The term "brownstone" is used to refer to a particular stone, but in the United States, also to refer to a terraced house ( / rowhouse) clad in this material (Fr.: maison de grès) Some Manhattan neighbourhoods retain many brownstones.

New York City brownstones are highly desired  and cost several million dollars to purchase.

from Momos this superb photo of Harlem brownstones:

About 700,000 Cajuns live in South Louisiana, originally from Acadia (a French Canadian province). The word originates in the attempted pronunciation of "Acadian" by U.S. speakers.

In 1604 -- sixteen years before the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock – families from Western France settled in  Acadia, now Nova Scotia, Canada. An estimated 18,000 French-speaking Catholic inhabitants from Brittany, Saintonge, Poitou, Normandy, established a thriving, self-sufficient community. Later, the British won the colony from France in 1713, but for refusing to pledge allegiance to the British crown, which required renouncing their traditional Catholic religion for that of the Anglican Church, they were forced from their homes in 1755. This cruel and tragic event is known as Le Grand Dérangement (“The Great Upheaval”), and led families either to go to sea under dreadful conditions, (more than half lost their lives) or try their luck in other areas of Louisiana. Those who sailed away landed in Nantes, the greatest French port at the time.

This mural is seen in one of the old streets above the harbour in Nantes, it represents the Acadians preparing to depart from Nantes and sail back to America (they will eventually settle  in St Martinville, La)

In 1784, the King of Spain allowed the rest of the Cajuns to settle in South Louisiana.  They received a hostile greeting from the French aristocracy of New Orleans, so they headed west of the city into a waste territory. They settled along the bayous where they could live according to their own beliefs and customs.

Today, they are famous for their unique French dialect (a patois of 18th-century French), their music, their spicy cooking, and their folk customs (“joie de vivre, jambalaya, Courir du Mardi Gras, fais-do-do, boudin, andouille, etc.).

Source : http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~jmeaux/cajun.html

http://www.acadian-cajun.com/colorig.htm

http://geography.about.com/od/specificplacesofinterest/a/cajun.htm

Now, let them talk !, and pay attention to the accent

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André BRINK (who died on Feb. 7^th, 2015 ) was one of South Africa's most distinguished writers: poet, novelist, essayist and teacher, he began work as a University lecturer in Afrikaans* and Dutch Literature in the 1960s. He began writing in Afrikaans, but when censored by the South African government, began to also write in English and became published overseas. He remains a key figure in the modernisation of the Afrikaans language novel.

Brink’s best-known book, A Dry White Season (1979), was made into a film starring Marlon Brando

André Brink has been made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters and awarded the Legion of Honour by the French government.

André Brink has constantly explored, in his own words, his 'love-hate relationship with the Afrikaner' and his own position as a 'cultural schizophrene'. He got associated with several South African writers that called themselves 'Sestigers' ('1960-ers'), and began to question the literary and cultural roots within the Afrikaans tradition and initially tried to subvert them with modernist and post-modernist technical experimentations.

He then admitted the influence of the 1968 students’ uprisings in Paris that he witnessed while doing postgraduate work at the Sorbonne. In his article 'The position of the Afrikaans writer' (1970), Brink stated that 'no Afrikaans writer has yet tried to offer a serious political challenge to the system ... We have no one with enough guts, it seems, to say: No'. In 1973 Brink published Kennis van die Aand, a novel that represented a turning point in his career, both in terms of politics and language : a black actor details his struggle against apartheid and his passionate, yet doomed, love affair with a white woman. South African censors banned the novel for its explicit condemnation of apartheid and for its candid depiction of an inter-racial relationship. Because of the ban, Brink decided to translate the novel into English (Looking on Darkness, 1974), to appeal to an international readership.  All his following books were written simultaneously in Afrikaans and English.

* Afrikaans is a Dutch dialect spoken by families from the Netherlands who settled in South Africa. It  became the language of apartheid in the third quarter of the XXth century. Maybe you use words without knowing they are Afrikaans : apartheid (literally "separate-ness"), Boer (literally "farmer"), eland (from Dutch, meaning "elk"), kommando (a mounted infantry unit raised to retrieve stolen livestock), rooibos (a kind of tea, literally "red bush"), springbok, trek (a long trip, literally "draw", or "haul"), veld (literally "field" or natural African bush vegetation)

Source : http://literature.britishcouncil.org/andra-brink

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surf_break

A surf break (= break / shore break / big wave break) is a permanent obstruction such as a coral reef, rock, etc., that causes a wave to break, forming a wave that can be surfed, before it eventually collapses. The nature of the seabed determines the shape of the wave and type of break. 

1.

A point break refers to the place where waves hit a point of land or rocks jutting out from the coastline. The bottom can be made of rocks, sand, or coral. 

A beach break takes place where waves break on a usually sandy seabed. A shore break is a wave that breaks directly on, or very close to the shore. This happens when the beach is very steep at the shoreline.

A reef break happens when a wave breaks over a coral reef or a rocky seabed. In Australia these open ocean reefs are sometimes called Bombora or 'Bommie' waves, after the aboriginal word for offshore reef, 'bombora'. Sometimes reefs which occur in open ocean but which do not breach the surface are also called 'Banks' (e.g. Cortes Bank off Californi a).

'Shipwreck breaks' usually form from sand build up over totally or partly submerged shipwrecks.

A rivermouth break breaks at or near the entrance to a river or creek. The bottom is usually sand, but can be pebbles, rocks, or even coral reef. They are sometimes called 'Bar' breaks because of the way the sand piles up along the shoreline.  

2.

As opposed to obstructions which cause waves to break, surfable waves are sometimes defined by the nature of their generation.

Swell waves : ocean swells form from the longer term amalgamation of wind-generated waves on the surface. The stronger the wind,  the longer the area over which it blows, the larger the swell.

Wind waves : If large enough, local wind-generated chop can be surfed in certain conditions.

Ship waves are created by a large ship (an oil tanker) :  although rare, surfable tsunami waves from earthquakes have been recorded.

Also found are Backwash and Sidewash waves (formed from the returning backwash of a wave which has previously gone up a steep shoreline)

Some rivers can also exhibit a surfable wave 'front' during flash flood events, particularly within narrow canyons. It is technically a wave front, but may be classified as a 'surf break'.

Tidal Bore waves form where strong tidal currents enter a river or deltaic system,

Rogue waves are a specific type of rare open ocean wave which is generally defined as being more than twice the significant wave height, and may be up to 30m or more in height.

barreling wave : Fr. Rouleau.

Rogue wave : Fr. Vague scélérate.

·      Another website for surfing glossary:          

http://www.surfline.com/surfology/surfology_glossary_index.cfm 

Forget wearable tech  ! from NPR, Jan 10th 2015.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2015/01/10/376166180/forget-wearable-tech-people-really-want-better-batteries