Today villagers shared their favorite chansons, danses and musique instrumentale at the soirée de talent. Meanwhile our special nature group, Aventure Nature, went on their overnight campout. They’ll be returning tomorrow morning to join the rest of Lac du Bois for the last full day of the session. It is hard to believe how fast the time goes by! We hope to see you soon (samedi) for the programme de parents.
Trois themes super
Our themes this week have been very varied and fun. Monday had the theme of Afrique de l’Ouest where villagers learned about the French-speaking nations of Western Africa and went to a marche in the evening to barter for djembes, cafe, photos and henne. On Tuesday, Lac du Bois played winter games despite the summer weather — broomball, penguin races, snowboarding, and snowflake-making! Today, le 14 juillet, is what we commonly know as “Bastille Day”: la fete nationale de la France. We had cake at every meal!!!
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Encore un dimanche dynamique
After a very busy (and fun!) weekend, today we return to our regular daily schedule at Lac du Bois. We had a blast at International Day on Friday, said “au revoir” to our one-week villagers on Saturday, and enjoyed lots of nouvelles activités on Sunday. Villagers visited Lac du Bois, Hackensack’s very own casino, paraded into le Salon de l’Agriculture (an annual event in France for farmers, sort of like a state fair for the entire nation!), savored a dîner délicieux featuring cuisine from Madagascar, and, dansed as the sun set over the lake à la plage. We hope that you enjoy all the pictures from all of these exciting events!
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Allez allez allez allez
Allez Journée Internationale! Today was a very full and a very fun day spent in Bemidji with our fellow Language Villages from around Minnesota. The weather was beautiful, the food was delicious and the birthday celebration was a blast! Thank you so much to those of you who joined us in the festivities. We look forward to seeing many more of you tomorrow at the parent program for our one-week villagers participating in FH48. À demain!
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Préparation pour la Journée Internationale!
Lac du Bois, Hackensack is very excited to participate in International Day tomorrow in Bemidji. This year’s gathering is particularly meaningful as Concordia Language Villages celebrates its 50th summer. The theme of the day is “Walls Still to Fall” and Lac du Bois, Hackensack has prepared a beautiful spectacle to Jean-Jacques Goldman’s song “Ensemble” which speaks of a “mur immense“ (immense wall) that can be overcome when we work together. Here are some photos of our preparations from this evening and a picture of our villagers who are at the Language Villages for the fifth time. Merci d’avoir choisi notre programme!
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La comédie française
Our theme today was la Comédie française and all of our villagers became comédiens today as they prepared des pièces de théâtre for our evening activity. They also continued having loads of fun with their ateliers and projets and beginning preparations for la Journée Internationale. The week is flying by!
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Le Maghreb
Our thème de la journée was le Maghreb: les pays francophones en Afrique du Nord. Villagers began their new projets (small language-learning groups) and ateliers (interest-based activités) and for the veillée (evening activity) ce soir, villagers learned some danse orientale, drumming, mosaïques and émigration algérienne. We hope you’ll enjoy the photos below.
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Deux nouvelles sessions
Today we opened our frontières to welcome villagers participating in two new sessions: FH48 (one-week session) and FH42 (two-week session). Our fonceurs (four-week credit villagers), who just enjoyed a fun weekend off at the halfway point of their program, showed that they were ready to get back to work today. They were a great help in wishing a warm “bienvenue“ to the new arrivals and in acting as guides for their peers. Les fonceurs had study hall this evening while the one- and two-week villagers watched sketchs and played jeux de coopération to learn important information about the camp rules for the sauna, beaux-arts and W.C./douches. The day ended, bien sûr, with a campfire and singing. We were sure to take lots of pictures during the evening activity; regardez toutes les belles photos!
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La fin de FH22
We have had a terrific time the last two weeks with our energetic group of villageois in session FH22. Today we celebrated how much these villagers have learned and grown over the course of their time at Lac du Bois, Hackensack. We shared a phenomenal five-course banquet in our dining hall, Paris (with a menu of: soupe à l’oignon, côte de boeuf bordelais, gratin dauphinois, salade de tomates et ciboulette, salade verte, baguette chaude, cinq sortes de fromage, raisins, et mousse au chocolat!!!), watched the final episode of our village soap-opera (Plaisirs d’Amour), and completed the evening with a cérémonie de béret and des remerciements.
We enjoyed an absolutely beautiful last day with our two-week villagers with wonderful sunny weather and many fun activities. Take a look at the photos below from today’s cérémonie de béret and activités au choix and last night’s soirée de talent.
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Festival de mode!
The French are known for fashion and yesterday at Lac du Bois we had our very own Festival de mode! Villagers were divided into four groups and each created a maison de couture: Dior, Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Yves Saint-Laurent. Their task? To design a high-fashion ensemble that integrated ALL of the materials that they were given. Take a look at the photos below showing our monos as mannequins and our beach’s quai as the catwalk. The evening activity ended with a campfire at the beach.
Villagers participating in Lac du Bois Hackensack’s special parallel program Aventure Nature had separate afternoon and evening activities as they embarked upon a canoeing and camping adventure! They, too, ended the day with a campfire, and in addition to singing songs around it, they prepared a tasty meal over the coals, learned how to bake bread (how very French!) in the wilderness, and then enjoyed some (somewhat less French) s’mores.
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