LKL’s Blog

14 July is the French national holiday. Learn about the history behind the celebration of Bastille Day and make some French food to celebrate!

On 5 and 6 April 2008, the southern French city of Hyères hosted its annual flower festival with an open day event at SICA (Société d’intérêt collectif agricole) / Marché aux fleurs d’Hyères. 500 growers produce over 180 million flowers a year, making it the largest flower market in France and the fourth largest in Europe. With information booths, wine and flower tasting, and a flower parade, it was a fascinating look at this colorful aspect of the Hyérois community.
Photo Gallery: Hyères Flower Festival

Good-bye 2007 (does anyone else notice that could read Good-bye to 007 [double oh seven]? Is this a sign of James Bond’s future?) and hello 2008. It was a good year - I spent more than half of it in Costa Rica. But this year will be even better, as I’ll spend the majority of it in France. I hope you too will have some long-cherished dreams come true.

Here’s some reading material and ideas for New Year’s Resolutions for you:

New Year’s in France
French New Year’s Resolutions
Veggie Table New Year’s Resolutions

I hope you and your families are happy, safe, and warm this holiday season. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all!

Vegetarian Christmas Menu
Christmas in France
French Christmas Vocabulary
Spanish Christmas Vocabulary

Yes, that’s right - the French visa court was so moved by our appeal that, after only a year of deliberation, they decided to grant us our long-stay visas. We picked them up last month, and now we’re good to go. We’ll be moving sometime between Febrary and April, 2008, but we’re not sure where yet. Originally, we planned to go back to Toulouse, since we loved it so much. But then I started thinking about how nice it would be to live near the beach, so Nice and Marseille started looking good. And then we wondered about living all over - spending a month or so in a dozen different cities, and that’s what we’re leaning toward right now. There are several problems with that:

1. It’s expensive to move once, let alone 12 times
2. It’d be a pain to find a new apartment every month
3. I would need a (likely expensive) wireless internet connection, because many French rentals don’t have fixed phones

I’ve got some good leads on number 3, so now I’m doing some research on number 2 - maybe we could find a rental agent who could help us find a place in each city, something like that.

In any case, it’s still all way up in the air, but at least now we know for sure that in just a few months we’ll be moving to France for a year - something I’ve been wanting to do for more than half my life.

Well, it looks like Nicolas Sarkozy is the new French president, and France is bracing for riots, just in case. I’m disappointed, but I’m not surprised.

I finally finished a huge, far too time-consuming project: a sort of calendar of the history of French-speaking countries, with holidays and celebrations, famous people’s birthdays and deaths, and other events and milestones in the world of francophonie. I’d had the project in mind for a long time, and I knew it would take a lot of work, but the reality was far worse than I’d imagined. Still, it’s done and I think it’s a fairly cool feature - I hope you do too: Today in Francophone History

As part of an initiative to encourage British tourism in Paris, French gestures have been “revealed,” for what you would think was the first time ever (learn more). It seems practically every online newspaper has an article about this “guide to understanding Parisians,” and I can only laugh when I check the publication date on my photo gallery of French gestures: February 2001. Not to mention the fact that I have a lot more than 8.

Ségolène Royal won the Socialist party nomination yesterday, making her an official candidate for the French presidential elections, the first round of which will be held in April. If elected, Ms. Royal would be the first female French president.

La Guinguette: Ségolène Royal - Présidente ?

The Age: Populist “Sego” gets Royal assent from France’s left

This video was done by the City of Toulouse to encourage dog owners to clean up after their pets. Can you imagine a government-sponsored ad like this anywhere outside of France? I love it!

Warning: this animated video contains gross-out material which some may find offensive.

I provided the transcript and translation of the audio on my French site (in the comments section).