Not sure how much I’ll be posting in the next couple of weeks, as I’ve realised that it might detract a bit from the whole “French language immersion” thing.
I was worried that everything was going pear shaped last night. My host family are very nice, but there are three of us sharing one bathroom, there’s no aircon, and worst of all we’re miles away from both the language school in the city centre, and the hospital I’m meant to be visiting. Then, I’m still struggling with jet lag and ongoing COVID symptoms. It was all shaping up to be a bust. In despair, at midnight I started myself on antibiotics in the hope that it would improve my health at least. And hey presto, within hours both my blocked and crusty nose and my sore throat were improving. Hardly even physiologically possible but there you go, and I’m just glad that it’s working, even if there’s an element of placebo about it. And no side effects as threatened by my husband, so far anyway.
In spite of my poor sleep I was able to get up at the crack of dawn and make it across town for the welcome briefing at 8:15. I travelled with another student who is staying in the same place as me, a very self possessed 22 yo Dutch girl called Emma. She is fluent in a number of languages and wants to add French to the list. That was the theme of the most of the students actually – young Europeans learning their third or fourth language so they can become primary school teachers or whatever. We Anglophone Kiwis just don’t know we’re born.
We were split into small groups for our lessons, according to an online assessment we did before arriving. I was a bit nervous, possibly because I cheated a bit on my test, but I’m very happy with the level of my class. It’s pushing me but I’m not wholly at sea. I’m the oldest in my group of seven by several decades.
The school organises plenty of activities outside of the classroom as well, so I think it’s a better set up than the course I did in Aix en Provence back pre COVID. For example, after lunch they had a walking tour of the town which was great, and all in clearly spoken slow French.
I’m writing this back at my accommodation, the school is trying to organise something that will suit me better but I feel a bit of a traitor to my hosts. Ah well. I might feel differently if she was a good cook but last nights meal was truly awful – plain baked chicken, plain sliced boiled potatoes and boiled French beans. Even I could have done better and that’s saying something.