French lessons

It’s a beautiful Friday morning in Paris. Coffee is on the stove, Susan is just waking up and the city is slowly coming to life around us. The street noise is picking up; a guy is shaving in the apartment building across the way and lights on starting to come here and there.

Well we finally took the plunge. Last Monday we began a two-week program of French language lessons at the Alliance Francaise here in Paris. It’s three hours a day (afternoons only), Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. The school is an easy 30-minute walk from our apartment – and just about the same time by Metro (lines 5 to 6 to 12).

There are 14 of us in class: a Czech boy and a Slovak girl (tidy huh?), a young Argentinean woman who teaches kindergarten back home, three Russian women, a young Thai woman (who is actually in school with Susan at LCB), a Taiwanese marketing executive, four Americans, a guy from the Canary Islands who operates his own dock facility, and a young man from Brazil. Our instructor is Thierry, a guy in his 40s maybe, friendly, open and smiles all the time – even though his newborn baby keeps him up at night. Most everyone speaks English it seems, except for one Russian woman and the Brazilian young man. In fact most speak it quite well including Thierry who is really quite funny in both French and English.

Anyway, we spend the session working from both a textbook and a workbook and the three hours go pretty fast. One day Susan even brought chocolates to class after one of her practical classes at LCB – she had to come straight to language class from LCB and had the stuff with her so we thought why not pass them around? So we’ve discovered one venue to unload some of this great food!

Besides the language lessons – and the little homework of course – the week has been quiet. Today, Friday we head off to Normandy to spend the weekend visiting the D-Day beaches. The plan will be to walk to the Denfert Rochereau metro stop where we will take the shuttle bus out to Orly airport, and then pick up our rental car and head west. This has been one trip that has been on our short list for years now and here we are actually heading to Normandy!

Take care, stay cool and as always,

Wish you were here,

Steve