back to school week

I started back to French school this week. It was hard to give up the free time that the short vacation provided, but it was good to be back with the friends I have made.

On the last day of class before Christmas, the school had a party and at the party we had to provide some type of entertainment... a spectacle, as they say. Our class did a sing-a-long of a popular (in the 80’s) French hit. I guess it was pretty popular because as soon as the music started, all the instructors and other French people immediately started singing along and they didn’t have to have a “cheat-sheet” for the words and pronunciation. So it wasn’t so bad.

After our “spec-TAK-le”, us girls took a picture. These are my new Japanese friends and one girl from Brazil. The girl (front left) is my buddy. She and I started at the school at about the same time and we are both still there. I remember thinking back then about how horrible her French was... it is difficult for her to make many of the sounds in French (and English too) and she just didn’t do very well. I took about a month off to travel around France and when I returned, I was shocked at how much better she had gotten. And this week, as we all returned to class, I was shocked again at how much better my Japanese friend was speaking French. I wondered... did they think I had improved? Probably not since my vacation was spent speaking English, not French.