Adventures in (French) Babysitting

Well, I actually don’t have any terribly exciting adventures in the babysitting domain … just the fact that I babysat for a professor at my high school last week. She’s American, married to a Frenchman, and they have five and eight year old daughters. The whole family speaks both English & French fluently, and the girls were adorable! As a baby-sitting job it was really pretty simple … they were eating dinner when I arrived, then they spent an hour showing me their rooms & toys, and then it was time for bed. Up until this point we had only spoken English together, but the youngest girl wanted me to read her a book in French before going to bed. As soon as I started reading it out-loud in French, she started giggling and called her sister into the room – “Come here, you’ve got to hear this!” And, yes, the other sister had to agree – “Ton accent, c’est fort.” Yep, I know I’ve got a pretty strong accent. The five year old continued to laugh for the rest of the book – good to know … my French speaking is apparently hilarious to little kids, super! After they both went to sleep, I put a movie in; finally got a chance to see Bride and Prejudice, a Bollywood Indian-wedding classic that I’ve always wanted to see!