Le leprechaun français ...

Long time between blogs.  We have been hosting Steve's mom, sister, and niece from North Carolina, who took advantage of a wedding in the family (American cousin to French-American young man) to come hang out with us in Paris for ten days.  We were impressed with the way Shari (Steve's sister) and her daughter Erica immediately mastered the subway system and plunged into the city on their own, though they spoke not a word of French and had hardly been out of the US before.  They also seemed to find plenty of ways to enjoy themselves although both had announced (after accompanying us to the Orangerie on their first day) "no more museums!"  Steve's mom, though needing to stick closer to us and to the apartment, seemed to enjoy everything we took her to, particularly the Musée d'Orsay on her last day in Paris.

Until just this week the weather has remained rainy and cold, but today is sunny and the forecast calls for a high of 19 degrees Celsius (66 F)! At l'ARC, I have just completed a four-week course in French phonetics given by a bizarre little man, a self-described leprechaun (a short, squat, Breton frère with Celtic roots) who was much like a Dickensian caricature come to life.  He did manage to inject a tiny amount of affection and a fair amount of drolerie into his otherwise extremely harsh teaching style.  If you showed up five minutes late for class, he would chase you from the room and lock the door, shouting invectives.  If you mispronounced thé (it does NOT rhyme with prêt or aimais), he would threaten you with a stick and throw his hands in the air, yelling something about the uselessness of teaching idiots. He particularly enjoyed insulting other cultures, the US of course (we are the laziest people in the world, worse even than the English, and what's more, we've elected -- twice! -- a maniac who has the blood of 4,000 young Americans on his soul), but also most other nationalities.  I watched him chew out, on first meeting, a young Columbian whom he seemed to hold personally responsible for the plight of Ingrid Betancourt, and a Chinese girl who had the persecution of Tibet to answer for.  

But he knew how to teach phonetics.  Though heretofore I had gotten mostly compliments on my mastery of French and ability to suppress my American accent, I hadn't a clue about phonetic signs and never even realized the pronunciation errors I was making.  He insisted that the stick he brandished was a leprechaun's magic wand (he called it, for some reason, "Miss Jameson") that would cure us of our slovenly ways of speaking.  And by the end, after successfully pronouncing tu es allé à la gare, jeudi matin à neuf heures, I actually received what I took to be the highest of compliments: 

"Are you sure you're an American?"