The Importance of Reading the Newspaper

This semester the newspaper Ouest-France, in it’s benevolence, has decided to gift our school with numerous copies of it’s daily press. I also profit from this delivery. Not only am I able to stay up to date with the news, but I also have a chance to improve my French. Last week I learned such useful words as bouder which means to pout and entamer one of I think a million synonyms meaning to start. I know this blows your mind, but just hold on...

I enjoyed reading my little copy of the paper in the evenings for the first couple of days and felt really with it when news was being discussed in the teacher’s lounge for example.

Then came two fateful days at lunch. One sunny midday the extremely popular topics of politics was floating around. The subject, more specifically, was the U.S. primaries. "There’s just one thing I don’t understand though, Lawrence," said a colleague, "and that’s caucus." Hmmm. Well, right. Needless to say I said I didn’t know too much either but shared what I did. That night Wikipedia helped clear up some of the foggines for me. Bet you didn’t know the word probably comes from a Native American implying meeting.

Day two was much the same as another question came my way. “So what do you think of the bourses in the US?” Thinking the teacher was referring to the loans that students received (my only reference for this word) I said, “Ummm, they help me?...” Well it turns out this is also the word for the stock market. So my comments about students and college must’ve seemed odd. The inquisitive teacher pulled out all kinds of knowledge about this nation and that one (France included) being influenced by the U.S. economy while others like India and China not being in this situation. “These people are political geniuses,” I thought to myself.

To make this a little more interesting, Mr. “What’s a caucus?” from the day before was sitting right next to Mrs. “What do you think of the U.S. stock market?” I think I lost some smart points with these people.

Fulfilling my wish to read the paper that evening, I noticed an article "When recession knocks at the door" which said just about everything the enlightened Mrs. Stock Market had shared. Disappointingly, I was reading this article about 6 hours too late. So perhaps my dates with Ouest-France will have to be elevensies instead of digestifs from now on...

PS - For those of you who don't like Lord of the Rings or aren't British, elevensies are a midmorning coffee and cake.