Vive la France

I was lucky enough to spend my half term in France, and as I stayed with a lovely French family in a beautiful French house, I had the opportunity to try many new things and act like a little French girl for a week!



These are a few things I noticed whilst I was there:


1.  Nearly all of the houses have colourful shutters on the windows and a boite aux lettres (letter box) by their gates with their names on them (surname first, first name second, e.g, GUILBERT Elsa.)

 

 



2.  They have an aperitif, which is a drink and some nibbles, before a meal. Then they have a starter, a main meal, cheese, and a pudding. They eat all this slowly whilst talking and enjoying their food.


3.   Parents often call their daughter ma choupinette; chou means cute and pinette is slang for petite, which means small. I know understand the name of Karl Lagerfeld's cat: Choupette. Pette can also be slang for petite or could be a play on the Englsih word 'pet'.

4.  Every French family has a plat au fromage in their fridge which they take out at meal times. They eat the cheeses with bread.


5.  They absolutely LOVE bread and you'll always see them at every meal, breakfast, lunch and supper, with a baguette.


6.  The sweets people give out at Halloween are the nicest sweets I've ever had and come in all kinds of fruity, cola, caramel and nougat flavours.

7.  French children and young people can't necessarily speak English, but they can sing and follow English songs. The ones that were popular when I was there were:

~ Gangnam Style, by PSY
~ Wake Me Up, by Avicii
~ Burn, by Ellie Goulding
~ Let Her Go, by Passenger
~ Roar, by Katy Perry


8.   French women are obsessed with Zara's clean cut clothes, especially the beige trench coat. So very tres chic et elegante.

9.  They don't like cheese and onion crisps. (Well the girls I met didn't anway!)


10.  The crisps they do like are the best crisp invention ever.

11.   Every day at precisely 4pm the children have a goute; a drink and something sweet to eat like a cake, a biscuit or a nutella baguette.



12.   There are really good French songs in the French charts as well as well-known English ones, and here is one of my favourites. A song called Papoutai by Stromae:







Et voila, douze trucs que vous connaissez maintenant de France!
(And there you go, twelve things you now know about France!)