Just got back from France (long)
Message de ourimba posté le 09-01-2006 à 21:28:40 (S | E | F | I)
Hello all:

I just returned from a vacation with my family in France. I thought I would share some of the impressions I had during my stay. I went with my wife and our two children (6 years, and 2 years) I am 41 and my wife is 45.

Quant à moi, je parle(s) un peu de français – enfin je comprends assez bien l’actualité, je peux discuter de(s) choses un peu diverses et variées, mais je manque le de vocabulaire pour m’exprimer dans toutes les situations. Et je fais pas mal d’erreurs quand je parle(s) (évidemment) .

This is the 2nd time I have ever visited France – the first was about 8 years ago. I enjoyed it then but my French speaking skills are a lot better now (grâce à l’alliance française d’Austin).

I really wanted to practice and improve my French language skills on this trip, and I thought that my experiences in this regard would be of interest to those French speakers that are planning on traveling in an English speaking country.

Paris – Arrived in Paris after too many hours on airplanes – very tired, children are cranky (c’est normal). Really friendly taxi driver took us to our hotel in Montparnasse district. Chatted all the way in French which made me feel good.

Paris – Checked into the hotel – my French is better than the hotel registration person’s English so we spoke French. Cool!

Paris – The metro is confusing at first but we figured it out pretty quickly. What a great way to get around Paris. I wish they had something like this in U.S. cities. I asked the SNCF guy “pour une carte de métro” not sure if it’s a “plan” or a “carte” in any case he understood what I wanted and gave me one. They’re free! That’s nice.

Paris – Went to the Eiffel Tower. I bought tickets for us all to go to “le sommet” I spoke French, the girl at the ticket window answered me in English – I hate it when that happens. I guess my French is not so good after all.

Paris – Went to the Louvre – totally blew my mind, it’s even more incredible than I imagined. My little girl (2 years) has eczema and the skin on her hands was cracked and damaged. One of the women who works at the louvre asked my wife about it. The louvre person’s English was limited so she couldn’t explain herself. I came over and spoke with her about it in French – she was very helpful and gave us several suggestions that had worked for her kids. First non-travel related French conversation for me since arriving in France! Yeah!

Paris – Had many conversations with people in the hotel. I realized that we would quickly figure out which language to use I would try first in French and if they thought their English was better than my French they would switch right away to English. Otherwise we stayed speaking French. Everyone was super friendly though.

Paris – A salesperson at the cashier station in an Fnac store asked me if I had a frequent shopper card – I didn’t understand her and had to ask her to repeat it. I didn’t have one

Paris – I try to understand what people are saying to each other on the metro and in the streets and restaurants. I get bits of it but mostly it’s too fast for me. I have to do something to learn to understand real conversational French, but I’m not sure what.

Marseille – Traveled to Marseille from Paris by TGV. Met friends there that I found on the AnglaisFacile.com website. We had been talking over the Internet each week to help each other with English and French. We stayed in their home for 3 days.

Marseille – Talking a lot of French now. I’m having a hard time with the Marseille accent though – I find that I have to concentrate much harder to understand this accent, which is a bit tiring. It’s a fun challenge though.

Marseille – Our hosts showed us around the city and surrounding areas. We are speaking a lot, and I’m feeling more comfortable communicating in French now. Getting the opportunity to live with a French family is incredible. We are all having a great time here.

Marseille – The people in Marseille are very friendly too, they just have funny accents

Marseille – Time to leave Marseille, but we have made firm friends with our generous hosts. I hope they come and visit us in America. I’m looking forward to seeing them again next time we are in France.

Lyon – Met another AnglaisFacile.com friend in Lyon who showed us around the town. It was excellent, but a bit rushed because we only had one afternoon here. It was nice to meet face to face though.

Méribel – A week of skiing in the French Alps. A lot of English people here so we are speaking a mix of English and French – It’s nice here but I miss Marseille.

Geneva – 1 night in Geneva before we return home. Taxi drivers are not very friendly here. The hotel people are very nice though – as usual I am speaking English with some and French with others depending on which of us is better at the other’s language.

Final Thoughts:
France is awesome, we all had a great time and met wonderful people. My French improved for sure, but I realize I have a long way to go to be comfortable with regular conversations. I need to watch a lot more films where people are speaking normally to get used to this style of speaking, which is very different to the news programs I have been watching.

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Edité par bridg le 09-01-2006 21:31
divers