It’s interesting and challenging. She is still testing ‘the perimeter’ but we are having some fun.

S finally arrived home on Saturday afternoon after being gone for two weeks. I always find his return after long absences to be disruptive to my schedule. I get into a regular groove while he’s gone, my schedule, my agenda and only me to clean up after. I miss him of course when he’s gone but his returns take a few days of adjustment again. Sort of like finally adjusting to being able to stretch out across the whole bed at night and taking up all the space and then having to adjust to just may half again.

So that’s me for the week how are you doing?