Story Of St.Valentine Friday

Something special must be in the air. The Friday started already on Thursday evening when my fried GI hurt her back badly; so badly that we had to call an ambulance. And here starts the very lucky story. GI came back from hospital early in the morning, nothing broken.

Snowing began already in the night. Yupiiiii!

No cars and lots of snow

I was afraid of huge traffic jam on the way to Montreal. Unbelievable, there was almost no traffic at all. Did everybody stayed at home today? Is it Friday or Saturday?

Difficult studen's life - walking in deep show to school

I reached the school ten to nine. One of my schoolmates R. was waiting in the front of the house.

What are you doing here F.?

Enjoying the snow fall.

Is he crazy? Italian enjoying snowfall? I thought to myself. Then I went to the door.    

No school today

Noooo!!!! Today’s class was cancelled. The email with this information unfortunately arrived only at 8.19. Long after I left home. We decided to have a coffee somewhere. At that time we did not know how big challenge it is to find open café in the morning at nine o’clock downtown Montreal. Is it because of the show? Or maybe Valentine Day? The only open place was McDonalds. No, I thought, I cannot go with an Italian to have a coffee in McDonalds. Finally we found place in the underground we could have a good coffee and tea. 

Coffe and tea

Yes, Italian guys drink tea nowadays. We practiced French for some time and then I went back home to check how is GI doing. Good. You will be in perfect shape soon! We love you!

Let’s see what the afternoon brings.

Todays French word:

afternoon program -
le programme de l'après-midi

Fourth Day In The Class

Main purpose of my visit, next to spend some time with my friend GI, is learning French. I was eager to write about the experience right on first day. I have to admit I was not able to do it on Monday. I had very mixed feelings after day one. It was not better on Tuesday. Wednesday made me feel ‘what am I doing here?’. And today? I am ready to withstand till the end.

It is interesting that my willingness to finish the course rises with sunny day and is quite low on cloudy days. It is almost as cold as in Moscow. This morning -18^oC and SUNNY!!! 

Our teacher Thomas is French.

Thomas

This makes the learning bit difficult. I am starting to understand why people do not like to speak/learn French. I speak five languages but French (will be the sixth one if everything goes well) taught by a French man is disaster. All other teachers, and I experienced a lot of various systems, were strict with grammar and vocabulary and had understanding for accent. British and Americans are especially generous in that field. French? No way! I agree pronunciation is very important part of every language, but nobody shall exaggerate.

Being Czech native speaker, I am sure Czech language would be very successful in the contest ‘complexity of Czech pronunciation’. Here is best of Czech pronunciation introduced by an Englishman:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLfWPmhA-FU.

And this is example of French students speaking Czech:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AojMIgZbFMc. 

So Mr. Teacher, what would you say now?

Todays French word

(for context this time with Czech translation):

strč prst skrz krk

Place your finger through the neck

placez votre doigt à travers le cou

French Teacher

If you want to learn something new, you primarily need a good teacher. My experience with learning French is very bad. All my previous teachers (male and female) were not very motivating. I remember my last teacher but I forgot his name. His lessons were endless. What did I learned? Nothing, I only recall the feeling of not being able to remember the word I have hear ten times five minutes ago.  Being very suspicious about my intention to finally learn this challenging language, I was curious who will be my teacher this time.

I met my teacher today. Please meet Thomas, my French teacher:

Thomas Faudon, www.thefrenchschool.ca

As you see his picture on the Internet website is very promising. My female friends are divided into two groups. Group one says - you are so lucky to have such a sympathetic and beautiful teacher; and the other group says - it is not possible to have such a sympathetic and beautiful teacher, either is his picture stolen from the Internet or he is now 20 years older ... and uglier. What is the reality? Come back for more stories and you will find out.

Todays French word:

teacher - enseignant