Immersive Beginnings

Bonjour!

We can’t believe we are already four days into our journey in France! It feels like we’ve been in France for just a few hours, but also several weeks, all at the same time! In reality, we have been in both Paris and Montpellier for only two days each.

Paris was an incredible experience. Getting to tour the beautiful city with our peers was extraordinary. Although exhausted, we kept putting one foot in front of the other… literally. Viewing all of the famous landmarks of Paris was breathtaking and we all seemed to be in a sort of dream state. We especially enjoyed our visit to le Tour Eiffel. Walking almost 700 steps to reach the top created a memory with a sense of accomplishment, which was only made durable by sharing the lack of breath and leg pain with our friends by our side! Speaking in French was encouraged, however most of us ended up conversing with one another in English because it felt more natural in a city environment as tourists.

Now, in Montpellier with our host families, our French is becoming second nature. As cliché as it sounds, the act of being immersed within the French culture is seriously beneficial. To be frank, even though we knew traveling to France would help our french speaking abilities, we had no clue as to how much we would truly be learning.

In the two nights we have stayed with our host families, we can already feel our French skills advancing; our abilities to speak French are becoming more comfortable, in an almost natural manner. This was especially notable at our dinner tables during the first nights. We clearly remember it being much more difficult to communicate with our host families, whereas now, only one dinner later, we feel exceptionally more confident with the language and have begun incorporating new words into our vocabulary regularly.

From perceiving that our growing knowledge is only thus far from interactions with our host families, we are so excited to see what will come of the school we will attend and the rest of our adventures in Montpellier. With our academic program at l’Institut Linguistique du Peyrou (ILP) we can be sure our understandings of the French language will only continue to grow.

While our stay here is only a fraction of the way finished, it’s hard to tell how time will continue to pass. As we’ve already become relatively settled into our lives here, we wonder if our day to day French lives will become a normal and natural routine for us. Montpellier has already given us an abundance of independence, allowing us to freely explore the city with our friends. Every day here brings a new cultural experience and we are so excited for all that is to come.

Thank you so much for reading! We hope you all continue to read our blog.

Much love,

Sheer & Alexandra