Expressions of happiness

I love it when this happens. From a French person's mouth to my ears to my brain in seconds. And I smile.

It's when I hear an expression for the first time. I've seen it and read it before. But now I've heard it, in real life, and I got it.

Today, it happened in the few brief seconds while turning onto the sidewalk, leaving my apartment. A lady yelled down the street, "Ça fait un bail!"

"It's been ages!" is what she said to her friend, a French expression that isn't literally translated.

Sometimes it's really the little things that make me happy. And since learning a language can be so difficult and discouraging, I'll take as many little moments and expressions as I can get.

Beginning of the end...and a new beginning

English in italics

Samedi je suis retournée à JF, une des écoles ou j’ai travaillé, pour la fête de l’école pour la fin de l’année scolaire. C’était vraiment un plaisir d’être là. Au lieu de stress, j’ai ressenti un bonheur de voir les élèves et bien sûr l’excellent équipe des enseignants. Et les enfants, au lieu d’être petits monstres, étaient mignons.

On Saturday I returned to JF, one of my schools, for the end of the year festival. It was truly a pleasure to be there. Instead of stress, I felt happy to see the kids and of course the wonderful team of teachers. And the kids, instead of being little monsters, were cute.

Les enfants ont chanté et puis il y a eu des stands des jeux. J’ai bandé les yeux aux enfants et les ai fait tourner au stand de La Queue de l’Âne avec Patricia.

The kids sang and then there were games. I blindfolded kids and spun them around at the Pin the Tail on the Donkey stand with Patricia.

Parmi les chansons était « Hello, Goodbye, » une chanson que je les ai appris. Malheureusement, je suis complètement bête et j’ai supprimé la vidéo. En regardant mes photos sur l’écran de mon appareil photo, je pensais que c’était une photo floue.

One of the songs was “Hello, Goodbye,” a song I had taught them. Sadly, I’m a complete idiot and I deleted the video. While looking through my pictures on my camera, I thought it was a blurry picture.

Par contre, j’ai conservé heureusement la vidéo d’une très jolie chanson que j’ai entendue pour la première fois. C’est « Toi Plus Moi » de Grégoire. J’étais instantanément fan.

However, I luckily didn’t delete the video of a beautiful song I heard for the first time. It’s “Toi Plus Moi” by Grégoire. I was immediately a fan.

Merci, les enfants, de m’avoir présenté cette chanson. Vous chantez bien !

Thanks kids for introducing me to this song! And you sang beautifully!

Et voilà la vidéo de Grégoire. C’est tout simplement une chanson optimiste et joyeuse, parfaite pour le début des grandes vacances et encourageant pour mon avenir un peu pas sûr.

And here is Grégoire’s video. It’s just simply a happy and optimistic song, perfect for the beginning of summer vacation and encouraging for my less than certain future.

Les Paroles/ The Lyrics (English translation not as good as the original, of course)

Fête de la Musique in a (small?) city

This year was my 3rd time in France on June 21, and my 2nd time getting to celebrate the Fête de la Musique. In 2006, I experienced la fête for the first time in a small-ish town with my study abroad gang in Normandy. In 2007, I was in Lourdes, volunteering and wasn't really aware of any festivals going on. In 2008 and 2009, I was sadly stateside.

What is this Fête de la Musique? It's a music festival involving all types of music performed by bands, mostly outdoors, to celebrate the beginning of summer and the longest day of the year.

And in 2010, on Monday, I got to experience la Fête de la Musique in Paris. The capital. This year totally rocked 2006's socks off. While interesting, my experience in 2006 involved listening to various mediocre bands do covers until about 9pm when we headed home.

On Monday, Tom and I didn't start until 10pm (although, this was a mistake because many venues closed down at midnight). We started in the 5th district at la Place de la Contre-Escarpe where, again, we heard covers, the best of which was Born to be Wild. We then took the metro (for the last time) to the 4th, near the Bastille where we listened to Les Dindons Virtuels, a pretty great sounding band doing songs by the Stones, Beatles, and Lynyrd Skynyrd outside Le Paradis du Fruit. Next, we walked to the nearby Place des Vosges. In each corner of this square there was a different band. We stood in the middle to orient ourselves then followed our ears to a band singing, you'll never believe it, French songs! It was very good to hear. Even though I didn't know any of them, I get sick of all the covers in English (especially when they don't actually know all the words). Unfortunately I don't think they were on the official listing and don't know how to find out who they were.

Really bad picture. You can't even see the band. But this was at Place des Vosges.

On the way out, we listened to a few interesting Electro-chorale numbers by a group wearing...rain suits?

Electo-chorale group called Echo.

Our last stop was supposed to be at Le Troisième Lieu, a bar with bands playing until 2am. I thought it would be good to find a place open late where we could sit down. Except when we got there, there was a line and it looked too hip for us. Instead, we went to a nearby bar to listen to music (through the stereo). At about 1:30 I was feeling pretty tired, so we decided to walk to the nearest metro to go home. RATP had announced for a week before that the metro would be running all night. After checking several stations, though, we realized they had deceived us and had decided to screw us all over. Why? I still don't know. Even the night buses, which are a normal thing, weren't normal. RATP, I can't believe I praised you in a recent post. I'm still waiting for an apology.

So we walked. From the 4th to the 13th. It took a little over an hour, and we reached home at 3am. It seemed like a very long walk, especially since I was so tired. But at the same time, I expected it to take longer. It turns out that Paris really isn't that big (excluding the suburbs of course). Our long early morning walk was only a little over 3 miles, or about 5 kilometers. In every other way, Paris is a big city, just not in actual size.

This walk gave Tom a chance to show off, though. Without a map, he got us home without a hitch, and he even showed me some pretty cool hidden treasures I'd never seen. He took a Discovering Paris class, which involved a lot of field trips, and now I'm really jealous because he might know Paris better than me.

Overall, it was a great night. The best part, I think, was experiencing some of my favorite spots (Place des Vosges, Place de la Contre-Escarpe) in new ways.