Speaking French in Tours

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I find myself in a strange situation, language-wise. For one whole week now, I have not spoken any English at all. Our group is very good at speaking only in French. Whenever someone speaks to me in English, I always respond in French and s/he continues in French. Our teachers are strict on that note. While I am at ease speaking French (moreso than most of the others who are all students of French in their early 20's!), I keep finding myself "out of context".
Today, for example, we were looking at an article about the Feudal System--for homework we had about 10 questions to answer in writing about it. My last contact with the Feudal system was when I taught it to a Grade 8 class in Sardis, in 1965, in English! So, not only am I a bit rusty, but I have never studied the topic in French. Once I look up the words in English, I can understand the context, i.e. le donjon = keep, not dungeon. So, words like "feodal" and "adoubement" don't bring forth the images of "feudal" and "ceremony of knighthood".

I am still operating largely from a visual point of view. I seem to have to transform the sounds into written form--not always easily evident. Today, in class, we had to interview a partner, then introduce him/her to the class. One of the girls used the term - that's a representation of the sound. I heard "metro" (as in the Paris underground) or else "metre" (like the unit of measurement) + nageur=swimmer. It wasn't until the teacher wrote out: "maitre nageur" that I understood it to mean swimming instructor.
So, you can see that I am a little slow in my reactions. I cannot imagine how some of the others are managing when they have less experience in the language than I do!

The good news is that my self talk is now in French, as well as my dreams! I even began doing my private mediations in French. Engish is defintely fading into my present background. (I may have to start writing these travel journals in French) Attention!

One little quip before I close on languages today:
As a Canadian, I am of course used to seeing package labelling in both languages. So, guess what? I keep turning packages over, expecting to see the other language. Of course, it's only in French. I am going to watch to notice when I stop doing that!

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