Natter
In view of last entry and having re-read the correspondence from Christmas , I thought I'd say a bit more about our involvement with the French group.
To people in the UK it might seem strange, but here, anything European or from anywhere else really, is seen as a bit 'exotic'. For schools, struggling to keep language teaching even alive, French is a good start, being so closely allied with English. Of course, Asian languages are taught here in schools and have some strong following, but are seen as 'hard'. For Mary and myself it was a chance to have a shared interest and meet new people and of course the French emphasis on food and art and films, had an influence! I don't watch American films any more.
Learning a language also helps with brain plasticity etc
Most recently one of our conversation group members, who teaches presentation techniques at a local tech college, thought that we could all benefit from improving our skills and so 13 of us are enrolled on this free course. We all have proper student registration numbers, so are now eligible to take part in student protest marches, throw things in the street, have wild parties and generally become a social nuisance (again!).
The course is going well, allowing for forgetting to bring your flash drive (me), forgetting to save your work to the flash drive (Mary) and other minor hiccups.
For us now, with a reasonable level of fluency, one of the main attractions of our weekly group, is listening to various members present a topic from their life.
Some very interesting stories emerge:- one lady had crossed the French Alps in the war. in the company of the French mime artist Marcel Marceau. Another told us how she was sent with her sister as young teenagers, in about 1960, unaccompanied, to stay with their father in an east African country, by air, but which took three days and included getting stranded in Europe with no money, no language skills and no means of communication. They were fortunately befriended, safely, by a young businessman man who paid for a hotel room for them. I spoke about making explosives and a French lady told us of the best five cafés to visit in Paris . Another lady got us all to make clay pots! So many other topics. One new lady has just returned from four years as a missionary in Burkino Faso and offered to do a talk.
We have also made many French friends and been to visit France with them and now have a permanent offer of accommodation in a charming French village, Bonnet, where the owner, Brice, a friend of ours here in Sydney, has inherited a sort of French 'lairdship' comprising a vineyard and several houses.
pictured with wife Agnés at her 50th birthday party on a boat in local estuary.
Our greatest achievement has been our contribution to the start of a bilingual primary school locally. It's taken 8 years. You can google https://www.tarenpointps.nsw.edu.au/french.html
