The Chit Chat Chit Chat Thread

FutureCEO

FutureCEO

Well-Known Member
Since I never been to Disney outside the USA. I'm looking at parades/fireworks outside so today is Disneyland Paris. Where at least for least for this, they speak English. I always thought it was French being in France and all but I guess they have to speak English because the rest of Europe probably doesn't speak French. Look at the trees!!!

 
Last edited:
Songbird76

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
21stamps said:
My plan for T’s birthday is as follows-

Night before- I will make sure T is asleep by 9:30pm. (One of his teammate’s moms called me last night with an amazing offer).T’s friend, and friend’s sister & mom, will come over our house and decorate our front yard with signs and silliness. First she said “toilet paper” then said “oh, wait, no toilet paper..but we’ll figure something out” 🤣...
I’ll send him out to get the newspaper when he wakes up, and he’ll see the yard.

Then we’ll have a bday breakfast, at this time I’ll show him the planned scavenger hunt that we’ll be leaving on.
This should take up a few hours, we can pick up lunch and get an ice cream from a seasonal creamy whip (they’re supposedly open)... then come home and a few minutes later the surprise parade will arrive. Local police department, friends, and family.
We’ll order pizza (his request for his bday dinner) then have cake, ice cream, and presents - I’m still stumped on the cake. Wanted to do a toilet paper cake, but the bakery is no longer doing them due to too many orders, hoping I can find another bakery, if not, I’ll figure something out.

It’s not Magic Kingdom, but I think it will be a good day
Click to expand...
What is a toilet paper cake?? Can you not make a cake yourself?
 
Songbird76

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
FutureCEO said:
Since I never been to Disney outside the USA. I'm looking at parades/fireworks outside so today is Disneyland Paris. Where at least for least for this, they speak English. I always thought it was French being in France and all but I guess they have to speak English because the rest of Europe probably doesn't speak French. Look at the trees!!!

Click to expand...

The attractions alternate. We went on Carrots of the Pirabbean like 7 times, and they switched between french and English. But signage is all in French. We got lost in adventureland because we couldn't read the French signs. And the people working in the restaurants don't necessarily speak English. My husband took French in school and he tried his best, but in typical French fashion, they pretended not to understand him. My daughter is taking French though, and she's good at it, so if we ever go again, we should be fine. But not everything is in English there.
 
MySmallWorldof4

MySmallWorldof4

Well-Known Member
Songbird76 said:
These birds (Starlings, according to google translate) usually come and sleep in the trees in this park, but for some reason a lot of them are dying overnight and just falling dead out of the trees and they don't know why. This particular day the animal ambulance worker picked up 87 dead starlings. He said sometimes you get a bird that flies against a building, but that can't be the case here, so they aren't sure what's causing it. They had one instance before with .......(not sure what he said...I think a different type of bird) and that took a week that they were finding dead birds every day. The birds that they autopsied appeared healthy, so they can rule out a lot of things, but it could be poisoning, it could be that they ate something bad. It's the talk of the neighborhood with dog owners, because they aren't allowed to walk their dogs there right now. Then the last two people are just people who live there, and the guy says he always keeps a good eye on his dogs because labradores have a tendency to snarf things up, and the woman said she doesn't really know what's going on, so they are just avoiding the area and hoping nothing bad happens.
Click to expand...
How long did it take you to be fluent in Dutch. I know a little German and Dutch seems a bit different.
 
ajrwdwgirl

ajrwdwgirl

Premium Member
StarWarsGirl said:
So it looks like we're cancelling our June trip entirely. My dad is looking for dates for Hawaii in October. Disneyland will have to happen next year.

I'm sad about it, and I'll be desperate for vacation when it does come, but what can you do? Way worse things to come of this than a missed vacation.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear that. We have a trip planned at the end of June and B and I talked yesterday about when we should get serious about cancelling it. Hubs wants to wait awhile, there isn't any incentive to cancel yet so we will keep a glimmer of hope alive. Like you said there are way worse things.
 
ajrwdwgirl

ajrwdwgirl

Premium Member
SteveBrickNJ said:
Good morning friends! :)
Today is my last day of remote teaching until it resumes on April 20th.
Beginning tomorrow it will be Spring Break in NJ.
Is it (likely) the same in many other states?
Click to expand...

It varies by district in my area. We had our Spring Break (which we only have every other year) in early March. Son had theirs a week later, some planned for this week.
 
StarWarsGirl

StarWarsGirl

Well-Known Member
In the Parks
No
Songbird76 said:
Is that what you dreamed? You don't even want to know about my strangest dreams.
Click to expand...
It's one of my recurring dreams. I don't know why, but some of my strangest dreams happen at WDW/DL. They're almost never close to the real thing, and they're never really pleasant.

I don't know why boats overturning in Splash/PotC is a thing, though. It never happens on Small World.
 
SteveBrickNJ

SteveBrickNJ

Well-Known Member
MySmallWorldof4 said:
They kept Spring Break even though schools were closed before then?
Click to expand...
Yes. We are following the 2019 - 2020 School Year Calendar.
We ( in Brick NJ & Toms River NJ) were never closed. Your "even though schools were closed before then" statement doesn't apply to us :)
We were learning in our school buildings up until the end of the day on Friday, March 13th.
When that weekend was over....that immediate Monday (March 16th).. remote learning began.
Not one day of learning was ever missed ;)
 
Last edited:
ajrwdwgirl

ajrwdwgirl

Premium Member
Songbird76 said:
The attractions alternate. We went on Carrots of the Pirabbean like 7 times, and they switched between french and English. But signage is all in French. We got lost in adventureland because we couldn't read the French signs. And the people working in the restaurants don't necessarily speak English. My husband took French in school and he tried his best, but in typical French fashion, they pretended not to understand him. My daughter is taking French though, and she's good at it, so if we ever go again, we should be fine. But not everything is in English there.
Click to expand...

When we went we liked that stuff was in both French and English even though we don't speak French. Before we went I taught myself some basics but I was far from fluent, knowing Spanish helped out a lot. But I wouldn't say that it is typical French fashion to pretend not to understand. I didn't encounter that at all, actually we found the French to be very polite to us and seemed to appreciate when I attempted to greet them or ask for something in French. I actually thought that people were more polite to us in France than they were in London.
 
SteveBrickNJ

SteveBrickNJ

Well-Known Member
ajrwdwgirl said:
It varies by district in my area. We had our Spring Break (which we only have every other year) in early March. Son had theirs a week later, some planned for this week.
Click to expand...
Ours starts on Good Friday.
In the old days, the district used to call our breaks: Christmas Vacation and Easter Vacation......or maybe We The People all called them that.
Way back in the days of the dinosaur 😁
Now for years the breaks are unrelated in TITLE to Christmas and Easter....but in reality, the breaks are always scheduled around those celebrations.
 
donaldtoo

donaldtoo

Well-Known Member
MinnieM123 said:
Does anyone else here keep getting those ads on forum pages, for hand sanitizer? Is it just me, but I really question if those are legit products or not -- unknown brand names, etc. :cautious: (I wouldn't buy any of them.)
Click to expand...

Yep, gettin’ bombarded with ‘em.
I don’t EVER even remember typin’ the word h**d sa*****er :hilarious: here or anywhere else over the years.
Maybe it’s an age demographic thing, in my case, since that info is in my profile...? :cyclops:🤷‍♂️
 
Songbird76

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
MySmallWorldof4 said:
How long did it take you to be fluent in Dutch. I know a little German and Dutch seems a bit different.
Click to expand...
I honestly am not sure how to answer that, because my idea of "fluent" is pretty...advanced. I didn't feel fluent for a LONG time. And I'm constantly learning more, every day. I now know, for example, that a spreeuw is a Starling, and that the other bird he mentioned in the video was a type of crow. So yay for new vocabulary. But as far as FUNCTIONAL level...I guess about 6 months to a year?
When I moved here, it was a requirement that I had to go to school to learn Dutch and I had to have a level 2 in reading, speaking, listening, and writing, and get an 80% on a test about life in the Netherlands. (kind of like the American citicenship test, but not as politically oriented....questions about healthcare, how the government is set up, about how different social services work, etc)
So first I had to go through all the hoops to get residency and get a social security number. Once I had that (4 months?) I had to take a test at the school to see what I already knew and then a pattern test that had nothing to do with Dutch to see how fast I learned, could discover patterns, etc. Then they placed me in a group that matched the level I was already at approximately, and that moved at the speed I could handle based on the testing. I remember coming home from the test in tears, telling my husband I had never felt so stupid in my entire life and I was sure they were going to put me at a really low level because I knew NOTHING. They ended up putting me in an advanced group that I thought was WAY too high...everyone already seemed to speak pretty well. I came home in tears again...how was I supposed to keep up?They were past all the grammar, which I NEED grammar to learn a language. Tell me how a sentence should be structured, what goes where, and I'm fine....but that was the first 19 chapters of the book, and I came in at 21.:cautious: My first day, one of the girls in the class asked me why they put me in their class, because it was way too hard for me. (The girl admitted to me later she was trying to intimidate me because she had been the last one to enter that class and she didn't think anyone could possibly come in later because she was already so advanced. :rolleyes: She was upset at not being the "best" anymore.) Fortunately, in the computer lessons you could go back and do the first chapters and within a week I was pretty well caught up to my class, thank goodness!
So you took one year of school and then had to take the test. If you had Level 2 for everything and an 80% on the society test, you were done with school and considered to be fluent enough. If you didn't pass, you had to do another 6 months. Within the year I did, I took the Staatsexamen 2, which is a level 4 and it's what you need if you want to do University studies in the Netherlands. I didn't want to study, but I thought if I passed that test, I'd feel more confident. I passed, but I still didn't feel like I knew enough. I finished out my year and passed the final exams no problem, so I was technically considered fluent, but like I said, I still learn more every day. I'd say I'm fluent, but I have a LOT more to learn. I still have to watch the news several times to catch everything, and I still stumble sometimes when I'm talking to people. I don't always know how to conjugate a certain verb, or know the past tense.

Sorry....that's the novel length answer. Readers digest condensed version: I'm considered fluent and have been since I was here for about a year, but I still don't feel proficient all the time.
 

Register on WDWMAGIC. This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.

Back
Top Bottom