Learning French, Learning France

Tomorrow I start my second week at language school. I'm going 4 hours a day, 5 days a week for a whole month. Then in Sept. I'll start going fewer days each week for another two months. I'm enjoying school, but it is challenging. My teacher is very good, but of course she speaks in French the entire time so I have to really listen. Thankfully she knows English, so if I have to I can ask her a question in English.

There are students in my class from all over the world: Italy, Spain, Columbia, Mexico, Korea, Turkey, Ghana... I'm the only American, but most of them speak English pretty well, so we can communicate. It's fun getting to know people from so many places. One day last week, a group of us went on a brief tour of the city with one of our teachers. She gave us the history of Marseille...in French. I didn't catch much except that Marseille is the oldest city in France and was settled by Greeks.

Yesterday, I went to a park outside of town with two girls from class. We made a long hike down to a beautiful cove where we could swim, only the water was freezing so we mostly laid around. They both spoke Spanish (and I know a little), but only one of them spoke English well, and all three of us just started learning French so my head was swimming in three languages all day!

The place we went is called the Calanques and its absolutely georgeous. I put some pics below. The mountains come right up to the sea of the Mediterranean. There's tons of trails to hike. France is truely a beautiful place.

I have the practical side of "getting settled" taken care of for the most part. I have a bank account, a cell phone, and a furnished apartment complete with working gas, television, and internet. And all that only took a month! Tomorrow I need to mail off some visa papers so I can begin the process of being legal here for 2 years. I'd explain that further, but its a terribly long process and I don't understand it anyway.

I'm adjusting to life here and all the small differences like having to air dry my laundry, having to walk everywhere, having no A/C and my window open all the time so the neighbors can see in, and only being able to buy lunch meat in packages of 2 or 4 slices.

Right now my main focus is learning French so I can get out and do more things on my own. That will be a full time job for now. Thankfully, there's nothing else going on here during August. Everyone's on vacation and most businesses aren't even open. Most of the events we do like English club and frisbee in the park are on hold for now. I'm staying busy though!

-rsl