French TV and talking

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been trying to watch a lot of French TV in order to improve my comprehension. This does not necessarily mean french series, as many of the shows I watch are US shows dubbed in french. Anyways, I even have a french-tv-watching schedule that I try to follow in the evenings. I forget what I watch on Mondays but on Tuesdays I don't miss Pékin Express (french version of Amazing Race), Wednesdays is House, Thursdays is Nouvelle Star (french version of American Idol) and on Fridays if I'm home I watch Bones, my obsession, whose second season has just started up back here. When I used to come home earlier, every day I would watch Gilmore Girls episodes, most of which I missed when they first showed so it was fun catching up, and Las Vegas.

The good thing about watching TV series on the french channels are that they usually show at least two episodes in a row so I get at least two hours of listening to french spoken at a normal and, for the most part, very fast pace. What's more is that I don't limit myself to only watching the shows I mentioned. I watch quite a few other ones, both French and American, when I catch them showing and I watch at least one french movie per week on the tele as well as at least one other dubbed in french, usually on a Sunday afternoon...

My favourite french show (reality or scripted) is Pékin Express. This is no surprise as I used to love Amazing Race. I know no one who reads this blog has any idea what's happening in Pékin Express but I wanna make a quick comment. It's down to the last 4 teams now and I am stressing for the teams as I am watching it. I really want either Gérard and Cédric or Jean-Pierre and Joël to be the eventual winners but in this show anything can happen. Also, it's done a bit differently from how I remember Amazing Race. For one thing, the french one apparently has always had a team made up of two people who never met each other before the race began (in this case Jean-Pierre et Joël). In addition, teams who win each stage don't actually win prizes, they just get an amulet worth a few thousand Euros. However, if a team that has won a stage ends up being eliminated they have to give their amulet to another team. Thus, in the last stage of the race, the two remaining teams usually have all the amulets that have been won in the race shared between them.

Talking about comprehension...for the last 3 days I've spent most of my working days in training. It's done in french. Most of the time I feel like a fool when it's time to do the exercises and explain to the trainer why I'm dooing what I'm doing. Often my mind goes blank and I can't remember the simplest words. I mess up my tenses, say the wrong words, the worst pronounciations, you name it and I've done it. Of course, as soon as I'm done with training for the day I can remember what I wanted to say in perfect french. Worse is when I know what I want to say beforehand but once it comes time to talk my mind freezes. Today I was so considering resorting to english because I just could not seem to properly explain myself. Frustrating.

Hmm, back to French TV. They have a lot of game shows and reality shows here, similar to America. I'm more interested in the shows where people can win MONEY or gain a substantial prize. From french versions of One versus One Hundred, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, Amazing Race and Don't Forget the Lyrics to their own like Des Chiffres et Des Lettres (literally means digits and letters), they have it all. Every morning I turn on my TV, there is a show where they give away thousands of Euros for answering simple questions.

Why am I going on about this, you wonder? Because France is much smaller than Canada and I'm pretty sure they're less rich as well but cheap-ass Canada barely has any game or reality show, like the French, that gives away lots of money or big prizes to people. I don't really care about Canada's Next Top Model or Canadian Idol. Those things require talent or beauty. lol. I'm talking about the shows where the ordinary Jane or Joe can seriously think about entering and getting a real chance at winning. Are Canadian companies really that cheap that they can't sponsor Canadian versions of these shows or sponsor a Canadian-developed game show? Or is it that Canadian networks just don't think there is any benefit for them in creating a Canadian show like that? I would REALLY like to know. Maybe I should go do a google search to find out...

Oh To Be In Paris (Part II)

I have decided to add to the list I made earlier on the note-worthy things about Paris and the French.

• The French REALLY do love their baguettes. Many of them go to the bakery every morning before they go to work to get their morning baguette fix. Others go in the evenings so that they don't have to wait in the long lines at the bakery in the morning. At the very least they buy their baguette fresh from the bakery on weekend mornings. You know you're in France when you find that all Chinese restaurants sell a sandwich made with the baguette bread and porc/chicken instead of just the staple rice dishes. In fact, many of the small take-out Chinese places, called a traiteur in French, often have more sandwiches and salads on the menu than other dishes.
• There is dog poo everywhere in Paris. Like a British classmate of mine noted, the worst thing is that so many people have a small dog that they walk everyday but no one picks up the poo. This is despite the fact that there is a law in place for people to clean up after their pets.
• I find the traffic signs here much more confusing than the ones in Québec and that is saying a lot. I swear the location of the traffic lights make it seem like they are trying to hide them from public view. Also, the central meeting point of intersections here are much bigger than the normal 4-way maximum smaller ones in North America. In addition, the centre of the intersections here is usually shaped like a circle so that the road area that serves as the meeting point of all the cars approaching from the intersection is a huge circle. I've seen 4- or 5-way intersections where 3 or 4 of the cars approaching from the intersection from different directions all press forward in what seems to be a race of first-to-reach-the-centre-gets-right-of-way but none of them ever really slow down. I don't think I will be driving in France anytime soon.
• On the subways here, musicians are allowed to get on the train and sing, play or do both. Often, they have a contraption in which they've plugged a mike or their instrument to boost the sound of their music. This contraption is usually firmly secured to one of those small wheeled carts that I see a lot of people pulling around when they go grocery shopping. I know there must be some proper name for the contraptions that increase the sound but I dont know it. Anyways, so far, I've really enjoyed all the musicians that happened to get on the train car in which I was sitting. Today I found myself tapping my feet to the lively singing in italian being done by two men who got on the train. They had background music that they were blasting from their contraption, no mike, but cheerful faces AND they were clapping.
• This past weekend, thanks to my cousin knowing people in the film industry, I found out about and went to the 2008 European Independent Film Festival. It was in its third year and I guess that in order to increase attendance and visibility the event was free . I love watching foreign films so it was the perfect event to attend. I liked meeting the people, actors, directors and film-makers trying to make a name for themselves. My only regret is that I didn't take better advantage of the situation and watch more films.
  Oh, during the closing ceremony, they had an independent artist perform. She played the guitar and the instrument that looks like a very small guitar and she sang. It was her singing that I loved. She only introduced herself as Melissa so I have to go find her name in the program. Melissa had a great voice. Her singing and me appreciating it made me remember that there are a lot of excellent artists out there who may not be as well known as Christina Aguilera or Amy Lee but they are just as talented. Also, I should make the effort to discover and start listening to some of the excellent indie artists out there.

Bonjour from France

Today marked my fifth day being in France. Woohoo!

I haven't done much really. I'm staying with my uncle and his family in a suburb called Brétigny-sur-Orge which is just south of Paris. I haven't actually gone to Paris yet because I didn't want to waste too much money. LOL.

Ok, the cost of a metro ticket in Paris and the surrounding 'burbs depends on how far away one is from the centre. Basically, Paris is split into 6 zones with zone 1 being the centre and zone 6 being the suburbs that are furthest from the centre. I am in zone 5 and so a one-way ticket costs 5,60 Euros. I didn't really feel the need to spend 12 Euros just to explore Paris when I knew I was going to be buying a weekly metro pass that would allow me unlimited travel from Monday onwards and then after that I'll be getting a monthly pass. Yes, I know that means that I don't get to explore Paris right away but I'm here for 5 months so I have lots of time.

Speaking of the metro system here, I think people like me will find some problems with it. For on e thing, the weekly and monthly metro pass resemble the size of a bus ticket in Toronto but it's printed on less flimsy paper which means it will be easy to tear or lose. Also, how it works is that to enter the station one has to put the ticket in a thing that looks like an ATM card slot and REMEMBER to wait for it to come back out - a huge effort for someone as scatterbrained as I am. I hope I won't forget even my weekly pass because that cost 32,50 Euros.

Also, the ticket/pass should be kept handy at all times because the conductors occasionally go around to check and ensure that passengers have the correct pass/ticket. When my cousin was originally explaining this to me, I wondered why it would be necessary to keep the ticket/pass on me if I would have to use it to get in the station. This was until we reached said station and she having only one card, told me to walk underneath the ticket barrier thing. After doing this, we went to the ticket counter at the other end of the station, bought my weekly pass for Monday and then again went under the barrier with the ticket agent sitting right there watching us and saying nothing. LOL. Ah the French!

But hey I can't really complain. The metro sysem here is very complicated which means that the transportation system is great. In addition, all the surrounding suburbs are linked by metro to the the city centre.

What else have I done? I watched Sweeney Todd in French in the cinema. It was a bloody movie and it was a musical, my two least favourite types of movies but it had Johnny Depp and he acted well. Also, learned to play a card game called Citadelles. It may be the french version of an english game but I wouldn't know. I do believe my comprehension is improving because my cousins talk so very fast and when all three of them get going telling me something or explaining, 'tis fun to decipher. Good thing is that I have yet to meet anyone who speaks english. One of my cousins supposedly understands a bit but I wouldn't know because he only speaks french to me and I to him in my broken short sentences.

I hate how my french always goes away when I leave a french environment. In Quebec City, I felt like I was starting to remember words on my own to use in daily conversations. Now I can't remember even the simplest words. When people speak I mostly understand because I recognize the words once they've been said but I cannot seem to remember them on my own. So, I sometimes feel like I'm mute.

Since my comprehension is already improving, all I gotta do now is talk. But I'll leave that for tomorrow when I start school, if I don't get lost on my way there.

This is me

My friends have often encouraged me to write a book or at least short stories about the things that happen in my life as I'm always telling them about some dramatic event that happened to me or my family. The stories that they've heard have included having my house surrounded by a SWAT team, being that girl at the office Christmas party, praying that our car will not explode after catching on fire with the whole family in it, having our roof blown off during a hurricane, bathing in the rain when there was no water in my house, getting lost driving to school even after 2 years practice, climbing up a steep grassy hill (cliff really) at the Plaines D'Abraham in Quebec IN HEELS, having a sketchy French guy really come on to me while staying in Montreal, and complaining about my family's love of going everywhere together even to get milk at the supermarket (we're 5 now 6 of us in the family AND one of my sisters and I are both over 21).

Truthfully, I don't think that my stories are all that different from many other people's but maybe if I tell you a bit about my life you will understand the background to the stories and thoughts that I will be posting...

I was born in Belgium to a Haitian mother and a Chinese-Jamaican father. I lived in an inner-city neighbourhood in Jamaica until I was eleven then we moved to a very different residential neighborhood. My move to the upper middle class area also coincided with my beginning high school, a high school filled with students from the upper echelons of Jamaican society. During high school, with my father's encouragement I decided to go to the USA for college. I left Jamaica at 18 years old to go to a top liberal arts college in the the middle-of-nowhere Iowa in the States. I did two years there before my parents success in getting approved to immigrate to Canada, prompted my transferring to a university here in Toronto. I transferred because I wanted to save them some money and also to live in a city and be closer to my family. It turns out that not much money was saved because I was getting a nice grant from my old school and I had failed to factor in other costs besides tuition into the picture when looking at Canadian universities. Anyways, I just graduated with a degree in Computer Science this past June. Yes I was one of very few females in the graduating class. I did a 16 months co-op as part of my degree. All in all with the transfer from the States and co-op it took me 6 years to graduate. I'm currently working on contract with the hope of going to France next year. Oh, another thing about me, I am constantly striving to become fluent in French and so I always try to do things that will bring me closer to this goal.

Today I decided to start my own blog and share my personal reflections and (sometimes) outrageous stories with the world. I may even tell you, in entirety, some of the stories I mentioned earlier.

Many people have big dreams and hopes for their blogs.

I just hope you like it.

:]