Faire des etudes de francais (To Study French)

It was a great experience to attend school at the ILA (Institut Linguistique Adenet) in Montpellier. For one straight week I had the opportunity to faire des etudes de francais. At times I felt really "sideways" (kind of like my pictures that I CANNOT seem to fix!) and my brain felt like it was ready to crack. But when a word or phrase or grammar started to make sense I felt like I was on top of the world. Every morning after a little breakfast of juice and baguette I would walk to school with Tifiny & Manfred (another student staying at the house). It took us about 20 minutes and I was very glad for the exercise before class.

Classes at the ILA are small. Students come from all over the world for intensive language study. My class had students from Sweden, Brazil, Germany and the USA. English really is the universal language. Every student could speak their native language plus English. Makes me wonder why we post-pone language studies until junior high and high school in the USA. It's much easier to learn a foreign language when you are young. The morning class had a rule that NO ENGLISH was to be spoken...ONLY FRENCH! I had several sweaty moments when I could not understand a thing. Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday I took the intensive course adding almost 3 extra hours a day.


Tifiny & I tried to be good little students. Each night we would retire to our room and study by the light of a very dim light bulb. My French/English dictionary became my best friend. Raphael (a 17 year old student from Germany) told me I was very fast at finding words in my dictionary. I told him I had no choice. My brain is older and slower than his and since I couldn't remember the words I had to find them in the dictionary before I got left behind. Our host mother Magali was extremely helpful with homework. She helped us conjugate verbs, form sentences and worked on pronunciation. Wish I could have brought her home to help with the kids homework as well!