zefrenchpeople

I know it’s not for another 9 years but it’ll be here soon enough!

Yesterday, Annecy was designated as France’s choice in the candidacy to host the 2018 Winter Olympic games.  The lakeside town, in the French Alps, not far from the Swiss border was named ahead from Grenoble, Nice, and Pelvoux-les-Ecrins .  It is situated next to the cleanest lake in Europe, 80 per cent of the necessary infrastructure are already in place.

Here are the other selected cities around the world:

Asia:

•  Almaty, Kazakhstan

• Harbin, China
• Pyeongchang, South Korea

Europe:

• Annecy, France
• Bukovel, Ukraine
• Bursa, Turkey
• Geneva, Switzerland
• Munich, Germany
• Sofia, Bulgaria
• Sweden:

1. Åre
2. Falun
3. Östersund

• Upper Carniola, Slovenia
• Zaragoza, Spain

North America:

• Quebec City, Quebec, Canada

South America:

• Santiago, Chile

Oceania:

• New Zealand

The host will be announced in July 2011 in Durban.

Happy St Patrick’s Day!

It is, for most of us, the “wear-green-day” and “drink-stout-day”.  I was looking for a site with French terms for types of beer but I couldn’t find anything so I will have to dig to remember them myself!

Amazingly enough, France is not a huge beer-drinker… (I kinda feel sad suddenly)

(beer list)

Anyways, I did find some very interesting and useful sentences you should learn and practice while you’re drunk.

 As I was looking for the price of a pint now in France  (which seems to be 4.5 euros, I remembered that you cannot pronounce “pint” the usual way because most of the servers won’t understand what you’re ordering.  You have to pronounce it à la française “pinte” like ” p-huh-t’ “…. yeah!

If you want half of that it’s a “demi” (duh-me) and half of that is a “bock” … although I’m not sure that term is still used and it is regional.

Then, it is very common to order a beer (ale) with some what we call “sirop” (syrup) in it: “un demi fraise” or “un bock cassis“for example.

 If you “cut” the beer with some “limonade“  you get a “panaché“ to which you can add syrup also.  (below is the Heineken version of it and then they released one with “grenadine” syrup in it which is called a “Monaco“. (watch!)

(yes… 100% satisfied or you get your money back!)

Confused yet?

Even though we say “une bière” or “une pinte“, we change gender to “un demi“, “un bock“, “un monaco” and give female referrals to the type of beers:

• Ale - une blonde
•  Red - une rousse
• Stout - une brune 

For me, Beamish red is the best, even though impossible to find around here.  If you have the chance, do yourself a favor, try Beamish Stout or Murphy’s and I promise you, you will forget all about Guiness in no time!

A la vôtre!

N.B.: a British beer is 20oz(568ml) while a US one is 16oz (475ml) and a French one is 500ml.

On February 2nd, we celebrate “la chandeleur” (candlemas) and apart from the Catholic sound to it (Purification of the Blessed Virgin, Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple), it is mostly Crêpes Day!

The tradition is to hold a coin in your writing hand and a crêpe pan in the other; then toss the crêpe in the air. If you manage to catch the crêpe in the pan, your family will enjoy prosperity for the rest of the year.

There is also the old people’s belief that keeping the first crêpe of the year in aluminium foil at the bottom of your cupboard will bring money year-round… don’t know about that!

Here are some recipes in French.

As you may know, we also make another kind of crêpes than the one we eat as dessert.  The “crêpes de sarrasin“ from Brittany (also called Breton galette) are the ones you will taste if you are more interested in a complete meal.  Made with buckwheat flour, they have a very peculiar taste.  If you ever go to a crêperie you will have the choice between both so you might end up eating crêpes for dinner (recipe) filled with Ham, eggs, meat, fish, veggies, anything really… and crêpes for dessert… with cold cider of course.

N.B.: I finally did it! I started a new blog, same concept but in French about the US and it’s called Ze Ricains.  

When I was a kid, I went to Marennes-Oléron with my school.  This town, on the Atlantic Ocean, is a major Oyster location.  Ostréiculture is the term we use to determine such culture.

I know a lot of Americans are grossed out about oysters (huîtres) and the fact that you eat them alive.  But if you do like them, then the best ones are from that place.   The best way to know if an oyster is fresh is to squeeze some lemon juice on it and if it retracts then you know it’s still alive!  But make sure to chew it because if you don’t, it will grab on to your stomach and you will be having some nasty heartburn.

We usually eat oysters for the Winter Holidays but sometimes you can have it as an “entrée” (appetizer) in fancy restaurants.

Anyways… Marennes-Oléron is by far the largest oyster cultivation area in all of Europe. The combined growing and refinement area covers approximately 15,000 acres (approx. 6,000 hectares). Annually, anywhere from 45,000 to 60,000 metric tons of oysters are produced here. The production accounts for approximately 45% of the entire French oyster industry.

Dining Etiquette: How To Eat Oysters

Let’s talk about France’s Educational System, how it works.

If your child is clean (doesn’t wear diapers anymore) and knows a minimum (how to talk and behave), he/she can start going to school at age 2 and a half or so.  It’s called “école maternelle” and usually lasts 3 years… but if your kid starts at 4 years old then he will only stays in that “cycle” for 2 years.  It’s just to teach children how to be social, be with others, a little bit like daycare but teachers actually have a program to follow so they teach colors, letters, shapes etc… and there is nap time in the afternoons if you don’t pick up your kid from school at lunch.  A lot of parents only leave their kids for a half day at a time and then when the kid doesn’t nap anymore, the kid stays in school in the afternoon also. (I couldn’t find a translation, it linked me to kindergarten which is actually after).

Then you have the “école primaire” which starts at least at 5 years old and is mandatory where you learn how to read, write and count although most of the time, you already learned that in “maternelle“.

In France you are not allowed to use a ball pen, only fountain pain, and you learn how to write in script first.  Nobody write in capital letter except typing machine!  Especially for exams, because if your copy is too dirty with scratches, points will be taken away from your work.

When you turn 11, you go to”Collège” for 4 years.  At the end of “Collège” you take a small exam: “le brevet des collèges” with three main tests: French, History-Geography and Mathematics. The last two years of “Collège” are in “contrôle continu” which is like the US system in which your grades during the year count as a percentage of the final exam.  So depending on your average grade during those two years you know if you have a shot in getting the “brevet” or not.

Depending on these grades again and your results at the exam, you know which “Lycée” (High school) you will/should go to.  We have three types of High Schools:

1. General - Literary Focus, Economy Focus or Scientific Focus (which is the way to take if you plan on going to any University)
2. Technology - which is the way to go if you plan of going in a Tech University
3. Professional - which is the way to learn a job like hairdresser, or seller, or baker, or woodcarver… you see what I mean.

At the end of the “lycée” you take another exam, “Le Bac” (Baccalauréat). The exam is different for each specialty which determines how you are graded by coefficient.  For example, if you are in General Literary Focus and has English as a first foreign Language (usually study 3… at least that’s what I did), then the coefficient will be 5.  So if you score a 15 out of 20 (always out of 20 or 40 in High School and “Collège”, out of 10 before that), you multiply the 5 extra points over 10 by 5 and so you got 25 points (if you got 5/20 then it would be -25 points).  You need a certain amount of points to get the diploma, or get a distinction.  There is 3 distinctions:

• assez bien (12/20)
• bien (15/20)
• très bien (18/20)
• and for the really good you have “Féliciations du jury”

If you follow the professional field then you have to do an internship and you get graded on that also. Also, you will rarely get a 20/20 (100%) because nobody is perfect. (seriously!)

Then you can go to the University and technically you can enter any University with any Bac but it is way easier if you’re from the General field because you’ve been molded to fit in.  As well as if you plan on going to a Tech University, the Technology Bac is a better choice… and if you picked the professional field, you had thought about a job long ago and you didn’t  plan on going to a University.

Although it is starting to change, Universities and schools in general are free in France, it’s the law of the laïcité and it is mandatory until you hit 16 thanks to Jules Ferry.  This system is highly centralized, like anything in France.

Ecole maternelle (Petite-section, Moyenne-section, Grande-section) = 3 years
Ecole primaire (CP, CE1, CE2, CM1, CM2) = 5 years
Collège (6ème, 5ème, 4ème, 3ème) = 4 years
Lycée (Seconde, Première, Terminale) = 3 years-5 years
Université (Licence, Master, Doctorat) = 8 years (new system since ‘04)

We also divide the School calendar by zones, so that everybody doesn’t get vacation at the same time.  It’s a weird concept but is supposed to help with traffic for example because as soon as they can, French people LOVE to go somewhere on vacation.  It’s not vacation if you stay home basically!

So you have three zones by Académies (the administrative authority for each region):

There is more info on wiki but that’s pretty much the essential…  if you have any questions though, you can comment!