Visit to France
Various thoughts from various dates:
Thursday, 29 May:
Here I am at the French Open. Maybe I should try some live blogging. Gulbis serves. Then Blake hits the ball. Then Gulbis hits the ball. Point. OK maybe not. It's nice to be at the game.
Tuesday, 27 May:
It's been fun seeing Chloe acquire language. Recently, she has developed a rule for past tense-- add "en" on to the end of the verb. She says "broken it" and "eaten it" and that has transferred to other verbs. For example, "sleepen" and "driven".
Also, she infers that the verb for open is "op". This is similar to how she sometimes thinks the singluar of box is bok. You might also be interested in acquiring two languages---Chloe surely understands both English and French very well, and will imitate sounds in both (and of animals, kids, and inanimate objects as well). She thinks there are at least two words for every object, and will use them interchangibly. Sometimes she says birdie, sometimes oiseau. Sometimes eat sometimes manger. Sometimes nose sometimes nez. You get the idea. That means that to the untrained monolingual ear she is babbling, whereas she is trying to convey information. Yes, there is still babble, but most of the many things she says is intelligible and makes sense. She is also very strong-willed. If you don't understand or acknowledge what she is saying, she will repeat it incessantly until you get it. Then she'll get a little smirk on her face---"They finally got it!"
Saturday, 7 June:
Chloe must be over 1000 words by now; I'm going to stop estimating after this. As a follow up to the previous paragraph, she now reinforces what she says using both languages. If a person doesn't understand [or doesn't want to understand] what she wants, she'll switch languages. So she'll say "daddy dehors!" "dehors daddy!" "dehors!", and if I pretend to not understand what she wants, she'll say "daddy outside!", "outside daddy!", "outside!". She's starting to create more complex sentences, like Chloe piquer Mamie bobo
[Chloe poke grandma owie] to say that she was poking grandma with a stick and it made grandma have an owie. Her French vocabulary has certainly been increasing here in France. Unfortunately Chloe will be surrounded by English 11 months out of the year, which makes it hard for her to learn equal amounts of French and English. And while I speak French very well, it would be good for Chloe to have a good amount of native speakers around so that she won't have problems with the gender of objects, for example.
We also have to figure out how Chloe will take the French Baccalaureate exam, without which Chloe would not be able to find a (good) job in France as a French citizen. Or go to the public universities here in France, which are much less expensive than in the United States. Chloe could take high school classes by mail, but doing that in addition to the homework she'll have at school in the US might be overdoing it. We were thinking she should go to France for her last year of high school; however Audrey tutored a high school student in Seattle who was going to do that, and missing 11 years of expected knowledge is hard to overcome at the same time as adjusting to a new culture and making new friends. And we would have to be in France, probably---a one-year sabattical is possible... As you can see, there will be difficult choices to be made in the upcoming years. And Chloe isn't even 20 months yet! We're thinking about schools because we have to think about school districts when we move into NYC.
Another milestone: she has a 17th tooth, and the 18th on its way.
Tuesday, 27 May:
To change the subject completely, as for gas prices, the US has finally topped $1/L. That makes it easier to compare prices. Here in France the price is 1.5 Euro/L. Knowing that the exchange rate is $1.5+/Euro, gas is over twice as expensive here. Of course, if you take into account the fuel efficiency here, I'm guessing it would cost about the same to go the same distance, so maybe we'll finally have some sort of push for good and useful mass transit in the US. Or at least in the blue states.
Saturday, 5 June
I don't know if you realize it, but there's another system for calculating gas mileage. In the US, we're used to miles/gallon. In France, and I'm guessing is true elsewhere as well, they calculate in liters per 100 km. That is, they figure out how much gas it takes to go a fixed distance. If a car gets 60 miles / gallon, that is approximately equivalent to 1 gallon / 100 km, which would give a value of 3.7 liters / 100 km. The smaller the number, the better the gas mileage. Without round numbers, it is difficult to convert between the two, so it's hard to understand what various news reports are saying in France. But chew on this. Most cars here have fuel efficiency around 6 l / 100 km. On the other hand, I saw on the news the other night that GM is having trouble selling the big SUV's here in Europe. Who wouldn't want a car with an efficiency rating of 60 l / 100 km? [Now that I think about it, that can't be right---that's the same as a liter per mile, or 4 mpg. There aren't cars like that, are there?]
This vacation to France will have been four weeks of running around to make sure to see everyone. I know that I am lucky to have the opportunity to spend so much time with my family, and to see Chloe grow up as much as she has.
I need to find a hobby that inspires me. Photography is certainly a hobby---I truly enjoy taking a great picture---but I find it tedious to do all the cleanup work of pictures, and I certainly would not want to have a bulky and completely manual camera. I also enjoy making mosaics, but that's not something I can share with Chloe at this point, and it's hard to find quality materials in Binghamton. I like math puzzles [see Hashi and Slitherlink at conceptispuzzles.com], but that's not something I can share with others. I enjoy board games, but this is not something you can do without others around. I occupy a good amount of my [now much more limited] free leisure time playing arcade-like internet games which I enjoy at the time, but I'm frustrated with myself for having done so because it is not a constructive activity. Then there's reading RSS feeds, which I could probably do without, but then I wouldn't have any access to the world and the news of the day...
I would like to garden more, but that is hard because we leave for at least a month during the summer, during which time it is important to tend to a garden. In Binghamton it is cold until May which means planting is not easy, and indoor plants we need to pass off to someone when we're gone.
I need a hobby that feels useful. Perhaps volunteering somewhere.
Are there any hobbies you really enjoy and would like to suggest that I try?
Thursday, 29 May:
Here I am at the French Open. Maybe I should try some live blogging. Gulbis serves. Then Blake hits the ball. Then Gulbis hits the ball. Point. OK maybe not. It's nice to be at the game.
Tuesday, 27 May:
It's been fun seeing Chloe acquire language. Recently, she has developed a rule for past tense-- add "en" on to the end of the verb. She says "broken it" and "eaten it" and that has transferred to other verbs. For example, "sleepen" and "driven".
Also, she infers that the verb for open is "op". This is similar to how she sometimes thinks the singluar of box is bok. You might also be interested in acquiring two languages---Chloe surely understands both English and French very well, and will imitate sounds in both (and of animals, kids, and inanimate objects as well). She thinks there are at least two words for every object, and will use them interchangibly. Sometimes she says birdie, sometimes oiseau. Sometimes eat sometimes manger. Sometimes nose sometimes nez. You get the idea. That means that to the untrained monolingual ear she is babbling, whereas she is trying to convey information. Yes, there is still babble, but most of the many things she says is intelligible and makes sense. She is also very strong-willed. If you don't understand or acknowledge what she is saying, she will repeat it incessantly until you get it. Then she'll get a little smirk on her face---"They finally got it!"
Saturday, 7 June:
Chloe must be over 1000 words by now; I'm going to stop estimating after this. As a follow up to the previous paragraph, she now reinforces what she says using both languages. If a person doesn't understand [or doesn't want to understand] what she wants, she'll switch languages. So she'll say "daddy dehors!" "dehors daddy!" "dehors!", and if I pretend to not understand what she wants, she'll say "daddy outside!", "outside daddy!", "outside!". She's starting to create more complex sentences, like Chloe piquer Mamie bobo
[Chloe poke grandma owie] to say that she was poking grandma with a stick and it made grandma have an owie. Her French vocabulary has certainly been increasing here in France. Unfortunately Chloe will be surrounded by English 11 months out of the year, which makes it hard for her to learn equal amounts of French and English. And while I speak French very well, it would be good for Chloe to have a good amount of native speakers around so that she won't have problems with the gender of objects, for example.
We also have to figure out how Chloe will take the French Baccalaureate exam, without which Chloe would not be able to find a (good) job in France as a French citizen. Or go to the public universities here in France, which are much less expensive than in the United States. Chloe could take high school classes by mail, but doing that in addition to the homework she'll have at school in the US might be overdoing it. We were thinking she should go to France for her last year of high school; however Audrey tutored a high school student in Seattle who was going to do that, and missing 11 years of expected knowledge is hard to overcome at the same time as adjusting to a new culture and making new friends. And we would have to be in France, probably---a one-year sabattical is possible... As you can see, there will be difficult choices to be made in the upcoming years. And Chloe isn't even 20 months yet! We're thinking about schools because we have to think about school districts when we move into NYC.
Another milestone: she has a 17th tooth, and the 18th on its way.
Tuesday, 27 May:
To change the subject completely, as for gas prices, the US has finally topped $1/L. That makes it easier to compare prices. Here in France the price is 1.5 Euro/L. Knowing that the exchange rate is $1.5+/Euro, gas is over twice as expensive here. Of course, if you take into account the fuel efficiency here, I'm guessing it would cost about the same to go the same distance, so maybe we'll finally have some sort of push for good and useful mass transit in the US. Or at least in the blue states.
Saturday, 5 June
I don't know if you realize it, but there's another system for calculating gas mileage. In the US, we're used to miles/gallon. In France, and I'm guessing is true elsewhere as well, they calculate in liters per 100 km. That is, they figure out how much gas it takes to go a fixed distance. If a car gets 60 miles / gallon, that is approximately equivalent to 1 gallon / 100 km, which would give a value of 3.7 liters / 100 km. The smaller the number, the better the gas mileage. Without round numbers, it is difficult to convert between the two, so it's hard to understand what various news reports are saying in France. But chew on this. Most cars here have fuel efficiency around 6 l / 100 km. On the other hand, I saw on the news the other night that GM is having trouble selling the big SUV's here in Europe. Who wouldn't want a car with an efficiency rating of 60 l / 100 km? [Now that I think about it, that can't be right---that's the same as a liter per mile, or 4 mpg. There aren't cars like that, are there?]
This vacation to France will have been four weeks of running around to make sure to see everyone. I know that I am lucky to have the opportunity to spend so much time with my family, and to see Chloe grow up as much as she has.
I need to find a hobby that inspires me. Photography is certainly a hobby---I truly enjoy taking a great picture---but I find it tedious to do all the cleanup work of pictures, and I certainly would not want to have a bulky and completely manual camera. I also enjoy making mosaics, but that's not something I can share with Chloe at this point, and it's hard to find quality materials in Binghamton. I like math puzzles [see Hashi and Slitherlink at conceptispuzzles.com], but that's not something I can share with others. I enjoy board games, but this is not something you can do without others around. I occupy a good amount of my [now much more limited] free leisure time playing arcade-like internet games which I enjoy at the time, but I'm frustrated with myself for having done so because it is not a constructive activity. Then there's reading RSS feeds, which I could probably do without, but then I wouldn't have any access to the world and the news of the day...
I would like to garden more, but that is hard because we leave for at least a month during the summer, during which time it is important to tend to a garden. In Binghamton it is cold until May which means planting is not easy, and indoor plants we need to pass off to someone when we're gone.
I need a hobby that feels useful. Perhaps volunteering somewhere.
Are there any hobbies you really enjoy and would like to suggest that I try?