This is Part 2 of a series about my 4 week stay in Paris, with my sister, while we attend a French language immersion class at Alliance Française. In case you missed the first instalment, you can catch up here.

After the elation we felt after our first day of class, a few realities hit us hard over the next few days. Cycling back to the very most basic beginning, despite the fact that she had been taking French online and in a once-a- week class in Nérac, Patti seemed to be doing well at her A1 level. Because English can be used as a common denominator when dealing with various nationalities, her teacher was using that to get the class started on the basics of the French, so it was easy for her to understand instructions in class and for homework. It was a very different story in my classroom.

In room 314, our A2 class was total immersion, with all discussion in French. Since auditory processing was my weak spot, it felt like I had been submerged in a whirling blender full of French words, often having no notion of what was being said. Often, we would be given instructions and the rest of the class would start in while I was trying to figure out WTF we were supposed to do. Ivana, our instructor, is really good, though, and she would watch the class while she explained a specific point, watching our masked faces to see if we were getting her point. If we all looked comfortable, she would move on to the next topic, employing the white board to write notes or draw diagrams, adopting exaggerated body language to clarify a subject when necessary , or using a string of synonyms, in French, to help us understand a word meaning. Unfortunately, I must have looked like I was getting it when, maybe, I really wasn’t.

This is probably a good time to address the fact that I am definitely the oldest student in the class- by about 40 years. I think it might even be safe to say I’m the oldest person in the building, when I’m there. Most of the students are somewhere in their 20’s, with a few in their 30’s. (Patti read that the AF schools in Bordeaux and Marseilles often have older students.) I have no idea how much my age factors into my ability to learn today, but I do know that it’s been a long time since I had to worry about grammar and sentence structure in English. When I did learn it, I learned it fairly well, so it’s almost become an autonomic function to compose a sentence in English. However, in this class, when the terms Objet Direct and Objet Indirect started being thrown around, along with the vocabulary and the verb tenses, my brain struggled to make sense of any of it. And, as much I like school, it has been a really long time since I sat in a structured class where I had to be accountable for my work.

Our daily schedule was to leave the house by about 8:40 and walk across the Jardin du Luxenbourg to arrive at class by 9:00. Leaving class at 1:00, our goal was usually to head home, have a sandwich baguette de jambon et de beurre and then get our homework done, freeing the evening to go out for dinner, explore, or work ahead in our textbooks. Unfortunately, we were easily swayed if we realised that we didn’t have a fresh baguette or other necessary items at home (all of the boulangeries have huge lines at lunchtime, with students and workers lining up for a sandwich or other lunchtime treat), and we would convince ourselves that it was in our best interest to go out to lunch. And, then, on a full stomach, we would march ourselves home and take a very long nap! Which meant homework was done in a scramble before and after dinner.

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On Thursday of the first week, Patti came home with the news that her teacher and one other person in the class seemed to be sick (runny nose, scratchy voice, etc.) and we worried that she might have been exposed to COVID. Within a few hours she received an email from the school that her teacher had tested positive for COVID and they were suspending class for the following day. The next day they announced that they would be switching to online classes for the next week.

Neither of us slept very well that night. Patti spent her time on the internet searching about Omicron information and trying to find a local hotel for me to check into in case she tested positive. I simply worried all night. The students in her class were encouraged to test for COVID for a week, and so Patti went to the corner pharmacy 4 times over the next week for an antigen test with results available within 15 minutes. Luckily, happily, she tested negative each time.

The entire first week was a roller coaster. I loved the class, I hated the class, I felt good about it, I felt like an idiot. That night, when we lost sleep worrying about COVID exposure, I slacked on my homework. The worry wasn’t the only reason- I had done most of the homework, but I didn’t understand it, and I knew that I had done it badly, which was made me feel guilty. It was torturous for me! All the way to school that next morning I considered not going to school. Maybe I would go sit in a café and drink multiple espressos while trying to figure out what I didn’t get about the work. Maybe I’d go back home and sleep, but I didn’t want to have Patti know I was such a chicken. Bad memories of slacking off on homework as a kid were coursing through my mind, compounding the self flagellation that was happening in my head. One step in front of the other, though, ultimately led me to my classroom.

As we did every day, the first thing on the schedule was to go over the homework. Going around the class, each person voiced the same issue I was having with the material- nobody really got it. It was only when I realised that almost everyone in the class was struggling at about the same level as I was. We were there to learn, not to already know it, and sometimes it takes a little longer to learn than we want it to.

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.