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…
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…
Here in France, like so many other places in the world, as of noon on Tuesday, the 17th, we are on lockdown/quarantine/shelter-in-place for at least 15 days, needing an Attestation De Déplacement Dérogatoire (a form) stating who we are, where we live, and our purpose for being out. Luckily for me, my friend Luke decided to come here last week from Switzerland rather than going back to his home in Italy,, which was already experiencing a mass quarantine, and…
Rentrée: for the French, this usually refers to the first week in September, when they return to work after their month of August vacation. For me, today, it’s returning to life in France after two weeks in California with family and friends. It’s jet lag; waking up at 4:20 AM and watching the moon move across the sky through my open window. It’s thinking of my first born, who’s birthday celebration I am missing. I feel melancholy, for sure,…
(and I just figured out why) I have been living here in SW France for just over two months, and, as humans are so good at doing, I have figured a way to survive in an unknown habitat by falling into the safety of avoidance, or, in this case, without learning much French. Oh, I can greet people with the best of them, with a bonjour or a bonsoir. My departure is artful, my choices plentiful, with so many choices:…