Wow. I go months without posting and now I've posted like five times in one week. For new followers of this blog, this is highly unlike me. Normally, I post once or twice a week, and I'm assuming that once I'm back in Chauny, it'll return to that trend.
This evening, I decided to go out on a limb and go to the weekly Cleveland French meetup group. I say "go out on a limb", because I don't normally go somewhere where I know no one, but I figured why not since it was finally meeting on the Westside of Cleveland while I was in town. Usually, it's on the Eastside, and I'm not driving over an hour to get there.
It was a little awkward since everyone else knew each other. There was another new girl, but she was afraid to speak French. However, I'm glad I went. Almost everyone was a native French speaker (from France, Quebec, Tunisia, Algeria, etc.) and the few others had been speaking French for like 15 years or whatever, so definitely a high level of spoken French. I mostly talked to the woman from Quebec who was super nice and outgoing. She definitely had the accent. Every time she said "heure" (hour), it made me smile, because it reminded me of Alexis' announcements at Middlebury each day and the way we cracked up over how he said "heure" (among other things). Anyway, I had to listen to her closely, but I understood everything she said (thank you, Alexis!). She also complimented my French. The other person I spoke quite a bit with was from Tunisia. He moved to the States six years ago (though he spent the most recent year in Tunisia) and teaches at CSU (Cleveland State for all you non-Clevelanders).
I'm sad that I won't get to really know this interesting group of people before I take off to France again. Guess I know I'll at least have people to speak French with when I return! I think I'll go to next week's meetup as well. Plus, it's at Le Petit Triangle which is a really yummy creperie! Had dinner there with Anna last week. It never disappoints!
And now, I leave you with Hart's lovely description of our time in Chauny (hope she doesn't mind). It cracked me up, so I had to share especially with all the new assistants reading. It's the assistantship in a nutshell.... (well, kind of...):
Glorified Vannah White trapped in the French countryside. 4 other foreigners and I decide our sole recourse to avoid insanity is to create a sort of isolated, low-budget Real World/Greatest Race to accumulate the highest number of French friends or enemies possible.
Speak of the devil, Hart just messaged me :-)
I've had a very similar experience with the Indy French meetup. I've gone off an on for about a year and it seems to be a hit or miss experience for me. People seem to have little groups of friends already and others speak more English than French- even native French speakers! arg. Maybe after France I'll be more outgoing and attempt to infiltrate the little groups.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it nice to know you're French is still up to par for when you come back? I was afraid that the lack of speaking French for 6 weeks would cause me probs coming back to France but I was okay!
ReplyDeleteTake care... Leese
Katie - Yeah, it's so true! Even some of the native French speakers slipped into English every now and then!
ReplyDeleteLeesa - I'm still a bit nervous for the big switch back to French. I feel like I improved so much this summer, but if my colleagues don't think so, that's going to be rough.