...nothing quite like a long walk through a cemetery to remind us of our mortality. We are staying quite close to the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise - resting place of Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf and Oscar Wilde to name a few of its more well-known tenants - so we took an opportunity to visit on Friday (a couple of pics in the attached album).
Speaking of death, we attended my (Jon) first French church service last night to remember the death of Jesus Christ. I was frequently lost, although could pick up several phrases which would put me back on track. At times I would turn to my personal translator ... otherwise known as Cathlin.
We also discussed faith briefly in my French class on Friday. I learnt the French phrase for 'a secular government/the separation of church and state', which is "un pays laique". I enjoy learning French phrases, because often there isn't an equivalent in English. For example, if you are running very fast (because you are running late for something), you might use the phrase "prendre ses jambes a son cou". This implies you have taken off your legs and put them around your shoulders/neck, to get somewhere faster.
But my favourite expression remains "trois fois rien", or "three times nothing", which you might use when someone asks what you have been up to.
There's a good chance I'm using these phrases out of context (Francophone readers might be able to point me in the right direction). But, I've still got five weeks of language saturation to go... before the temperature rises 40 degrees as we enter (God willing) Africa.
Jon
More cemetery pictures here:
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| Dans le cimetière (à Paris) |
2 comments:
Salut Jon et Cathlin,
I was going to try and write this dan francais but I would probably waste about an hour of my day and it wouldn't make any sense.
I am glad the lessons are going well. I am two weeks into my lessons - they are fun but I have doubts about whether I will get there in the end. But I suppose if you just keep at it you will learn the language in the end...right?
Moi, trois fois rein.
Hope the next five weeks are a good time of learning and experiencing Paris.
Say hi to Jim Morrison for me. He use to be my idol and then I realised he was a drunken moron.
Cheers Chris, and nice photo on the horse. I feel the last year of learning French (and a few dismal years at high school) were a good platform, and during the past week of intense learning it has started to actually come together.
And I've also learnt that people that say they find languages easy tend to conveniently forget all the years it took them to learn....Jon
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