Today at the DEFLE

Well, the big event of the morning was our exposé on mai '68. We followed a team of American girls who talked about French cinéma in the 60s and 70s.

Then it was us. Me (Brit), Amy (American) and Katia (Russian). Amy has the best French, Katia has the best speaking manner and I have the best ... eye contact. I also had the best jokes, one when I spoke about how the cold war from time to time became somewhat warm, and another when I spoke about the enormous growth in the population of Europe after the war, which in French is called "le baby-boom". (It is, too).

I managed to get through my background material without dissolving into a bout of coughing. However I fed Amy the wrong past participle for the dissolution of the National Assembly (it's dissoude). Then while Katia spoke Amy wrote her headings on the board and I scrawled some '68 graffiti.

We always get a huge adrenalin rush after these things, so we went for lunch afterwards to the Vera Cruz. Unfortunately because there were six of us we ended up in the big smoky room so my cough is back with a vengeance. And a headache.

I had a turkey cordon bleu with ratatouille. One of the American girls asked me what is in ratatouille. Hmm, it's tomaydos, um ... eggplant, er ... zucchini, and onions. You can't even relax when you are speaking English!

I am going to bed very early tonight because tomorrow I have four hours of phonetics workshop. I have started doing lip exercises to limber up ready, but really it will all be about intonation. Last time we had to read on a monotone ready to start going up for the commas and down for the full stops. Then we'll have to start introducing glottal stops, pauses and displaced accents for emphasis.

Oh - the history lecturer's accent (which is the one I want to have). I am not doing very well, but at the moment my cough wouldn't permit it, really. Today at one point he said "c'était Radical" and his r was so strong the girl sat next to him jumped. I think I will have to start recording his sessions so I can practice the accent.

If I do some courses as auditeur libre next year I could do his. He's just very, very good. The trouble is he specialises in urban history. His big contribution has been to study the introduction of electricity to Bordeaux. I don't want to do that! Can't think of anything duller!

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