Keith and Christine would love to hear from you with questions, comments, personal news and any news at all from Australia or wherever you are. We will reply to all emails! Please write to either windlechristine@gmail.com or windle.keith@gmail.com
Anne-Marie was home today and that gave us a good chance to spend more time together. It was a very hot day – too hot for long walks – so, apart from chatting, the day was spent in catching up some of the blog, emailing friends and family, doing some French language study and preparing some information about education in Geelong for a contact from Ireland. I am putting all my reading of the newspaper and magazines into the studying basket, while Keith is ploughing through a fabulous dictionary that has words and then gives examples of their usage in sentences. We have dictionaries on hand all the time but tend to talk around a missing piece of vocabulary rather than slow down and look it up. Eg we don’t know the word for ‘storm’ so we say ‘the time when it rains lots and lots’. Anne-Marie and Yves will then supply us with the correct vocabulary, ‘orage’, but unless we write it down or use it several times immediately, we are prone to forget it. So it is very much one step forward and one step back for our language development in these early days. Keith looks so serious when someone speaks to him, from concentrating so hard, and it is only then that I realise that any speaking we do is actually language study as well. We all had a siesta today, with our fatigue relating to a big lunch, wine and mental efforts.
We watched a very interesting television program about the Amazon River, which was narrated by, and included Nicolas Hulot, a famous French ecologist who is very influential in France. He presents as a charming man with a lot of knowledge and a personality to endear him to everyone. I was able to follow most of what he said as narrator, but I couldn’t follow all of the dialogue. After diving with dangerous creatures à la Steve Irwin, exploring the forest and discussing its destruction and the future of the whole world, he visited the Zo’es, a tribe which was only discovered in the 1980s. Missionaries had gone there, but they were subsequently banned because it was considered that their impact, and in fact any impact that leads to the loss of culture and lifestyle, was against the best interests of the tribe.
There was a big news story of the rescue of Ingrid Betancourt from the clutches of the Farc, a Colombian insurgent group. A half-French Colombian politician, she was held hostage for six years in the jungle. Video of her last November showed her to be in a bad way and very thin, but she has emerged from the ordeal in reasonable health and with the ability to be articulate in interviews, hours after her return. She is certainly a very strong woman. It is so much easier to practise French in interesting contexts like this, and in reading the paper than from a textbook for me, but also so much more random in what I pick up.
Anne-Marie was home today and that gave us a good chance to spend more time together. It was a very hot day – too hot for long walks – so, apart from chatting, the day was spent in catching up some of the blog, emailing friends and family, doing some French language study and preparing some information about education in Geelong for a contact from Ireland. I am putting all my reading of the newspaper and magazines into the studying basket, while Keith is ploughing through a fabulous dictionary that has words and then gives examples of their usage in sentences. We have dictionaries on hand all the time but tend to talk around a missing piece of vocabulary rather than slow down and look it up. Eg we don’t know the word for ‘storm’ so we say ‘the time when it rains lots and lots’. Anne-Marie and Yves will then supply us with the correct vocabulary, ‘orage’, but unless we write it down or use it several times immediately, we are prone to forget it. So it is very much one step forward and one step back for our language development in these early days. Keith looks so serious when someone speaks to him, from concentrating so hard, and it is only then that I realise that any speaking we do is actually language study as well. We all had a siesta today, with our fatigue relating to a big lunch, wine and mental efforts.
We watched a very interesting television program about the Amazon River, which was narrated by, and included Nicolas Hulot, a famous French ecologist who is very influential in France. He presents as a charming man with a lot of knowledge and a personality to endear him to everyone. I was able to follow most of what he said as narrator, but I couldn’t follow all of the dialogue. After diving with dangerous creatures à la Steve Irwin, exploring the forest and discussing its destruction and the future of the whole world, he visited the Zo’es, a tribe which was only discovered in the 1980s. Missionaries had gone there, but they were subsequently banned because it was considered that their impact, and in fact any impact that leads to the loss of culture and lifestyle, was against the best interests of the tribe.
There was a big news story of the rescue of Ingrid Betancourt from the clutches of the Farc, a Colombian insurgent group. A half-French Colombian politician, she was held hostage for six years in the jungle. Video of her last November showed her to be in a bad way and very thin, but she has emerged from the ordeal in reasonable health and with the ability to be articulate in interviews, hours after her return. She is certainly a very strong woman. It is so much easier to practise French in interesting contexts like this, and in reading the paper than from a textbook for me, but also so much more random in what I pick up.
The Primat's dog, Arkun, gives a very vocal and rather scary welcome to all (even to family members) but fortunately, after a short time, he was friendly to us.
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