The French way of life

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Je màpelle Silvia
Je suis Néo Zelandaise
J'ai vingt trois ans
Je reste à Montpellier trois semeine
Je vai Benin.

By the end of my stay here in France hopefully I will have taught you a little bit of French...

So I caught the train from Herrliberg on Sunday, with my huge 20kg pack... The little local train to Zurich and then the fast one to Geneva. In Geneva the train that I had wanted to catch was already full and only a couple of seats left in first class.... Well I had to get to Montpellier, so the first class experience it was... Coming from a country without boarders I still find it exciting to cross any boarder, but on the train its not much of an experience, France just sort of slides into Switzerland. The houses get slightly smaller, the grass not as green and lots of yellow stone buildings appear. So getting off at Montpellier I had no idea what to expect, but Jean-Pierre was standing at the station with my name, I approached him, smiled and then he suddenly started ratterling off in French!!! Very quickly I had to (with the universal language of sign) tell him that no I could not speak any French, so he very kindly slowed down and said everything VERY SLOWLY, but to his dismay nope I still didn't get it.....

Well their house is a wonderful old place, on a big property. The house, like the whole neighbourhood, is out of yellow stone. Inside it has that incredible feeling that it is a place with history. The oven for example is below a huge chimney, in the place of an old fire place. All the windows and doors have huge shutters, though I haven't worked out how to close mine yet. Twistie (the dog, yellow lab) meet us at the gate, I have never seen a dog with acrobatic skills like Twistie. She has this way of jumping a couple of meters in the air and twisting a full 360° at the same time.

Martine showed me my room, top floor with my own balcony looking out over their garden. Very nice. Then she offered to show me how to get to the school, 5min walk, 10 min tram, 5min walk, but the whole way her speaking and explaining in French and me trying to understand..... welcome to my world at the moment!!!!

Jean-Pierre (retired from the French Army) and Martine are real nice, friendly and welcoming. They had made me dinner, the whole works.... first appetizer - sweet wine, cheese, nuts and olives; then a pasta concoction, then a salad, a dessert of yummy custard, all accompanied by red wine and baguettes.

Next day first day at school!!!! I found my way there on the tram. Montpellier is a student city, on that tram were perhaps 100 people; 80 would have been below 30y. Arriving at school we were all put into rooms of about 10 people and given a test, which to my horror was all in French!!!! So I sat there for an hour while all around me people frantically scribbled. But thankfully there were other people in the other rooms in the same boat as me and we were all then shuffled into different classes, me in the very beginners class with people who also had no clue what was going on.

And so my time in Montpellier began... Absorbing this language, which at the moment sounds like one long romantic word, but which hopefully by the end I will be able to understand. Its incredible how you take your language for granted, even German I don't really think about how I speak it. The one lucky thing is, that in a group of international students (lots from Germany and England, some American, Spanish), the universal language becomes English. But all the classes are only in French.

Now better go and learn some verbs....

Etre (to be)

Je suis
Tu es
Il/Ell/On est
Nous sommes
Vous étes
Ils/Elles sont

Avoir ( to have)

J'ai
Tu as
Il/Elle/On a
Nous avons
Vous avez
Ils/Elles ont

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Photos

999 Rue du Pont Trinquant
My home in Motpellier

1st class
an experience.....

My first French sunset
view from my balcony

Place la Comedie
central square, the French school is just around the corner

An alley way
I could put up a million photos of the alleys around the town. Its a wonderful place (and very easy) to get lost in.