Mistral
-
Posts
570 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Never
Posts posted by Mistral
-
-
*However*, the UK has taught my French husband a lot about the alternatives to traditional French cooking, like the fact that no recipe is set in stone (now that was a revolution), that starters are optional, that puddings can be tasty, that wine is produced beyond French borders.
You forgot to add that it's also possible to eat cheese after dessert and that you are allowed to drink wine without a meal which were two of my husband's discoveries along with your list.
Discussing our evening meal (chicken tikka masala) with a neighbour, she said "oh, was this because you had a fit of nostalgia for the UK?" I tried and failed to explain that no, this was just part of our standard selection of meals. We didn't just limit ourselves to steak frites.
Back to the original question; I'm like a lot of people here. I don't like andouille or andouillete, tripe.... I'm not too sure about the little round pieces of bread because I've never tried them. The foie gras producers we asked, said that it was best served with good baguette. In regional food, i don't like pieds et paquets.
I'm a fussy eater. So many French people tell me my parents should have forced me (they did, it didn't work) and announce with great pride that they eat everything put in front of them. But when you ask them what they actually like, they often don't know too well and go on again about eating everything. I suppose in my mind, eating is about pleasure and if I don't like something i don't see why I should eat it and even less cook it for myself.
No-one has yet mentioned the great school cantine standard: boiled egg with spinach
-
I've heard that every country has a veto right which means that if even one country refuses it, then they'll have to start all over again. the echos are that if france votes non, then they'll try and do another vote in 6 months time. I've understood the same thing as Tourangelle, the British parliament uses the referandum as an indication of the public opinion, but in France it is binding.
The fact you got all the paperwork is strange. You usually only get the official blurb for elections you are allowed to vote in. It might be a good idea to check with the mairie they haven't put you on the wrong list.
About the oui and non papers, they can be used to vote with as long as they haven't been written on or anything, but there are always spare voting slips at the polling stations which most people use. I think the main idea is so you can prepare yourself for your vote. It probably came from the time when not everybody could read
My envelope arrived this morning. Now I'm going to have to plough through pages of boring legalised french (or read one of the explanations the newspapers are doing- so far I've been offered le monde and humanité's versions)
-
I know it is the school holidays but otherwise asking a school language teacher would probably get a faster answer than the maire. After all they are experts at taking other people's children abroad!
School language teacher here ;-)
Even in the espace schengen, you are supposed to have correct ID from your country on you (for french people this means an ID card or passport) if a child is travelling without his parents then he must have an "autorisation de sortie du territoire" which you should be able to get from the mairie. One of the parents needs to go there with the child's ID card and ask for it. It is done straight away. Some mairies do them for the exact dates and others do them for a year's validity.
If the child has a passport then no autorisation de sortie is necessary.
An ID takes on average 6 weeks to get, a passport takes a couple of weeks (but is expensive)
Of course, chances are that no-one will ever check.
-
Oh, was it on again? It's one of my son's favourite films because he's a great Louis de Funes fan. (can't stand the man's grimaces, myself) I thought they had shown it a couple of months ago when Jacques Villeret (the alien) died.
From reading your resumé you can't have missed much at the beginning.
-
Hi, I know that quite a few of the private primary schools in Aix have bilingual sections of some sort or another. I found a list on the internet a year or so back but can't find it now. I'm pretty sure that the ecole st catherine has a bilingual section which filters into the collège mignet (state)
As far as I know, none of the state primaries have an official bilingual class but that's not to say they aren't used to having bilingual/ foreign pupils.
-
Down here it's only 2 kisses (relief) I used to be really neurotic about the whole thing, which cheek first, how many, who.... but I've come to realise that most french people get it wrong too from time to time and end up with their cheek held out expecting a third kiss that never comes or bump noses. it makes me feel better.
I now launch myself in, left cheek first (seems to be most common) and do two. If the other person is still going, we share sheepish smiles and I say "chez nous c'est deux" It seems to work.
I still have trouble with knowing who though....
-
I can't really comment on whether French people have the same worries about the system as Brits because I don't know enough Brits with children in schooling to comment and those I know work in schools.
As SB says, the main worries for french parents seem to be teachers not being replaced and "falling standards". As other people have said, they don't seem to be particularly worried about teaching techniques or whatever but I think that is more because when you are used to something being done a certain way, you think that's the only way it should be done and can't imagine that anybody does it differently. If I taught English the way it was done 20 or 30 years ago parents would be happier, As it is I have to defend the fact I don't ask my pupils to learn the dialogues by heart or teach them the phonetic alphabet
No, French parents aren't bothered by rote learning and would be more worried if children didn't have things to memorise (I have heard enough conversations where parents try to prove that their child's teacher is superior by listing the amount of homework/things to learn every night) just as british parents don't necessarily question some of the basic teaching techniques used there.
-
I had thought that monaco was cotrolled by the sallic law, which would have meant that Caroline's kids couldn't inherit, but reading Téléstar (so it must be true...) it said that Rainier inherited through his mother who was the daugher of the previous prince and she renounced her inheritance just after the war.
-
I had a pupil who married at 15, with her mother's consent (actually if I remember right, her mother "disenfranchised" her, so she was considered to be an adult)
It is possible to marry even younger but for that you need the president's consent. My husband once had a 12 year old pupil who had married in another country but needed presidential permission to be considered married here in france. (I don't know the exact details)
-
And someone from St Brieuc is a Briochin (sounds like bread to me)
-
was it the Hotel de Ville in Marseille? Employees are getting a half-day congé for the funeral
Yes, that was marseilles, dear old Gaudin. I liked the interview with the creche directrice who now has three days to find out who is taking the hoilday and find replacements. The journalist did mention that only people who had a genuine reason (i.e. they were going to watch the funeral) could have the time off, but added that mauvaises langues were saying that the mairie de marseille was going to have a lot of catholics between now and Friday
-
when I lived in Tours, people claimed that the purest French in France is spoken there.
Yes, I've been told that too.
I've lived in the south west, south east, normandy and the swiss border and my husband is from brittany so I have no trouble with those accents. But we were on holiday last year in very rural ardeche, and it took me a while to understand everything they said there (but my husband had the same problem which was reassuring)
We watched le declin de l'empire américain and invasions barbares the other day and after about 10 minutes I adapted to the quebecois accent, although the voabulary was harder.
There's an author called Henriette Walter who produced a map of France based on what different regions call the object they wash the floor with. It's one of those great conversation starters. You tell people that and then leave them to discuss mops (for hours) Then you ask them if they use a mop or a rag and broom and that starts them off again...
-
It's very difficult to assess the true levels of collèges in France. The system is such that all teachers are supposed to be trained to the same level and the recrutement is done through a points system that barely takes teaching ability into acount. The schools themselves have no say in teacher recrutement. The teacher staff can change radically from one year to the next (I've worked in collèges where more than 50% has changed) Officially every school teaches the same programme to the same level.
About the only way that French parents judge collèges is on rumour, (my son did the pythagoras theorem before christmas and yours did it in March....) Reputations are notoriously slow to change. My last collège had a very bad reputation, to the extent that parents would try very hard to avoid it, but it actually had the highest brevet score in the town. The reputation was about 10 years out of date. A lot of parents judge more the sort of pupils who go to the collège than the collège itself.
I suppse ways that you could get some sort of idea would be from asking, what percentage of 3eme pass the brevet or go on to lycée general, but then you have to take into acount the catchment area, if the school is in an area where professional training is seen as important, more pupils will logically choose to go to lycée pro. This could be good careers advice rather than bad teaching.
You might be able to get hold of the 6eme evaluations and compare them with the brevet results from the rectorat, but the system isn't very good at sharing information.
About 10 years ago, my academie released their classement of all the collèges in the academie. It was based on various criteria such as parents being unemployed, parents being foreign (I loved that one!!) how many pupils had retaken a year, 6eme evaluation results.... All of it judged the pupils but not the school itself.
-
If I've got it right, you pay tax on your 13eme month (if you have one) but it doesn't count towards your pension. The state gains and you lose out both times, or at least that was how it was explained to me. (I don't get one but I do get a couple of primes)
-
I doubt the figures have changed much in 4 years, they sound about right to me (well at least the 6eme evaluations ones)
The thing is that when I hear french people (mainly teachers) complaining about the fact that only 62% students pass their bac, I have an urge to ask them why any more should. What I mean by that is, if the desired 80% of a "classe d'âge" (i.e. all kids born in 1987) manages to pass the bac, then what does that say about the value of the bac?
The same thing with the 40% of students who drop out of university, since everybody who has a bac can go to uni, even those who got 10.1/20 (like my sister in law who failed her first university year 3 times in a row) Maybe some of them shouldn't have gone in the first place.
I'm sorry, I'm sounding a bit reactionary. Don't get me wrong. I agree that the system aims at the "têtes de classe" and the others, the "different ones" get left by the wayside. I know that the system is failing these kids. I have my 20% of 6emes in every class who can't understand a simple text and the system is such that it's almost impossible to help them. We have to put them into mixed ability classes where the more fragile children are swamped by the others, they have to follow the full programme in every subject. (remember that some subjects have an hourly programme -hist géo has a list telling you that you can spend between 2 and 3 hours on WW1, of course if you choose to spend 3 hours you have to diminish the number hours on the rise of fascism) Flexibility and working for/with individual pupils just doesn't seem to come into the picture.
But what I think is missing from the discussion is the idea that we are failing to help these pupils do the best they could. Maybe they aren't all capable of getting to the bac, but we should be helping them to succeed to the best of their ability (whatever that is)
Rant over Just to add one thing about the 6eme evaluations, Every 6eme has to do them. All our chetchens, bosniacs.... who are here since last year took it too and are included in the results.
-
Christiane, I don't know much about this, but german friends have told me that germany doesn't accept dual nationality. One friend has three children born in france with a French father and all three are just french. But from what I've seen on the internet, it seems that it might be possible http://www.multiplecitizenship.com/countrylist.html
-
Congratulations.
I think everything has been said. Since your daughter was born in the UK, she can pass on her british nationality. Since they are unmarried, the father will need to "reconnaitre" the baby (I would suggest doing it before birth) and then the baby will be able to have both nationalities. My situation is the same (apart from being married but that isn't a issue for french etat civil) and all three of my kids have both nationalities.
-
Do you think it's worth the visit with the kids? As I said, it's out of our way, is it worth the "detour"?
It must be slow work
-
The French certainly don't have a tooth fairy. Teeth are collected by a mouse.
-
I agree with mysfloss, construstion work is seen as a "last resort". I'm in the process of trying to help my 3emes decide which BEP's etc they want to do next year. None of them want to ask for maconnerie or revetement de batiments. No, they all want to do VAM (vente action marchande)
-
We keep meaning to but it's never in quite the right direction. Here's their website http://www.guedelon.com/
-
Try here http://www2.finances.gouv.fr/calcul_impot/2005/ Of crse if I had talked about "calculez votre impot" instead of estimate, it would have helped. Sorry
-
I've been to quite a few christenings in france, including children 1 and 3 (#2 was done in the UK)
As with a lot of French religious services, a lot seems to depend on the priest. I often get the feeling he is making the ceremony up as he goes along. The basic ceremony doesn't seem very different from the UK, but there is more of an insistance on wearing white, as Chicfille says. When my filleule (goddaughter) was christened, the priest refused even tiny green flowers on her dress. Some priests have a (often revolting) white garment that they put round the baby, we had to undress my gaddaughter and put this on her instead in the middle of the ceremony.
I've been to christenings during the Sunday service (the preferred method for priests in rural areas who have to deal with several churches) and christenings at a separate time. As chicfille says, for most french people, the ceremony is slightly incidental. The celebration is the most important thing. Hours and hours in a restaurant (we hired out a salle de fêtes in Brittany)
It seems that most christening presents are non-religious. The godparents are often expected to buy a medaillon (one gets the chain the other the medaille- this is usually the virgin mary) But the other presents are generally toys and books, the same sort of thing you would give at a birth.
I'm a marraine. It's important. My goddaughter never calls me Tata, always Marraine. My husband has recently been asked to be parrain to a friend's son. He hesitated, not because of the religious responsibility, but because it's important to him to see his filleuls and be involved in their lives and he wasn't sure he would be able to.
-
All those poor girlies in Marseille who have to give birth in corridors and all that, it's all most unfair
This reminds me of my husband standing in a long hospital regsitration queue in marseille with a heavily pregnant woman behind him. He turned round and trying to be friendly, joked "I hope you're not in labour?" After breathing through her contration she replied that the maternity dept had sent her there to register before they would let her give birth.
I wouldn't mind croissants or even vending machines that charge less than 80c (no change given) for a cup of coffee. True you don't get ancient Reader's digests, but that's because you get 10 year old copies of Gala and Voici. In fact, that's quite fun reading about the "for ever" marriages of stars who have since divorced a couple of times.
Eldest child is taking immuno supressors at the moment. They come in boxes of 100. He has a half tablet a day, but every visit to the hospital, they give us yet another prescription. We could have around 600 tablets now enough for several years. These are the tablets that were only given to us along with dire warnings about not touching them with bare hands/while pregnant etc.
School trips?
in French Education
Posted
My son is in the same situation as Fantine's. He's done a lot of day trips, classes de voile at the nearby base nautique.... but no overnighters. The school used to organise a classe de neige with the CM2's and the old directrice, but the new one only arrived this year and is finding her feet.
Friends with kids in primaire seem to be in more or less the same situation; there's sometimes a trip for the CM1/CM2 but it's usually a trip that has been going on for a long time and has become part of the school's culture (the kind of trip that is expected by everybody and is organised by taking last year's programme and changing the dates)
Next year he will be at my collège. This year there was a trip to italy for the pupils doing italian or latin and a trip to Spain for the pupils doing Spanish (all 4eme and 3eme except for a few latin students) There have been trips to the UK and to the futuroscope in the past, but not this year.
My old school had a classe de neige in 6eme, trip to the UK in 5eme, trip to Italy/spain in 4eme and trip to the futuroscope in 3eme.
School trips seem to be less common now compared to 10 years ago (at least in collège) They have got more and more complicated to organise; there are new legal and financial rules which give you very little flexibility and a lot of teachers been put off by all the trials there have been over the last few years. They don't want to take that resposibility.