i love our conversation group meetings. we make the journey of learning french together with this fun group of moms. one mom is british and i love this list of her favorite new french terms she shared with us:
parents retardataire – referring to the parents who arrived late to the meeting – usually “les eleves retardataire” meaning late students. retardataire = latecomer
depots sauvages – (literally “wild trash”) = illegal dumping
dejections canines – dog poop.(apparently “dejection” is a medical term for this)
she also shared a british term with me once when i told a story about an artistocratic-wannabee mom that i knew in san francisco. this mom was also pregnant and could not make a certain meeting because she had an appointment to have her baby then. apparently, she had said to a friend, in reference to this, “dogs give birth”. my friend said that in england this is a type they call “too posh to push”.
of course, i also love the group because i get all kinds of stories about the school. it was so helpful to try to understand things when we started in september, a year ago. the french school culture is all about punishment and telling kids what they do wrong rather than the american way of telling them what they do right. there is a little notebook called "carnet de correspondance" which is used as the communication with the parents. it is theoretically to have all teacher comments, but usually to tell what the child has done wrong and to have a record of bad behavior. one mom told me that her daughter got a bad mark for having brought in the wrong type of scotch tape. absurd!
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