L'avion

Un avion = a plane (pronounced ah-vee-on)

L'avion is also the name of the new (or maybe not-so-new anymore by now) low-fare business class connecting Newark to Paris' lesser-known airport Orly, the larger airport being known as either Charles de Gaulle or Roissy (from the name of the town where it's located)

un cliché

un cliché = a print (for pictures) or a cliché.

All this just to introduce today's article from the UK on clichés about France.

Vive le foot

le championnat = championship, which in France (as in most of Europe) can only mean one thing: football! (a.k.a proper football, a.k.a. soccer).

The word is (quite obviously) derived from un champion (pronounced sh-an-pee-on) / une championne which means (quite obviously again) a champion.

If you're not following France's championship, I don't blame you, it can be both boring (Lyon coming first seven years in a row?) and exciting - like this year, with next week-end's games deciding both the 1st place (between Lyon and Bordeaux) and the last team falling to second division (between Lens, Toulouse and Paris-Saint Germain).

Fou rire

fou (feminine folle) is an adjective that means crazy, wild, erratic
le rire = laughter

Un fou rire is uncontrollable laughter, or giggles.

May 8

Today, le 8 Mai, marks a couple of important anniversaries, in France and beyond:

• It marks WWII V-day
• Less famously, on May 8, 1790, the French National Assembly decided to introduce the metric system.

May 8th is one of the many holidays in May in France, and as it falls on a Thursday is it the perfect setup to allow people to "faire le pont" (literally make the bridge), i.e. turn this into a 4-day week-end. Just like last week with May 1st (Labor Day).