Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Day 202: Larousse's French-English dictionary



The problem with writing every day about things in my past is I can't always remember what I've already written about. Hopefully this won't be a story I've already told.

I've studied three languages in my life and the first was French in middle school. In eighth grade I took a trip to France with some class mates. We toured the Loire valley in a bus and did a home stay in Paris. Of the family I stayed with, only the daughter Emilie knew any English. The level of French I had acquired at this point was minimal.

One of my more vivid memories was sitting down for family dinners. Every night they served some kind of flavorless puffy potatoes in various shapes. I had a strong distaste for those. One night we cooked our own meat on a portable grill. They removed their meat from the grill almost immediately after placing it while I let mine cook longer. They were completely baffled by this behavior.

Another memory was our discovery that the French accent does wonderful things to the word squirrel. For the entire trip, kids were asking random people to say squirrel for us and then we would break in to giggles.

Status: Donated

1 comment :

  1. If you have told that story already I haven't seen in yet. Now I need to go find a friend who can do a french accent and ask them to say squirrel because I'm not sure why it is funny yet.

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