Bonne Année tout le monde !

Come to our first Café Conversation of 2024 on Saturday, January 27, 3 PM at Alachua County Library Headquarters, 401 E University Ave, Meeting Room B. We welcome especially UF grad students interested in Francophone and Francophile community! Easy parking, but attention: the library closes at 5.

Past VP Haydée Britton will update us about her 25 children in Kinshasa, DRC. Her non-profit Les Petits Okapis has been a personal passion for decades and is now led by the adults she saved from the streets and supported from primary school through college.  Come enjoy pictures from her July visit with them. She will have Congolese handicrafts for sale to benefit her group (cash or checks appreciated, and Haydee’s website, okapis.org, takes charitable contributions.) Following Café C, the “convo” can continue at a downtown restaurant.

February 12 is the week that our Spring Sesion begins. Students can register on our Website under Courses. This time around we are offering:

• Beginning French Level 1 with Maria McGrey (Wednesday, Zoom, 6:30 – 8 pm)
• Beginning French Level 2 with Maria (Thursday, Zoom, 6 – 7:30 pm)
• Advanced French Level 1 avec Elie Pinta (Lundi, en présentiel, 17h à 18h30)
• Advanced French Level 2 avec Elie (Lundi, en présentiel, 18h30 à 20h)

Contact us if you completed a Beginning level in the Fall of 2023 and want to continue a series of private lessons with Dayana Georgieva. Also let us know if you are interested in Intermediate level instruction, which can be arranged with one of our instructors, even though it is not currently advertised on our website.

Additionally, if you have professional expertise and would like to offer a themed course about any aspect of French or Francophone language, literature, or culture, please send us your proposals.

The Taste of Things (Best Director award at Cannes Film Festival, 2023) is coming to the Hippodrome Theatre February 14 – 23. Weeknight screenings start at 8:30 pm, so it could be a nice after-class activity, as well as a potential topic at our next Café C.

Next Café C dates:

• Sunday, February 25 OR Sunday, March 3 (open theme and venue TBA)
• Saturday, March 30 OR Sunday, March 31 (Marice Caballero, Second Language Acquisition, venue TBA)

Visit our Media Gallery for a glimpse of January 6 with “La Fête des Rois” banquet, a resounding success attended by 50 AFG members. Thank you to all who came! A special Merci ! to the dozen hard-working volunteers who shopped, cooked, set-up, served, spoke & sang between courses, and cleaned up that night and the next day. Everyone’s participation made the event inoubliable ! We said farewell to Chef Jacques and Pamela, now in Japan, but thanks to their inspiration, conversations are already bubbling about more feasts in the future.

Here’s to another fun and educational year together!

Cordialement,
Elizabeth et le comité directeur
president@afgainesville.com
afgainesville.com