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Wait, do they speak French there?

There are people who live in Paris for years and never learn more French than required for ordering food and wine in restaurants. We could survive on minimal French. Houman wouldn’t be dealing directly with patients and his fellow physicians would likely speak English. There are international American schools the girls could go to and we could choose to live in an expat neighbourhood. But that is not what we wanted to do. In order to milk the most from this experience we wanted to learn to live and work in French. Our goal was to absorb as much culture and language as possible in our year. Maybe our girls could become fluent? I was slightly less hopeful for myself.

I took French in school as a child. I remember the textbook and learning, “je chante à la discotheque”. Unfortuntely, that is about all I remembered.  So I enrolled at the Alliance Française in Calgary in the complete beginners class, A1.1. We worked on how to pronounce the alphabet, the tricky numbers above 60, and starting to introduce ourselves. It was fun to be a student again. It meant I had to go downtown a couple of times of week. Do homework. It was the first time I had done anything unrelated to my family since having Sophia 8 years earlier. It wasn’t exactly going back to work but at least I was using my brain again.

It was more difficult for Houman to find time for classes. He was working full time, which, as managing partner for his practice, meant long hours including evening meetings and hours spent working after the kids and I would go to bed. He enrolled in a private evening class from 8:00-9:30PM one night a week. I will never understand how he had the brain power to learn French that late at night after a full day of work and an evening with the family. Good thing he has a lot of brain power.

The girls go to our local public school and in the early grades students don’t receive a lot of French instruction. Sophia received 45 minutes a week in grade two. We decided to find them a French teacher, also through the Alliance. We started out with a teacher coming to our house after school but quickly learned that after-school school was too much school.  We figured out that the winning recipe was to take an afternoon off and go to the Alliance for lessons. Added bonus: I had to sit there and wait for them which was the perfect opportunity to do French homework.

As time ticked away, our sabattical year was getting closer. Houman’s and my French was getting better (his at a much quicker pace than mine) but we decided we needed to accelerate things. We planned a month long spring trip to France to ramp up our French.  H and I took morning classes every day at the Alliance Français in Nice and the girls spent the time with their own private, and amazing, French teacher, Alicia. 

A month in France was exactly what I needed to motivate me. I came home knowing that if I wanted to use my French in Paris, I had a lot more work to do. 

Since then, we have persevered. Houman took a month off work to do full time French lessons. I added some private lessons to my schedule. We listen to French radio in the car (CBC) and at home or at work (online radio stations from France). Houman reads news in French. I have a collection of simple children's books. The girls are allowed to watch shows on the iPad during the day, if they are in French. We have discovered some good shows on Netflix. I love the children's show, "Les Grandes, Grandes Vacances" but our favourite is "Dix Pour Cent" (or "Call my Agent!" if you are searching for it). We watch with the French subtitles and are on our third time through the episodes. If I can turn off the subtitles before we go to France and still understand some of it I'll feel very proud.