But before that, I've been wanting to write down a couple of the things I've learned about spoken French living here this year that surprised me, or that I felt I really should have known. For starters, the pronunciation of the word le shampooing. I always pronounced the -ing like they do with most words in French like le parking. Not so! A few other Americans and I were so surprised that it's pronounced like shampwa, kinda but more nasal-y. I told my class of all girls studying English how we had thought it was pronounced and they thought it was hilariously cute :)
Also interesting were some phrases I hear allll the time like "tu m'étonnes" and "t'inquiète". These would translate to something like "you shock me" and "worry yourself." But mean more or less the opposite it turns out. "I know right [you don't shock me]" and "don't worry" respectfully. Which is so funny, because they've dropped the ne and the pas which make verbs negative. Also funny since way back in the day the ne made verbs negative and other words like pas and jamais were added to emphasize what was being negative (ne pas originally meant "not a step" ne jamais meant not ever.) For whatever reason, the ne pas stuck to be used for all verbs. Today just a few of the other extra words like jamais remain. But in spoken French the ne is dropped and all you have is pas, which makes little sense considering the history. But in the above sentences you drop both ne and pas and your friendly foreigner is confused! Language is a funny thing.
Back to Zan's visit. We drove out towards the coast and stopped on the way when some ruins caught our eye- an advantage of driving vs. the train.
Passing by beautiful chateaux on the way makes for one nice car drive.
We stopped in the very quaint old town of Guérande on the way to the salt fields.
And here are the fields where the world famous Guérande salt is harvested. We got a lot of rain that spring so everything was flooded.
From there we headed south to Nantes and stopped in the coastal town of Le Croisic for lunch.
Back in the car for a stunning drive along la Côte Sauvage.
We really weren't in any rush to get anywhere so we stopped once again, this time at Pornichet. It's not as famous as neighboring La Baule, a Parisian resort town. But still very pretty and the main thing, I really wanted to see the ocean and walk in the sand. :)
And final destination before home: Nantes! Suzanne got to see the castle, even if it was dark.
And we stopped in a funny bar where every room was decorated like a room in a house. We could see people sitting in a bath tube in the next room. We happened to be there in time for a concert by an R&B/Soul/Hip hop French singer named Audrey Lopes. She was sooo talented and sooo shocked when she learned we were American, I think because she sings only in English. She had everyone there wish Suzanne a happy birthday and got back to performing. It was such a great, random night!
Friday. One last day in Angers spent shopping till we drop and having a sunny lunch by the fountain. I'm smiling but bummed that the week flew by so quickly.
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