It was Nice
We went to Nice to immerse ourselves in French and take concentrated French lessons.
It is hard to learn a language when you live in Calgary and spend only a couple of hours of week in lessons. You say to yourself that you will practice in between classes but then the busyness of life takes over and all you’ve done are the 30 minutes of homework assigned by the teacher.
For that month, we were able to pretend we lived in France. It was our dress rehearsal. We loved the routine. Every morning the 4 of us would get our backpacks together and walk to school, hand in hand. Houman and I each had our own group classes at the Alliance Français and the girls had their own private, and very fun, French teacher.
Afterwards, we would meet up on the street by our classes and make a plan for the afternoon: go back to our apartment for baguette sandwiches, or perhaps to our favourite crêperie, then to one of Nice's playgrounds where H and I would either chat and watch the girls or do some French homework. We did very little sightseeing in our time there. On the weekends we took the bus or train to some of the towns around us, like tiny Ville-franche-sur-Mer and glamorous Monaco. We spent time sitting on the couch together to watch French television. We relaxed on the beach and laughed as our girls were the only ones brave enough, or crazy enough, to actually go in the water.
One day I convinced my family to walk up a huge hill to go to the Musée National Marc Chagall only to find that I had chosen the one day of the week that it was closed. One of my highlights was going to see La Belle et La Bête at the local movie theatre. We didn't understand most of the dialogue but we understood the story of Beauty and the Beast so it was still fun. We wandered the vieille ville and tried to decide if Oui, Jelato or Fenocchio had the better glace. Or maybe it was the place that served it looking like beautiful little roses.
We thought that 3 weeks in a row of French lessons was a lot. When we got to the school we learned that it was just a drop in the bucket. Our fellow students were there for between 3 months to a year. There were many young people trying to reach the B2 level so they could attend French university. It was definitely helpful to have concentrated time to immerse ourselves in the language. By the end of our time I felt more comfortable in restaurants and even dared to venture out on my own to some of the shops and the marché.
The girls loved their mornings with Alicia and seeing people actually living in French motivated them to learn. They actually wanted to be able to walk to the boulangerie and order their croissants. They started with almost no French and came home with just a little bit. More importantly, they now seemed interested in learning. And what they could say, they said it with beautiful French accents!
The biggest gift of this month was learning the value of being present in the moment. With work, chores and activities off our list, H and I spent time enjoying each other and our girls. We ate well, drank well, and took time to explore, wander and do nothing. We promised ourselves that on returning to Calgary we would try to continue to live as we had in France.
