Blogger Appreciation Award

My lovely new friends, An Irish Procrastinator and Becca, have both been kind enough to nominate me for a Blogger Appreciation Award. I am very grateful for their appreciation and I thoroughly appreciate both of their blogs in my turn. Between them they provide a sizeable chunk of my weekly reading entertainment, and are responsible for my new found knowledge of wonderful Dorothy Parker quotes (Thanks I.P.!) and life in the tropics, surrounded by exotic fruit and miniature Jersey cows (thanks Becca!) among many, many other things. Please take a look at their pages – I guarantee that you will not be disappointed!

Rules:

• Thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link back to their site.
• Write a paragraph of something positive about yourself.
• Nominate and notify as many bloggers as you wish.
• Use the Blogger Appreciation Award image

Something positive about myself:

Over the past six years and 361 days I have become quite adept (and almost comfortable) at communicating in French. This is an extremely positive state of affairs, since I moved to France on March 8th 2011. When I first arrived I had hoped that a French A-Level, acquired five years previously, might be sufficient to get me through my intended four months of adventuring abroad. As it happened I had no need to fear. The only real occasions where I was required to speak French was at au pair-recommended French class, which only covered the basics. Nearly everyone else with whom I came into contact spoke English (I was living in an anglophone-dominant suburb of Geneva). I had no real encouragement to improve and I rested on my laurels.

When I moved slightly further afield, however (roughly thirty miles from Geneva), three years later (after a two year residency in Geneva proper), I became painfully aware that my essays on swinging through jungle vines on the hunt for drug barons (GCSE French – I was foolishly given free reign to choose my own topic), complaining about the state of an aire whilst driving on the autoroute (AS Level), and telling my parents of my decision to get married (A Level – I have never understood the point of this exercise: I would never inform my parents of such a life-altering decision by letter, let alone in French) were painfully lacking in any of the more useful vocabulary needed to survive and thrive on a permanent basis in rural France.

Since then I can honestly say that my French has improved enormously and that I can now converse fairly confidently with nannies and teachers at the maternelle, with builders, and with doctors and midwives in the labour ward in hospital who spoke no English (now that would have been a useful essay topic…).

My nominees: (no offence will be taken in the slightest if you would rather not participate)

Invisibly Me

Tales of Belle

Seeing M.E. in Reality

The Home Place Web

Frugal Hausfrau

Frazzled Again

Open Source

No more Mrs. Plastic Fantastic

I look forward to finding out a little bit more about you and your lovely blogs 🙂

Mots du jour:

aire – services (most often found on motorways) autoroute – motorway maternelle – nursery school