Talk about … eating at Phu Thai in Wellington

Many times during your workday you need to make small talk. People often think small talk is unimportant, yet it ‘oils the wheels’ of your working day. Usually you need to keep small talk ‘small’, but sometimes you want to develop it into a longer conversation. What are you going to talk about? Food is [...]

 

Idiom – The icing on the cake

Recently I read of a couple who have to move out of their own home due to damage caused by the Christchurch earthquake. After this terrible disaster, they’re now starting to feel optimistic. They’re very happy that they’ve managed to buy a section of just the right size on which to build another house. They [...]

 

Talk about … food at Red Ginger

Many times during your workday you need to make small talk. People often think small talk is unimportant, yet it ‘oils the wheels’ of your working day. Usually you need to keep small talk ‘small’, but sometimes you want to develop it into a longer conversation. What are you going to talk about? Food is [...]

 

Talk about …127 Hours, the movie

Many times during your workday you need to make small talk. People often think small talk is unimportant, yet it ‘oils the wheels’ of your working day. Usually you need to keep small talk ‘small’, but sometimes you want to develop it into a longer conversation. What are you going to talk about? Try the [...]

 

Idiom – Play it by ear

Organising a day in town recently, my husband asked where we should go for lunch.  “Let’s just play it by ear”, I replied, as I wanted to keep our options open. Playing it by ear means deciding how to deal with a situation as it develops, rather than making plans beforehand. I suppose it comes [...]

 

Coming home

Read Mihi’s latest post. She’s a Kiwi from Wellington, New Zealand, and she’s just arrived home from her OE (overseas experience) in France. I’m now back in Wellington, New Zealand, having completed my ten month teaching stint in France. After stepping off the plane and greeting my smiling family (armed with a Welcome Home sign) [...]

 

Talk about … Te Papa in Wellington

Many times during your workday you need to make small talk. People often think small talk is unimportant, yet it ‘oils the wheels’ of your working day. Usually you need to keep small talk ‘small’, but sometimes you want to develop it into a longer conversation. What are you going to talk about? Places, movies, [...]

 

Idiom – Take your life in your hands

“When you bike through the streets of Wellington, you take your life in your hands.” So said my daughter when she spoke of riding the narrow, steep and winding roads of Wellington. To take your life in your hands means to risk being killed. She still does it.

 

Idiom – Hit the nail on the head

Yesterday one of my students said to me, ‘Your feedback has really hit the nail on the head’ after we discussed his writing. While I appreciated his compliment, his colleagues in the class all looked very shocked as they didn’t recognise the idiom. To hit the nail on the head means to say something that’s [...]

 

Changes

Read regular posts from Mihi. She’s a Kiwi from Wellington, New Zealand, and each week she tells us about living in France and speaking French. It’s my final week of teaching! My sejour in France is rapidly coming to a close. So rapidly, in fact, that I’m feeling a little overwhelmed. It’s time to wind [...]

 

Communicating your personality

Read regular posts from Mihi. She’s a Kiwi from Wellington, New Zealand, and each week she tells us about living in France and speaking French. Writing and reading in French are important to me, but speaking is the only way that I can express my personality and my character in France. My opinions, my sense [...]

 

The art of conversation

Read regular posts from Mihi. She’s a Kiwi from Wellington, New Zealand and each week she tells us about living in France and speaking French. I’ve been speaking lots of French lately, getting out and about on the weekend, having good conversations with friends. It’s made me think more about how I feel when I [...]

 

Brave New World

Read about how a Chinese speaker of English, living for a time in New Zealand, is facing “a brave new world”, misunderstandings included. In a cheerful tone in her article “Misunderstandings”, Mihiata Pirini tells us five interesting misunderstanding experiences during her stay in France. As she believes, these misunderstandings happen because of her “mishearing” or [...]

 

I am going to embrace the new “me”

Read about how a Chinese speaker of English, living for a time in New Zealand, is going to embrace the new “me”. Skimming the regular guest posts of Living abroad for at least 1 hour took away my study-life balance, but Embracing the new “me” really caught my eyes. I do love the sentence “To [...]

 

A taste of French culture: Marseille

Read regular posts from Mihi. She’s a Kiwi from Wellington, New Zealand and each week she tells us about living in France and speaking French. So I recently spent two days down south, in Marseille – France’s second largest city. I thought it would be pretty different to the northern Brittany region (A taste of [...]

 

Happy ‘Poisson d’Avril’

Read regular posts from Mihi. She’s a Kiwi from Wellington, New Zealand and each week she tells us about living in France and speaking French. A few weeks ago it was the 1st of April, or what the French call “Le Poisson d’Avril” (the April fish). Instead of playing April Fools’ jokes on one another, [...]

 

A quick weekend wrap-up

Read regular posts from Mihi. She’s a Kiwi from Wellington, New Zealand and each week she tells us about living in France and speaking French. I did it! Sunday morning, drove out to Saint-André des Eaux with Laurent from my running club, and ran a half-marathon on French soil. The event had a great friendly [...]

 

A taste of French culture: Brittany

Read regular guest posts about a Kiwi living abroad in a non-English speaking country.     I’m back at work after the school holidays. Some fellow language assistants and I hired a car and a French gite (a holiday home) and did a tour of Brittany, an area in the northwest of France and very [...]

 

Misunderstandings

Read regular guest posts about a Kiwi living abroad in a non-English speaking country. The other day I went rock climbing with some friends. I’m not a big fan of heights, so I was looking up at the rock wall a bit apprehensively, when Clément said to me “Je te rassure”. Which I took to [...]

 

Disaster

Like all New Zealanders and many other people around the world, I’ve been watching and reading about the devastating Christchurch earthquake. The earthquake hit Christchurch, New Zealand’s second largest city and situated approximately halfway down the east coast of the South Island, at lunchtime on February 22. The death toll has now reached 103 and [...]

 

Idiom – Bells and whistles

The other day, I heard someone say, “I don’t want all the bells and whistles, I just want basic insurance cover.”  In this context, bells and whistles are attractive extra features. They will also be more expensive. When someone uses this phrase, they’re implying that the extra features are not necessary.

 

Embracing the new “me”

Read regular guest posts about a Kiwi living abroad in a non-English speaking country. This week, some random thoughts about how language affects the way you present yourself to the world (and the way the world sees you). Lots of people feel a bit lost being in a foreign country, learning a foreign language. Of [...]

 

The great showdown: French versus English

Read regular guest posts about a Kiwi living abroad in a non-English speaking country. I mentioned a few posts back (Branching out, letting go) that I’m interested in comparisons between French and English. I guess I’m a bit of a language nerd. For example – how large a vocabulary does a person need in order [...]

 

And now, to work …

Read regular guest posts about a Kiwi living abroad in a non-English speaking country. For a while I’ve been feeling a little bit guilty about having so much free time and not using it to study French. I’ve decided I need a little more structure to my days. So, I now have a comprehensive French [...]

 

My experience of learning English in NZ

Read about the experiences of another Chinese learner of English living for a time in New Zealand. Born in a remote village of China, I never thought, nor expected that one day I could have a chance to study overseas. One of the reasons was that studying abroad was so expensive. I could not afford [...]

 

Branching out, letting go

Read regular guest posts about a Kiwi living abroad in a non-English speaking country. Tomorrow it will be exactly four months since I arrived in Saint-Nazaire and plunged into full-time French speaking. It also means I’m roughly halfway through my French adventure. So it’s a good time to reflect on progress, and particularly so because [...]

 

What I like and what I don’t

Read regular guest posts about a Kiwi living abroad in a non-English speaking country. On Friday I went to the little arthouse cinema down the road to see A bout de souffle.* It’s a classic French film, made in 1960 and directed by Jean-Luc Goddard, and was one of the first and most important films [...]

 

Getting back on track

Read regular guest posts about a Kiwi living abroad in a non-English speaking country. Holidays in France have been over for a while and everyone is well back into the swing of things. It’s odd because in France, the big work and school holidays are around June or July. Christmas and New Year is just [...]

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Read regular guest posts about a Kiwi living abroad in a non-English speaking country. If you celebrate Christmas and New Year, I hope they were both excellent. I guess it’s a funny time of year to be overseas, and away from most of your family and friends who you would normally celebrate with. Every family [...]

 

Community

Read regular guest posts about a Kiwi living abroad in a non-English speaking country. I’ve found that it’s important for me to feel like I’m part of a community, whether in New Zealand or overseas. There were times in New Zealand when I looked around me and felt like everyone was a stranger and wrapped [...]