My French French Class

    Sorry for the delay. I'm working on a longer post, but I've been a bit busy. This is just a quick post to say that I had my last French class today! The program I'm working through only allowed me to take the class for a month, which was fine by me, since it was enough time to increase my knowledge without taking over my entire stay here.
    I knew the month was going to pass by quickly, but wow. It still feels like I just got here. By the second week I'd really fallen into a schedule, and I think that helped to speed me through the days.
My basic schedule was this: I'd wake up at 7:20, and my host mom would drive me to the tram station at around 8:10. I'd take the tram into the city center, and get to class at around 9:00. The class was taught in two sections, an hour and fifteen minutes each, split between two teachers. I had the same two teachers for all four weeks, and I liked them a lot. They were both quite young, and were very friendly and engaging. The students in the class shifted a bit from week to week, as some people left and others arrived. But there was a core group that stuck around the whole time.

My class! Here we have representation from (left to right) the US (duh), Spain, South Korea, Japan, France and France (those are my teachers), UK, Switzerland, Brazil, Georgia, and Mexico. That's four continents! I'm still geeking out about it.

The class itself was a nice mix of grammar, reading, writing, discussions, and games. A lot of the grammar was stuff I'd already learned (unsurprising, as I've been taking French classes for nine years, and so have probably been over everything at least once) but that I'd forgotten. We also had a lot of debates- many of them spontaneous- on such dangerous topics as sexism, abortion, and LGBTQA... P... D... uh... etc etc etc rights. I've never yelled at more people in worse French before in my life, and I'm pretty sure I gained a reputation as the crazy American with the Opinions. But it felt good, and it got me talking, which is what I'm here for. Though there is nothing more frustrating than trying to make an important point in a language in which you aren't fluent.
Anyway. From what I could tell, my class was at an intermediate-type level, and it felt like a good fit. I definitely wasn't the best in the class. In fact, I might have been the worst. But it wasn't over my head, and I understood everything we did. And it was interesting to hear French spoken in so many different accents.

I didn't really make friends, though everyone was very nice. I have a hard enough time talking to people in English. Engaging in friendship-building conversations in French wasn't going to happen. But I did end up going out to lunch with a bunch of my classmates last Friday, and I talked more than I thought I would. I think we all bonded a bit, if only briefly. It was fun.

We went to a funny American-style diner for lunch.

Everything was pink, and there were old rock 'n roll posters on the walls, and little TVs were playing episodes of "Happy Days". It was great.

As diners go, it got points off for not having breakfast food, but won the points back for having pineapple juice.

'Murica!

My omelette sandwich, with a side order of salad and freedom.

I may be meeting up with the class next week for lunch, so I probably haven't seen the last of these guys yet. All-in-all, I was very pleased with the course, and am glad I took it, though it's hard to tell at this point just how much I learned. I'm sad it's over.
However, I'm also excited about not having to get up early anymore.
Speaking of which, I'm exhausted. Bon nuit!