When I was in middle school, I enrolled in French class. We were permitted to choose our own names, and for some reason I was reborn as Vivienne (in 7th grade). And then Annick (in 8th). And eventually Angelique (in high school). We learned the usual stuff: J'habite à Paris. C'est mon frère. Où est le Louvre? But we also learned that language and culture can be imbibed through food. Yours truly, fourth from left, in 1979 Mme. Sandburg told us tales of her year in Paris, when she had very little money and would often buy a can of peaches to eat on a park bench, pretending that the drunk on the next bench wasn't drooling in his sleep and that her near-starvation was somehow romantic rather than debilitating. She coached us on our irregular verbs and introduced a couple of different tenses, and she brought us to triumph on a National French Exam, where as I recall I scored about 7th in the country in knowledge of 1st year French language. So I was clearly imbib...
A blog about travel and staying put, reading and writing, food and food for thought.