Tag Archives: Expat Blog Awards

Weekly Blogger Round-Up – Getting Tough in French – Top 7 moments in France – A French library and literature

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This week’s Blogger Round-Up starts with two expats talking about their experience in France. Wendy from Random Ramblings describes a major breakthrough in French while Bread is Pain shares her top 7 moments in France as part of the Expat Blog Award which I didn’t have time to enter this year. After you read her post, don’t forget to write a comment and help her win an award. Finally, Claire from Word by Word, source of many of the books I read, takes us around the media library in Aix-en-Provence and talks about the contemporary French literary scene. Enjoy!

Getting tough

by Wendy, an Australian Photographer and Psychologist living in Paris, enjoying life and working hard. Random Ramblings is where she shares a story or two.

getting_toughWalking in the forest recently, I came across an elderly lady walking her dog. It was a little dog, playful and excitable a puppy perhaps. As the puppy ran towards me I bent down to pat it, to only hear the lady calling out ‘ne touchez pas’ french for don’t touch.

As I approached the lady she began to tell me the dog was young and needs to learn to not jump. I responded that I had thought she was telling me not to touch the dog. Read more

Top 7 “Moments in France”

by Bread is Pain, a 30-something American living in the Rhone-Alps, getting her master’s degree, learning French and slowly eating and drinking herself through the country

Being an expat has moments that are difficult, funny, exciting, even terrifying and no two countries are alike.  Here are a few of the moments that France has to offer:

# 7: The Language Moment: The time you accidentally offend people.

Speaking in a different language is always complicated, no matter how long you have studied it.  Every language has subtle nuances and phrases that are cultural not just linguistic.  You may be able to understand every single grammatical rule of a particular language but still be lost when you are in a country that actually speaks it…and French is no exception.  Read more

They’re Reading Thousands of Great Books Here, Cité du Livre – A Local French Cultural Centre and Library

by Claire from Word by Word, Citizen of Planet Earth, Anglosaxon by birth, living and working in France, who loves words, language, sentences, metaphors, stories long and short, poetry, reading and writing

library-aix-2Yesterday via a link on twitter, I read a provocative article in BBC News Magazine by Hugh Schofield entitled Why don’t French books sell abroad? It was an interesting, if superficial article, that made a few observations without going into any depth to understand the contemporary literary scene in France. It asked questions, reminded us of some old provocative stereotypes and did little to enlighten us on the subject of what excites French readers and why the English-speaking world aren’t more aware of their contemporary literary gems. Read more

Aussie in France wins Expat Blog Honour Award!

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Great news for Aussie in France which has been awarded  the Honourable Mention Award for Best Expat Blog in France!

Moving to France

Thank you to everyone who sent in a review (and to those whose busy lives prevented them from doing so but who expressed their appreciation of the blog in private). I was very touched and encouraged by all your comments. The greatest joy I get out of writing my blog is knowing that someone out there in cyberspace is having a little chuckle or learning a new fact about French life or following up a suggestion of something to do or see when they are visiting this wonderful country or one of my holiday destinations.

The second greatest joy is reading your comments. It’s always surprising to see which posts attract the most reaction from readers! The other great joy is making new friends across the world, some of whom I have been able to meet up with either in France or Australia.

I would, of course, like to extend a big thank you to Expats Blog for hosting the awards.

You can see all the reviews on http://www.expatsblog.com/blogs/526/aussie-in-france. And do take a look at the other blogs as well if you haven’t already done so. There are 89 in all! Congratulations to the other award winners.The Gold award goes to Little Pieces of Light, Silver to From Paris to Pureza and Bronze to Sara in Le Petit Village. The other blogs who also received Honourable Mentions are Tales from the Chambre de Bonne, Oui in France, Lost in Cheeseland, Paris in Four Months and Peter’s Paris. You’ll find them all on http://www.expatsblog.com/blogs/france.

I also thought you might be interested to know who my readers are. In the past twelve months, 14,600 people have visited the blog, including 67% new visitors and 33% returning visitors, with an average of 2 pages per visit. A little over one third are from France (5700), with Australia next in line (4900), followed by the US (3900) and UK (1600). After that we have Canada, Germany, Italy, India and Spain, while the remainder is shared among an astounding 136 countries! My most popular post by far is Five Places to Lunch Near the Louvre in Paris!

For those who have subscribed but don’t receive posts in their email in-box, I suggest that you subscribe again. You will then receive an email requesting you to confirm your subscription. If you don’t carry out this last step, the subscription doesn’t work. I can see that this has happened to several people.

So I’m looking forward to many more hours of blogging and interacting with you, my readers!

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