Toulouse-Lautrec's childhood home isn't far from the museum, so we ran up the street and saw it. It's not really a tourist attraction. People still live there; there's just a plaque by the door saying Toulouse-Lautrec's childhood home (only in French, of course).
Fourth Stop: crepe stand!
We bought delicious nutella crepes from a surly crepe stand guy, who did not put nearly enough nutella on Noemi's crepe. Side note: I have never once seen a crepe rolled up like we do in the US. They're always folded, either in a triangle or in a rectangle.
Fifth Stop: St. Salvi Cloister
I love, love, love cloisters. This one was very small, but absolutely adorable. It had a big herb garden in the middle, so it smelled so good in there.
Sixth Stop: cute little kitchen stuff store
I have a weakness for cute kitchen stuff. This store happened to have the perfect carafe d'eau that I've been searching and searching and searching for since I left Paris. No matter that I paid 10 euro for an empty glass bottle, and that it'll add at least a pound to the weight of my suitcase...the lady who rang me up asked where I was from and when I said the US, she told me how she had just been in Chicago with her husband. We then had a nice little conversation and at the end she complimented my French. Victory!
I've found that for the most part, my feelings after a conversation have nothing to do with content and everything to do with how well I just spoke French. For example, on Friday we had 5 visits, which is way, way more than our usual 3. We thought it was going to be too hard to get to everyone and be able to spend enough time chatting with them, so I called up Madame Cacheux to see if we could switch her to Monday afternoon instead. She was way ticked because apparently Pierre had already changed the date of her visit a couple times, so I ended up being like, "Ok, fine, we'll find the time to come visit you today as planned." Bad outcome, yeah? More work for us. But. For the duration of the entire conversation I was speaking awesome French; she understood me, and I understood her. When I hung up the phone I was smiling.
Anyone who's picked up a second language ever feel that way?
No comments:
Post a Comment