Diary Entry-24/01/2017-Rive Gauche

My French Class was really interesting today. We were learning how to say:

“Excuse me Madam, Is there a bakery here? ” or Bank, Post Office, Stadium, or place to ‘plante la tente’.

French translation “Excusez-moi, Madam, il y a un Boulangerie ici?

I am not very confident with learning the language, but my tutor informed me that I pronounced the sentence with a good French accent, and could roll my ‘aRRRs’ with ease. It’s a good thing I can take an insult.

After this, we were learning ‘directions’, to the left (‘gauche’) and to the right (‘droite’). The majority of us are females of between 30 and 40, and one of us mentioned the French perfume that was a big hit in the eighties called ‘Rive Gauche’ – you know the one, in the cylinder-shaped blue and black striped bottle, disgusting smell, I think, but that’s a personal preference. Anyway, before I get carried away, it clicked in our brains that the title of the perfume had the word ‘Gauche’ in it. Which, as we know, means ‘left’. Our powers of deduction were unstoppable, so we put 2 and 2 together with the word ‘Rive’ and asked whether it meant ‘The left side of the river’ (There was no stopping us today!!)

Anyway, that was correct, because ‘Rive Gauche’ is the left, or southern bank of the river Seine in Paris. Here, the river flows westward, cutting the city in two: looking downstream, the southern bank is to the left, and the northern bank (or Rive Droite) is to the right.

I thought that was quite interesting to know. We always come out of the class with a new little snippet of something to do with France that we were unaware of. I am looking forward to visiting France so I can use my new language. I just hope the river smells nice because the perfume doesn’t!

A la prochain,