Advent Day Sixteen, Coffee Break French

Christmas jumper day

Advent Day Sixteen

Yippee – it’s Friday

It has been a busy week for both of us, but Adrian has now finished work for 2022 and I can dig out his Santa hat and festive jumper. Actually, scrap the jumper. Today might be the day to celebrate your ugly Christmas jumper or pull moche de Noel, but the closest he’s ever got to one is posing for this photo. In fact, we are so un-ho ho ho, that this is the first year I’ve owned anything close to a Christmas jumper, and that’s only because Pearl’s sister had a wardrobe clear out and no one else in the family wanted this one.

Ho Ho Ho

 

I needed a distraction today. I’d already battled through deleting the seemingly hundreds of spam emails that ping into my inbox each day and resorted to unplugging the phone, as the unwanted cold calls began to drive me insane. Why is it that some days these things seem far more annoying than other days?

Coffee Break French 

My distraction came in the form of a Coffee Break French podcast. My French is pretty good, but far from perfect, especially in terms of conjugating verbs. Helping our friends to make medical appointments and volunteering with the Alzheimer’s support group, has brought it home to us just how much more difficult these things can be when you can’t fully understand what is going on, or what help is available to you. Adrian especially remembers the feeling of helplessness when in hospital last year and not fully grasping what was going on around him. We decided to make a concerted effort this December and get back into the Coffee Break French podcasts we first started using over ten years ago.

 

Their principle is brilliant, with each episode lasting just long enough to enjoy with your morning coffee. You can choose from lessons, magazine style episodes or travel bites and either just listen to the free podcast, or buy the extra material and transcript to go with it. We started out well at the beginning of the month, using them a bit like an advent calendar treat each morning, then life and work got in the way. Today, I’ve been catching up with the Travel Diaries Series One, following Lara and Noah as they visit various cities in France by train. We treated ourselves to the extra material and as I know a dictée or dictation helps me to absorb the sentence structures and spelling, having worked through each episode, I’ve been listening again and making it into a dictée. I can really recommend these if you are looking for a fun way to improve your French, whatever your level.

 

You can find out more at Coffee Break Languages here.

 

This is not a sponsored blog post.