It’s been snowing off and on for the past couple of days and I wondered if I would get to French this afternoon.  The roads were not too bad and by the time I reached Briancon, they were just wet.  The snow kept all the students away from class this afternoon and it was just us diehard English.  This of cos meant another intense lesson.  We spent the first part of the afternoon studying “les relations logiques”.   This was to teach us other ways of saying ‘because’ instead of just using “parce que” all the time which Rick and I both do.  So, “puisque” is another way of saying ‘because’ but literally means since, and is always used after a comma in written French.  “Car” is another more formal ‘because’, and used when written.  When using ‘because’ at the beginning of a sentence e.g. ‘Because I had a cold, I could not go to French’. One should use “comme”, “Comme j’ai eu un rhume etc”. 

Then we went on to “à cause de” (because of) and “grace à” (thanks to), the former being negative and latter positive. E.g.
“Le match et annulé à cause de la pluie” and “Je suis bien à grace à la medicine”.  Needless to say, I shall probably still continue to use “parce que”!

Valerie then produced copies of an article from a paper entitled “Comment le protéger du racket?” a letter written by a mother concerned for her son at school.   Naturally the three of us assumed it was something to do with a tennis protégé but it was actually concerning a protection racket at the school attended by this child.  The mother wanted to know how she could protect her shy, timid son and how could she prepare him for a reaction against this bullying.  We then had to have a debate, in French of course, as to the possible solutions for this mother.  Well, we at first had a hard job trying to think of anything in English, let alone in French, but I finally came up with some ideas.   But I’m afraid my French went a little awry as trying to find some ideas and then having to convert them to French proved quite difficult.