After playing ostrich for over a year, I’m back at the blog! Starting the New Year off with a grand adventure, this month will be a chronicle of a stay in Paris to take a French language immersion class at Alliance Française. Once a week or so I’ll update you on the progress in class for both my sister, Patti, and I, and then add a little Paris color, letting you know how we are adapting to our life in an apartment in the 6e Arrondissement.

After 5+ years of living in France, stammering and stuttering and google-translating whenever I couldn’t avoid speaking French, I am in Paris for four weeks, at the urging of my sister, to actually learn to speak la langue. My sister moved over here in September with little French, and wanted to learn as quickly as possible, so she invited me along to a four-week intensive course at Alliance Française, considered by many to be the best place to learn French.

We made the decision shortly after Patti arrived, deciding that January would be a good month, after the holidays and before the heavy tourist season started. Within hours of making the decision, we had booked our roundtrip train tickets, and reserved and paid for a 2 bedroom AirBNB in the 6th arrondissement, next to the Odeon Theatre and just across the Jardin de Luxenbourg from the school. We scheduled friends, writers Naomi and Joe, who were looking for a chance to hunker down in small town France and write, to arrive from New York to dog sit for the month, and signed up and paid for the course with Alliance Française.

And, then, Omicron hit! We struggled for days, trying to decide if we should cancel or not. We found we could postpone our course with AF, and were offered the option of choosing another time for the apartment, too-any time after June, as they were booked until then. Would there even be classes? Would we be able to get to Paris? Would our dog sitters be able to get to France? Were we being foolish to even consider it?

We coasted though most of the month of December, vacillating. By Christmas we had decided to see how things fell into place. Once our dog sitters arrived on December 29th, we were fully committed to the month in Paris.

We arrived in Paris on New Year’s Eve day with just enough time to drop our bags at the apartment and rush out to eat before lunch service stopped at 2:30. The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around Saint Germain in an effort to orient ourselves to the neighbourhood, buying a few basics at a small convenience store, and napping. At about 6:00 we took a walk to check out the route to school and check out the neighbourhood in yet another direction, hoping to stock up on a bit more food in case shops and restaurants were closed over the New Year’s weekend. Oh, and some champagne to celebrate the turning of the year.

As it happened, we had no trouble finding great food over the weekend! For New Year’s Day Brunch we found a sweet little restaurant overlooking the Fountaine Medicis that served perfect croissants stuffed with an even more perfect poached egg, hollandaise sauce and a couple of strips of bacon- France meets the American Brunch! For dinner, our second of four Neapolitain pizzas this week. At home, in Nérac, the pizzas are decidedly Southwestern France: a doughy crust topped with French meats (duck, fois gras, saucisson) and cheeses. We arrived in Paris with a mission to have a better pizza and we certainly attained our goal!

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We spent the weekend exploring the neighbourhood and carrying provisions to our apartment. With one injured knee (me, from lifting bags on and off the train up and down staircases and in and out of cars) and a sore back (Patti, aggravated by those same actions that got my knee), we tried to curtail the quantity carried at one time, which meant we took a few trips a day. Our biggest adventure of the weekend was an Uber ride to the Champs-l’Eysées to see the Christmas lights and to search for notebooks for class on Monday morning. The avenue was crowded with tourists and I vowed never to return unless I have another opportunity to march to the Arch de Triumphe to celebrate another win for the French National Football team as I did with my son, Zach, and all of his girls in July of 2018. There are too many tourists, the same shopping can be found in other parts of the city, and the food is overpriced and uninspired.

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Monday morning we were up early, packing our bags with text book and workbook, notebook and pens, snacks and bottled water. Oh, and our FFP2 NR masques- the French version of KN95 mask in the US. After eating our hearty breakfast of oatmeal (trés Americane!) we started the 15 minute trek to l’ecole. We laughed about the fact that the last time we got ready for school together was, easily, more than 55 years ago!

Amazingly, even at this stage in our lives, I think we both suffered from “First Day of School” anxiety. After we had registered for the class we were asked to test to determine our level of knowledge for placement within the program. Despite having had a few months of lessons, Patti tested at A1, and I tested at A2. We set off for school, each with our own concerns. Patti was worried that starting at the very beginning would be too easy for her. Given that the class was full immersion (all in French!!!), I had concerns about understanding anything/everything. After 5 years here, my vocabulary is fairly extensive, and, I can read French reasonably well. I can read letters I receive from my bank, surf the internet in French, understand recipes written in French, and make my way through the ingredient lists on containers at the supermarché. But auditory processing is my weak spot, and, so, actually hearing individual words when someone is rattling them off in French had me really fearful of being able to handle the class. (I should probably tell you all that I also have this competition thing. It’s not a competition with others, but with myself. I like to feel like I’m doing well. And, I hate to lose to myself,)

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The first day was super! My class had 14 people registered but only 12 were there on the first day. Half way through the class, one young woman excused herself and requested that she be moved to a lower level class. (I really didn’t want to have to do that.) The first hour was the usual introductions and orientation. In French. The class is all quite young (you can assume they are in their 20’s unless you hear differently), and everyone has a different reason for being there. One man, from Turkey, is working on his doctorate, though I haven’t determined his focus. One woman is there to learn the language so she can communicate with her French husband. All but one woman, who is from Ecuador, speaks English well.

After that first hour, we got right to it, working in the text book, then the workbook, and finishing up working in 2’s and 3’s to create some sentences. I was feeling a bit lost at this point, so I was really relieved when, working with two other students, I realised they were as confused as I was. Then, when we went around the room and shared answers, it was obvious that we were all floundering a little but at the same level. Whew. I felt like I was right where I was supposed to be. Patti’s class went well the first day, too, and that feeling of being in the right place and surviving the day was so exhilarating that we went out to lunch to celebrate!

Thanks for joining me on this little adventure. I’ll be sharing more in the days to come, so, if you are not already subscribed to my blog, there is a box on the right of this page where you can do just that. If you are interested in finding out about my virtual cooking classes on Facebook Live and on Zoom, click here to go to the Chez Moe en France site.