Au revoir, Marseille

So that’s the end of my year in France.

I’m back in New Jersey now, home for two and a half weeks before I leave for California to start grad school in the cognitive science department at UC San Diego. Marseille was a good year – I learned a lot, about French and about research; I met some very cool people that I hope will skype me in the future (hint, hint); I experienced Flutag, and the World Series of both Pétanque and Beach Volleyball. I ate tons of amazingly delicious bread and cheese. I had wonderful visits from my parents, and Josh, and Cindy and Andrew, and Sara, Rosanne, and Omar, and Aaron.

Waiting for the boule to be thrown at the World Cup of Pétanque

Il tire la boule.

As a fitting wrap-up, a fun language fact. In English, we’ve got all these expressions of “French” something – most of which aren’t French anything in France:

• French toast = pain perdu (lost bread)
  Baguettes get stale and lose their incredibly delicious squishiness after at most an hour of sitting around. So what to do with yesterday’s rock-solid baguette, as its cheese-carrying powers are long-since lost to the world? Answer: fry it in egg and enjoy!

• French fries = pommes frites (fried potatoes)
  Rather self-explanatory. Apparently, the “French” in the English phrase refers to cooking something “in the French manner”, namely deep-frying. I’m thinking there should be more butter and garlic on fries, though, if we’re talking French style of cooking.
• French horn = cor (horn)
  An English horn is still called cor anglais, though it is neither English nor a horn. Wikipedia informs me the name is likely a corruption, either of anglé meaning angled or curved or engelisches, from old German, meaning “angelic” and not “English”.
• French kissing = rouler la pelle (roll the shovel)
  Every single French person to whom I mentioned this expression couldn’t stop laughing about it. So much for French romance…
• Pardon my French = ?
  Apparently the concept of excusing oneself before cursing doesn’t exist in France. Certainly the frequency with which people yell putain! supports this.
• Encore! = une autre (one more)
  Bizarrely enough, even though we stole this word from French, after a concert everyone chants “une-autre! une-autre!”. Also, I never saw anyone throwing gloves onto (or off from) the stage. Granted, I didn’t go to any operas.

So that’s that. I’d like to try to keep this blog going, maybe turning it into a forum for “interesting doings in the world of cognitive science and beyond”, which is what it was originally intended. Any suggestions of a format or topics to write about or anything at all are welcomed. With that, adieu, thanks for reading, come back soon, and remember, cogsci is pretty cool.