Picture of the Week : Rodin Museum

The Rodin Museum is a nice museum to take a stroll and see important pieces of work of Auguste Rodin like The Thinker  and  The Gates of Hell.
It is also in the"Midnight in Paris" film, you can see the trailer below and I highly recommend to see the film.

Musée Rodin - Rodin Museum

 

Picture of Week : Pigeons

This week I have been thinking about pigeons, you know those birds considered disgusting and found everywhere. It's like the Canadian geese in America.

come here little birdy !

Anyway back on subject, I was thinking about how I have never seen a baby pigeon (un pigeonneau en français). I always see big ones and it always seems to be mating season, so obviously there are baby ones somewhere.

I looked and looked; and then I found one. 

A pigeon egg, kind of an odd place !

Two of my friends who live further down the street have been having trouble with pigeons. The pigeons have been trying to make nests out of their laundry,( I am sure that is a big surprise finding a pigeon in your jeans when folding them.) But I don't know what would be worse, a snake, a pigeon, or a rat !
One told me she keeps finding eggs in odd places, it's like they skipped the part of a nest and ended up laying one in her tomatoes ! She has baby pigeons too ! and she will probably have more because she feeds them, it's like never feed the seagulls at the beach so never feed the pigeons off your balcony ! And sadly they fly away too fast to get a picture !

Have you seen baby pigeons before ?

 

Picture of the Week : Paris Mosque

My husband and I go at least once a month to the paris mosque located near jardin des plantes, firstly because we are Muslim, secondly it is like stepping into paradise and thirdly for the tea time.

One thing that is good about the mosque, they have tours in English and French where they give basic information about Islam. But if you want to know more about Islam, do not hesitate to ask me.

Take a look into another world :

Picture of the Week : Louvre

The Louvre is full of art, if you didn't know already. There is literally way too much to see in one day. It can take months or years depending on how long you stand and gaze at the many different styles of art work.

Here are a few statues that caught my eye last time I was there, so gaze away.

French language rant

I consider myself to be fairly knowledgable in French and speak it fairly well; considering that I have a a Bachelor's and a Masters degree in which all my classes were in French and I speak it more than I do English.

Recently I had to explain to the insurance guy that we had a "flood" or rather a water problem behind the tiles in our bathroom.  The word tile in French is carrelage. So I kept telling him carrelages (my pronunciation car lage) carrelage and he was like grillage (like a barbecue). Later did I find out that carrelage is pronunced  care lage. but really does  that change anything if I said carlage instead of carelage ?

And this got me thinking...

that the French need to take a French for foreginers 101 class in order to learn how foreigners hear certain words.  I mean I am used to the French's bad pronuciation of english words and I still understand what they are talking about.

vhere are you going, vhat are you doing ? you know where the w's sound like v's. or they forget to add the s at when things are plural (I want one of those thing.) or the th sound. the = zuh (sounds like duh but with a z).

So why do I get such a hard time for my pronunciation ?
One time someone told me the reason is, that I don't articulate and speak loud and his reason behind that was that I was afraid I was going to make a mistake when speaking. When really and truly I am just a soft-spoken and shy person, and he didn't believe that this was true.

But then again, people have said that they enjoy my cute English accent, somehow they always assume though that I am English instead of American and that gets set straight rather quickly. 

or maybe I just need to invest in a French pronunication class ?!? or the French need to invest in some English pronunication classes ?

What do you think ?
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