On Tuesday morning I have a job interview in Bordeaux for a web design job in a company called cDiscount. It will mark my first interview all in French and not for an English teaching job. Of course I am ready but I am getting nervous. I find myself doing silly things like reviewing the subjunctive and plus’que parfait tenses and scanning my French English dictionary for gooder words. Of course last minute things like this rarely help. I should focus on being very conversationally fluent and funny and of course competent but I can’t help doing nervous twitch types of things. Do you think I should memorize a little Rimbaud just for fun? Or maybe I should memorize all the irregular past participe backward to dazzle them with my depth of knowledge? I have another 14 hours before my interview, who needs sleep?
Today we visited the ruins of an ancient Roman amphitheater. The Roman amphitheater was located in Ancely near Blagnac. We rode our bicycles with our friends Katya and Oliver from the center of Toulouse to the Roman Amphitheater. It was a nice ride but it was hot and there were a few hills. There wasn’t a guide for the Amphitheater so we were left to reading the brochure. I am going to do some more reasearch before writing too much more so for now I leave you with the pictures and a definition. Oh yeah, one of the pictures is a vomitorium, aside from over eating and over drinking and possibly getting sick after watching the death matches, why else would this have been needed? Research commences.
amphitheater |?amf?????t?r|
noun
(esp. in Greek and Roman architecture) a round building, typically unroofed, with a central space for the presentation of dramatic or sporting events. Tiers of seats for spectators surround the central space.
• a sloping, semicircular seating gallery : I was permitted to attend a lecture in the amphitheater of the hospital.
• a large circular hollow in rocks or hills : that vast amphitheater chiseled out of the mountain.
This SimpleViewer gallery requires Macromedia Flash. Please open it in your browser or get Macromedia Flash here.
This is a WPSimpleViewerGallery
Oops, I forgot to publish this post, sorry Bob. It was part of my series on my own blog readers. Now that he is in France for the summer, I know he is writing in his blog. Check it out. We were out of town when he was in Toulouse so we didn’t get the chance to meet, next time.
Here is a regular reader and commenter Bob Spencer. In his own words . . .
A francophile who occasionally gets to live le Rêve Français. Although like most dreams, sometimes the reality isn’t quite the stuff of which dreams are made.
2 favorite posts: Well he never specified his favorite posts so you will have to read to decide yourself.
RSS feed address: Well with this new Firefox 3 I cannot seem to find RSS feed addresses so easily, help. Other than that, Firefox 3 is really cool!
I just realized that I had written about planning to go to the Balkan Beat Box show in Toulouse but I never wrote how it was. I even had pictures in last Sunday’s photo dump from the show but no review. Well we have not gone to see much live music and we love to do this. So this past week with Saturday night and then Tuesday night feels like the Fête de la Musique all over again.
Balkan Beat Box were amazing. I knew what to expect because I had seen videos. They have a trumpet and sax player. A guitarist, bassist, drummer, and the singer presses some buttons on a funny box that makes even funnier noises, including the chicken noises. They were very energetic and had many calls for peace in the middle east, squarely placing the blame on each side evenly, more or less.
The night was warm and a bit humid so Prairie des Filtres was a bit umm smelly, hot day at the zoo, hot day at the meth lab, etc. Still no smell too strong or crowd too drunk could dampen my enthusiasm for seeing my new favorite band. They played a mix of songs from both Balkan Beat Box and Nu Meds. I was hoping they were going to have the female singers live but I guess that was all sampled.
The crowd sang along to all the songs. At the onset of each song, when the distinctive part began, the crowd went wild. They obviously knew each song. As much as I loved them they played a little long. I got a frantic call during the show and had to leave a bit early, after about an hour and a half. The only song I didn’t get to see that I was really wanting to see was Ramallah Tel Aviv. I’m sure it was great but I had to leave. If you like gypsy music, electronic music but with live instrumentation, world music but with an edge, experimental music, with political lyrics, Balkan Beat Box is for you.
As many of you know I teach English at an Engineering Graduate School in France called the ENAC, École Nationale de l’Aviation Civile. It is a Grande École which means it is very competitive to get into and the students are very motivated and work hard. I taught a General English class that was an elective so I had more flexibility with my curriculum. They generally have to do a final research project in English. They did it in my class as well but I had them make it in the form of a blog which they presented to the class.
I gave no direction for the topic because the goal was to research and write in English and keep the blogging interface in English. Some chose serious topics and some less serious. Here is a list of their blogs. Visit them to see what they did, comment on them, tell me what you think. They didn’t have a long time to work on them and we didn’t always have access to a computer lab but I think they turned out nicely. Also, since it was an elective I could only expect a certain amount out of them, but I think they are interesting.
Joe Jackson just performed last night in Toulouse. We went to see the concert. A friend of ours from Philadelphia is his tour manager. He sent us an email to let us know he was going to be nearby and we asked to go. It was a fantastic concert.
Now I really like Joe Jackson’s old songs. For example “Is She Really Going Out With Him?”
Now it looks and sounds like this. It was still great. It was really funny to hear all the French singing along in their best English, which was quite good. Now he performs at the piano with a bassist and a drummer. Even the older songs written on guitar still sound great.
Of course he hit it big with “Steppin Out”, which I liked less at the time, but last night sounded great. The 80’s-ness of it was stripped out and what was left was just a nice driving piano song.
Now it sounds like this
His newer songs I was unfamiliar with. I was afraid they would be too adult contemporary for me. I was wrong. This song is called “Solo”. Live it was heart wrenchingly good. The song oozed with emotion. The audience was dead silent, it was the highlight of the show, even us many of us were waiting to hear “Is She Really Going Out With Him”.
The Bikini was a great place as well. It was rebuilt recently after it burned down. Now it has a large terrace in the back where you can order food and drinks and sit on the terrace. There was a pool as well. When you enter it is beautiful inside and the acoustics are great. The sound was great from anywhere inside. I think there were about 800 people and the show was full.
We got to go backstage after the show. It felt odd because I didn’t really care about meeting him because I thought what would he care? I don’t imagine myself to be so enthralling that everyone must meet me. He doesn’t know me and he looked so awkward walking around before the show. Well we hung out with our friend Mike and then the drummer came by and then a roadie and pretty soon Joe came out and eventually warmed up and we hung out for about 45 minutes. Mostly it was to see our friend Mike but it was nice Joe came out. I didn’t want to seem to much of a fanboy so I didn’t take any pictures while we were with him, but here are some pictures I took at the show. Once again on my crappy camera phone so they aren’t that great in quality.
This SimpleViewer gallery requires Macromedia Flash. Please open it in your browser or get Macromedia Flash here.
This is a WPSimpleViewerGallery
