Bonjour from Tours! I am writing this in my bedroom in my host family\u2019s house, a farm-style home about a mile west of the campus of the Institute of Touraine. I arrived a week ago yesterday, and the time has gone shockingly quickly so far. In the last eight days, I have met people from five continents, eaten countless new dishes, and learned more new French words than I thought possible.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Prior to coming, I was very nervous about my host family and about the other students at the Institute, but very quickly, I realized that I had no reason to be anxious. The other students have quickly become my friends, and my host mother, Marie, could not be more welcoming. She is a middle-aged woman with grown children who has been hosting students from all over for many years. Every night, she makes me a new French dish and last night she took me to the movie theatre to see a French film.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Over the weekend, Marie\u2019s son came over for dinner and brought his son Louis who is in high school. Listening to the family speak to each other was a very humbling experience, as they are able to speak very quickly to one another and use slang with which I am not familiar. Louis in particular was very difficult to understand and there were many moments throughout the night when Marie had to act as a translator so that I could fully understand.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
One term that Louis used throughout the evening was ouf,<\/em>which Marie explained was an inversion of the French word fou, <\/em>which means crazy. The two words share the same meaning but ouf\u00a0<\/em>is used primarily by young people and has a more informal connotation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n An expression that I heard first in my classes was C\u2019est top!\u00a0<\/em>In the movie that we saw last night, I heard this expression numerous times. Marie used it this morning at breakfast after checking the forecast for the day, so I asked her about it. She told me that it simply means that something is the best, and that it is an expression that is popular among all age groups.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The local expressions make it more difficult to learn French, as there are so many \u00a0left to learn, but they also make it much more rewarding and interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bonjour from Tours! I am writing this in my bedroom in my host family\u2019s house, a farm-style home about a mile west of the campus of the Institute of Touraine. I arrived a week ago yesterday, and the time has gone shockingly quickly so far. In the last eight days, I have met people from … Continue reading Weeks 1 and 2<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3402,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3402"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":597,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions\/597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}