what music is popular in france right now?

Do you love old French music like Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel or Serge Gainsbroug?  Are you craving some more modern French music?  Below are some current French favorites.  Even though they not all are necessarily French these are some of the most popular singers/bands enjoyed by The French today.

French Singers/Bands:
Bb Brunes - Rock/Indie Rock
Camelia Jordana - Pop
Ben L'Oncle Soul - Pop/Reggae
Coeur de Pirate - Indie Rock
Gaetan Roussel - Rock
Christophe Mae - Pop/Rock
Joyce Jonathan - Pop/Rock
Zaz - Pop/Rock
Lily Wood and The Prick (French but sing in English) - Indie Rock
Phoenix (French but sing in English) - Indie Rock
M - Matthieu Chedid - Rock
David Guetta - Techno
Stromae - Rap/HipHop
Yannick Noah - Pop
Olivia Ruiz - Pop/Indie Rock

Non French Singers/Bands:
Muse - Rock (UK)
Keren Ann - Pop/Indie Rock (Israel)
Ayo - Pop/Indie Rock/Reggae (German)
Radiohead - Indie Rock (UK)
Angus and Julia Stone - Indie Rock (Australia)
Mika - Pop/Rock (UK)
Robert Francis - Rock/Indie Rock (USA)
Adele - Pop/Rock (UK)

Enjoy the new French music!

You can download all MP3's off of Amazon.com directly by clicking the CD cover and in most cases listen to a part of the songs on their website.

Not included in this article are the Top 40 in The United States i.e. Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars and Katy Perry as they are also popular in France

what i'm reading...

When F was in the US a few weeks ago he picked up a new book for us to enjoy.  Here it is Winter's Bone.

teaching aids for small toddlers

When we were in the US I picked up a few teaching aids...since I am the only English Speaker in the household and I want to make sure M would learn adequately.   I found that there wasn't much to offer little toddlers...boo!  Below is the Brain Quest series I bought...they didn't have much to offer for 2 year olds...but I am very excited for him to get older as they are GREAT!  M really enjoys using these...I can usually get about 20 mins of focus.  Right now (20 months) he is answering about 20% of the time.  I am not sure if he is acquiring more words or not.  But it's a start!

 

I also saw the KUMON series which sounded just as great but they didn't have anything for 2 year olds that was language related...more activities and that's really what I was looking for.  But it might be good for others!

What have you used?  Any recommendations or ideas to encourage language skills?

fashion week!

So the garage near our apartment holds fashion shows...they even have a facebook page it you would like to see photos of said fashion shows...haha!

Garage Turenne

Very funny venue indeed...

I looked up the line up this past week and it was the following designers:

LUIS BUCHINHO
PEACHOO + KREJBERG
and
MANISH ARORA

Next time I promise to get some photos...it may just be unimportant fashion buyers but still...

dorade en croute de sel

Last Sunday we decided (since it was so SUNNY HERE!) to check out the open air market near our place next to Bastille.  It was BUSY but great!  Since we were just talking about our trip to Guadeloupe we decided to get some lunch from a Guadeloupian/Martiniquian Creole stand.  It was great!  Then we bought some fresh veggies, fruits, sausage and some Dorade which is a white fish - which in English it's called Sea Bream (whatever that is!)

When we were in London at a French Bistro F had the best Dorade which was encrusted in salt...it looked like a pastry that covered it.  They do not serve it with the crust.  It was cooked to perfection.  So we decided we can do this!  So we bought the fish and headed home.

After doing some research online we noticed that it took A LOT of sea salt to cook two fish...1 kilogram of salt per fish (which is 2lbs of salt per fish)!!!  So we headed to a small epicere (convenience store) which are the only stores open on a Sunday evening.

We washed, gutted, scaled (which some recipes called for not doing this...next time we will not), took off all the fins.  With the 4lbs of sea salt we added two egg whites and enough water to make the salt a bit moist.  Then we laid a good 3/4 of an inch of salt down on a baking pan, laid the fish on top, and covered the remaining salt over the two fish.  Pics will show what it looked like.  They looked like big snow balls ;-)

Then we put it in the oven for 30 mins.  When the fish was done the salt mixture was as hard as a rock.  We had to hammer it out.  The skin unfortunately came off in the process but no biggie...this is why next time we will not scale the fish!

I thought with that much salt the fish might turn out too salty but it was perfect!  We rarely cook fish at home but this recipe was so simple I'm sure we will be eating fish at home more often ;-)

french lessons

So I started my first French Lesson with my new in house French Professor!

It was great we went over a review on grammar, conversations at daycare and conversations when meeting new people.

She encouraged me to speak at the daycare and supplied me with some basic phrases to ask how M's day was.  I tried it out when I picked up M and it worked.  I said "Vous allez bien?" to the director and she looked so happy that I asked how she was doing!  She stumbled on her words to ask me how I was ;-)

And I ask "Il a ete sage avec les autres enfants?" (was he well-behaved with the other children?) and she explained that he is and always is ;-).

I was also able to explain that I have decided to change my French classes to in house and it is one on one and mostly conversation.  She agreed that it was a better idea and easier on us for the traveling etc...

Can't wait till I can speak easily and confidently!