Back to school...again.

After finishing my very last course for my university degree ( ugh Stats) and celebrating being done school (Sorry Mom and Dad law school is still not on the table) I planned a long and extensive trip to Europe so I could go back to school?!?!?  It seemed like a good idea at the time to brush up on all the high school French I've since forgotten. And now that I'm here it seems like an even better idea. As much as it irks me to be back in a class room for half a day with tests and homework classes are pretty much an essential lifeline right now and everything I learn I use about 2 hours later in my daily conversations with my family.

 And yes I do actually mean conversations. I'm happy to report that after about a week of mouth gaping, blank staring WTF are they sayingness I can actually understand about 50-75% of what my host family says now. Plus I can string together a sentence or two of what is I'm sure very linguistically and grammatically challenged French in under an hour. I even managed to make a couple jokes....which probably weren't  actually that funny but even if it was a pity laugh I will take it. I think now they can at least appreciate that I have a personality and they are not housing a stoic robot who stares at them and says "oui" periodically.

I am taking 4 weeks of classes at a French foreign language school in Montpellier called Accent Francais. That's right I have become one of those annoying foreign students that I always wanted to run over with a car in downtown Vancouver. You know the ones I'm talking about? The one who cluster outside the schools with no regard for people attempting to walk down the sidewalk? The ones that hop on the bus and loudly speak in their native tongue or yell at each other across the bus.I apologize to all the Montpellierans? in advance.

I was very surprised the first day of lessons  because when I asked what a word meant the teacher explained it.... In FRENCH.  I am accustomed to being given instructions and translations in English in French class but here that doesn't happen.  I guess it wouldn't be fair to the Japanese, Colombian, Swiss and Brazilian people in my class some of whom don't speak English. I was actually quite surprised with the diversity of the people in the school. There are the typical young people doing years abroad but also business people here to learn french, and even a recently married Australian couple here for a couple weeks as a part of their honeymoon. It makes for really interesting group work in class as we struggle to understand each other. We have a lot of different life experiences and cultural differences to try and relate to each other in simplistic French. For example the other day we had to make up and present to the class a story about something being stolen.  I suggested we do it about a stolen pie off a windowsill (Random - I know). But my Colombian partner didn't know pie in English and I didn't know it in French.  So I googled it in French but he didn't know that French word so then I had to google a picture of a pie while he reverse translated the French word to Spanish.... and 3 minutes later we were ready to start.

I struggled to keep up with the teacher's lessons and instructions the first day or two and I used up the battery on my phone by lunchtime translating everything.  But after a day or so I caught on and I actually really like that they teach in French.  When we compare the French word to synonyms or antonyms and learn French definitions it really helps get an ingrained understanding of the word  rather than always doing a direct translation to English in your head. I feel like we would have learnt a lot more if we had we learnt French like this in high school. I've also found that it is much easier if I just consistently speak French because if I take a break and speak English with another student  it takes me a couple steps backwards the next time I try and speak or understand french.  Even with a fellow Canadian comrade we try to speak french to each other as much as possible (until we reach an impasse where neither of us gets it) plus it is only fair to our Colombian friend who doesn't understand English. It makes for some entertaining conversations and impromptu games of charades in class and I think I might just be OK with 3 more weeks of school.