So, Brandt and I made it through a second day of speaking French together. And we spoke a lot. Mexican Raspberries with French Subtext? French even showed up in my food. For breakfast, I ate raspberries with yoghurt. I was…
I am using some new tools to help advance my French skills. First, I have begun listening to French radio stations via the Web, focusing on news and cultural programs from Paris. In addition, last night I came home…
At a local coffee shop yesterday, I found myself studying French between a French-speaking Haitian woman at the table to my left, and a Japanese woman at the table to my right. Sitting with the Haitian woman was another Japanese…
I have been noticing how many store and restaurant names have French in them. This seems to be especially true on the Upper East Side. House of Chocolate! Upper East Side, Manhattan At a party last night I spoke some…
My French Verb Tenses book by Trudie Maria Booth has a very exalted view of the knowledge of the average foreign-language student. This is the kind of true-false question I am encountering:
Night Falls on the Upper West Side
Here I was just now, minding my own business, studying French vocabulary for weights and measures (i.e., “ton,” “millimeter,” “mouthful,” etc.) with the television on in the background, when all of a sudden an ad caught my attention. …
Yesterday morning I went to Harlem, exiting the subway at 110th and Lenox and walking north to 116th. I had a particular destination in mind, one that I thought would produce some opportunities to talk about and speak French as…
This morning while drinking coffee at a local café, I thought I heard French. Looking up, I spied what I thought was a French couple in line waiting to order. The woman half of the couple came over to the…
Yesterday I visited the first public French-American charter school in New York City, called—appropriately—the New York French-American Charter School. 116th Street Subway Station Art Heading East on 118th Street Headed by Katrine Watkins, it is located on 120th…
This morning at Café Margot, there were to my delight two tables full of French-speaking women, unfortunately separated from me by one table, at which there was another foreign language being spoken: Hebrew. If I had been studying Hebrew, I…
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