Update from Maggie in France

Hello again from Paris! I just finished up with my midterms week which involved 15 mintue long oral presenations and a 3 hour long saturday morning exam. I'm glad that's over. Today I'm going to talk about English. Strange, I know, I'm in France, but the American influence is everywhere. For me, it's not strange to walk into a store and hear songs in English on the radio. I hear everything from Whitney Houston to Akon. Also, American movies are really popular. They are either dubbed over into French or subtitled with the original English sound still playing. (My French friends think it's way cooler to see the versions with the original voices). Because English has become the international language and is also the working language of the European Union, a lot of French people are very eager to brush up in their English. In fact, at my school to get a diploma, you have to pass an English language exam! One of my favorite activities involving English is teaching a group of seven eight year olds English as part of an after school program. Of course they only know simple things like colors or food, but hearing duck, duck goose with French accents is quite an amusing experience.