Blahhhhh

Bonjour mes amis,

Well, things are getting better here in la-la-land…or should I say blah-blah land. Since my last post, I’ve received my luggage (Wahoo! It felt just like Christmas), but I still have not received a single word from my host family. I’m a little discouraged because I’m really getting comfortable here at Bernard’s. According to M. Faure, my family should be back today. I guess we’ll see…

School “started” on Monday. The other first year students at l’ESC (Ecole Superior de Commerce) will join us next week for a larger orientation, but for the present, it’s just our group from Kalamazoo. So far we only have one class, “French language and civilization”, which we have every day this week from 9h00 to 17h30 with a 1.5h break for lunch. That’s one class for 7 hours with the same professor, who just happens to look like a tres chic female version of Professor Snape from Harry Potter. She’s terrifying. Her name is Mme Fox-Muraton and she is very French. So far in this class, we’ve practiced our pronunciation, conjugated verbs, read the newspaper, watched the news on TV, listened to music, completed lots of grammar exercises, and who knows what else. It’s basically a crash course in all things French.

After class on Monday morning, we met the other faculty members with whom we’re going to be interacting. Of the four people we met, two are British and the other two are American. The two British people are the coordinators of the international program, and the two Americans are English teachers at l’ESC who are to be our “tutors” if we need help in any of our courses. While all four of them obviously speak English, we have to speak to them in French at all times. We all went out for lunch together and it was the strangest thing to me to be speaking in French with a large group of people who all spoke English as their native language. One of the Brits has a very pronounced British accent when she speaks French. It’s very different sounding!

My head is absolutely swimming. I find that I never know what language I’m supposed to be speaking and when, nor do I ever know what exactly is going to come out of my mouth. I do alright when I’m just speaking French, but when I try to revert back to English to talk to my friends and family or to write anything, like this post, I get confused because I’m still trying to think in French. My Kalamazoo friends and I try to speak to each other constantly in French, but sometimes we just can’t express ourselves the way we’d like to, so we give in and speak in English. This is going to have to change. I’m thinking it’s got to be all or nothing. Franglais does not truly exist!

I feel pretty good about the whole language thing so far. I’ve received many compliments from French speaking people, which is encouraging, until I realized tonight that I’ve been responding to them with, “j’essaie”, which means “I’m trying”, but sounds a lot like “je sais”, which means “I know”. Unfortunately, I fear that I’ve been pronouncing “j’essaie” as the latter… What I might as well be saying is “Hello, I’m arrogant.” I know for sure I made this mistake on Sunday night when Josh, Bernard and I dined with Bernard’s girlfriend and her neighbors. There were at least 8 people at our table, excluding Josh and I, who all were speaking rapid-fire French. They all talked over one another at the same time; I hardly understood a word. I came away from that experience very discouraged. Ah well, I’m learning. I hope that in time, I’ll be able to keep up with conversations like those.

I suppose that’s enough for now. I’m sorry if these posts are too long, but I have an awful lot to say! Au revoir!

P.S. The French are very good looking! Bernard has a couple of good looking sons himself, including two that I’ve met. For this reason, I like les bisous (the two customary kisses on the cheek when you meet someone)! J