As you can tell, I changed up our look here at Mystère et boules de gomme. I did this over frustration with the way the old template (Tarski) screwed up the Discussion page. Comments were forced below the long list of links. (Other than that, I liked Tarski just fine.) With this template this issue is solved, while other nice features, like the organization of the links, are maintained.
Qu’en pensez-vous?
[UPDATE: I have obviously been screwing around with themes and have settled on this one. It seems to display well on all browsers I’ve tried from Macs an PCs. I encourage anyone who has some talent with Photoshop to submit a banner for the page. The one above looks good enough, but has no particular connection to FIA. Banner should be 3024 x 533 and contain the title and subtitle. I’d love to have a few to alternate!]
In other news, a big merci is owed to Jennie for her dedication to the FIAfans wiki to which she has been adding several episodes a week! Her blog is a delight. I especially liked this summary of why French grammar is hard. In addition, FIA fans should be aware that she has an amazing language tutorial website that covers 15 languages and has loads of excellent, well organized material for learning French, including mp3s of her native-speaker boyfriend pronouncing vocabulary and phrases. Frankly it boggles the mind how one person can know so much about so many different languages. To then put it all online for the benefit of us all…Jennie you’re our hero! Here’s an excerpt from her French Tutorial 1, lesson 39 and a good illustration of why French grammar is hard:
* Use of ne … pas de: In negative sentences, the partitives and indefinite articles become de before the noun (unless the verb is être, then nothing changes.)
Partitive: Je prends du pain et du beurre. I’m having some bread and butter.
Negative: Je ne prends pas de pain ou de beurre. I am not having any bread or butter.Indefinite: J’ai un chien. I have a dog.
Negative: Je n’ai pas de chien. I don’t have a dog.Verb is être: C’est une chatte brune. It’s a brown cat.
Negative: Ce n’est pas une chatte brune. It’s not a brown cat.
I think Prof. Capretz kept rules like this out of FIA pour ne pas démoralizer les étudiants…
Also, I still encourage anyone who has a FIA-related story or anecdote to contact me. I’ll make you an official FIAfans author. Use the contact field below the fold to get in touch.
That’s all for now. Bonne continuation!
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Mystère et boules de gomme ! 
On my blog, La Belette Rouge, I posted today about French in Action, among other things and I was referred to your brilliant blog! This is so much fun!!! I am off to explore your archives.
Hi! I just discovered your site, I love it! I was just in France last month and got to spend a couple of days in Paris. I met a friend for dinner at a restaurant in the 5th arr. and lo and behold, I looked across the street and saw this: Home Latin
That’s right, it’s Hotel Home Latin where Robert stayed. It actually exits! Now, most people think I’m weird because I get all excited about this so I’m glad I found your site. I know somebody out there will appreciate it.
Glad to have you aboard, Drew. Check out the FIA on eBay link. I got my second-hand set of FIA DVDs that way.
Just found this site and can safely say that any downtime at work will see me here.
I studied French all through high school and then discovered FIA after that and got right back into learning the language. I found it was useful having some fairly strict grammar instruction before delving into the world of idiom and everyday conversation.
I went on to study French at Uni level but sadly I have nobody to speak it with. I’ve recently been going through all my old video cassettes with a view to throwing most of them out but I’m capturing the good stuff onto DVD before I do. I have about 20 episodes of FIA and would love to get the whole series somehow.
Anyway, great site. Consider me a regular reader.