A Little Bit of This ; A Little Bit of That...

It's been a while since I've written, because my beloved cousin, Jill, was here for two weeks during our winter break, and Jill and I saw every cathedral and art museum in Paris (with a few exceptions...), and then, took a weekend tour of Florence, Italy and the nearby Cinque Terre. Wooonderful.
So, now I'm back in the Paris area--back to classes, back proof reading other peoples' articles for the organization's newsletters, and back to blogging. (Or so I hope!)

First off, I'm now an Aunt. You can probably tell by the changes in my writing style. Something about my word choice definitely screams "aunt", right?

And secondly, I've made friends with a mail-order bride, which has me very excited. I ran into this girl through a friend of mine about a week ago. She's 20 years old, and her 23 year old husband's family decided they wanted their son to marry a girl from the "old country." The girl moved over from Morocco and was married a few weekends ago. I've been over to her house twice now, which is quite the feat, because she lives on the top floor of an apartment building sans elevator. :s She's been coming to French class, learning French little by little. It's fun to finally see someone "young" come to class...not to insult any of my ladies, but most of them are 40s, 50s, 60s, and so, to see someone more in my age range has me thrilled.

And thirdly, I have a brief story that made me laugh a little. Today, I finished classes at Telegraphe, got on my metro, and was headed to the main train station. I saw one of the ladies from class on the metro, and she made her way over to sit with me (if you've read my earlier posts, this woman is the compulsive story teller). She sat down, and began explaining how she was "so African" when she moved to France twenty years ago, and how she had to learn to speak French correctly and act more "French" in order to get herself a job as an agent of L'Oreal products. ("I hate hair," she tells me on the train. "Oh?" I say. She nods, "But you have to live, don't you?") This woman has very good French. She speaks clearly, doesn't have a heavy accent, and in my opinion, has a pretty huge vocabulary.
"Well," you probably are thinking, "she has lived in France twenty years."
And that really doesn't mean much. My ladies over in Gennevilliers area (Little Morocco) have been here twenty to thirty years, and they're still in my beginner class saying things like, "I lots like you."
So, I asked this woman on the metro, this compulsive story teller, what her secret was to learning French.
"Night clubs," she replied. "Lots and lots of night clubs."
"Oh?"
"Yes," she continued. "You get the right combination of loud music, sweat, and movement, and it's like magic--poof! You know French."
I nodded and thanked her and moved right along.

So, there you have it--the secret to learning French is night clubs. Who knew?