Try taking this test(no cheating) and tell us your score.  I’m sad to say I only got 6 correct.

www.discoverlanguages.org/files/public/DL_teacherquiz.pdf

Peggy and Adrian!!  Congratulations girls!  Their rap about Discover Languages, Discover the World won the ACFTL video podcast contest!  Please visit www.actflvideocontest.org and see what they did.  The school earned $500 for future French projects and I hope the girls earn something too!

Merci to all of you who went to the site and voted for them.

I am very proud of these girls!

It was about this time last year that I began this blog.  In a year, I’ve had almost 9,000 visits to the blog and over 1,000 comments.  Most comments have come from my French students who get extra credit when they post comments.  But, I’ve also had comments from strangers around the world who found my blog and have posted.  That’s very exciting!  If you look at the Clustermap and the Flagcounter on the right, you can see where everyone is posting from.  What a neat variety of people! 

Merci to all of you and I hope you will continue to post!!

What a great surprise we have here in town!  There is a seal in Parker’s River!  I know it’s hard to see in the picture, but where the marsh sticks out into the water, there is a gray blob and that’s the seal.  It’s sooooo cute!  I have seen it twice, and never have my camera, so I have to use my phone to take the picture.  It’s very unusual to see seals around here.  I have lived here my whole life and the only place I’ve ever seen seals is out on the open Atlantic side of the Cape.  There must be some good fish in this river!

I found this website http://zut.languageskills.co.uk/index.html and really like the activities.  Click on the French flag to enter the area for French activities, then select something from the left side bar and get going!  It says you have register but I found that you do not, as long as you aren’t using it during the European school day.  That is strange, I think, but since we are 5 hours behind England, I’m pretty sure we won’t run into the problem of using it during the times listed there.  Some of the activities are great for practicing your listening skills because you have to fill in the blanks.  Bonne chance and let me know what you think!

I am VERY VERY VERY excited to share the news that Peggy and Adrian are finalists the ACTFL Podcast Contest!  Starting vendredi, le 15 janvier, you can visit www.actflvideocontest.org and vote for your favorite.  The whole world gets to vote so this will be very interesting!  Congratulations to Peggy and Adrian for being finalists et BONNE CHANCE!  This is as exciting for me as it is for them!  Judging ends le 31 janvier and we’ll find out who wins in février!

Did you make any New Year’s resolutions?  Do they include speaking more French????

What do you know about Christmas, New Year’s Eve, etc in the francophone world?  We are looking for information about the traditions you know about in France, Quebec, Martinique- anywhere that is a francophone place that celebrates special days in December and January.  Share your information here!!

This is a cake eaten on le 6 janvier in many French households.  It’s called the Galette Des Rois.  It is first eaten on l’Epiphanie which takes place le 6 janvier and is a Catholic tradition.  This is the day that the wise men are believed to have found Jesus, 12 days after his birth(those are the 12 days of Christmas).  This cake symbolizes the wise men searching and then finally finding what they were looking for.  Their epiphany was finding Jesus. 

An epiphany is a “waking up” or an AHA moment.  Like when you’re searching for something and then finally find it.  It could be an actual object (like your shoes) or when you finally find the answer to a math problem or you FINALLY understand what someone has been talking about for a while.

When you eat this Galette Des Rois, there is a tradition.  Inside of it, a little bean or token of some kind is hidden before it is baked.  No one can see where it is.  As you cut it, you put a dishtowel over it so if it sticks out of a slice no one gets to see it before it’s served.  Then you serve it to all of the guests and the person who finds the bean or token in their slice becomes the king or queen of the party.  They had an epiphany when they found what they were looking for.  The king or queen is like the wise men and the token is like the baby Jesus.

In bakeries all over France from now until about March they sell these cakes and people often have them when they have people over for dinner or parties.  The bakeries usually give away little gold paper crowns to wear.  Some bakeries have collectible tokens that they put in their Galette and people collect them over time and it becomes a tradition. 

After le 6 janvier, they Christmas celebrations are over and life goes back to normal.