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August 29, 2012

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My French adventure

AFTER six months of living in a new culture and environment of Shanghai it was nice to be able to go back to my first home.

I went to the lovely state of California. The two people who saw us off when I left for Shanghai and were the first to greet me upon my return, grandma and my puppy. After a few days with them I headed on to my big adventure.

I was taking on the challenge of learning French. I wanted to be able to understand and speak French. So I was off for four weeks of being totally immersed in French offered by Middlebury Language Academy at Pomona College.

No English except for dances that were held on Saturday nights. I went from not being able to understand anything except "Bonjour!" and "?ava?" to being able to understand and actually speak to people. It was very exciting for me when I started to be able to carry on a conversation in French.

At the camp we had very interesting electives, one which was a course on chocolate. We made chocolate, watched movies about chocolate, learned how to describe chocolate and sang songs about chocolate, all in French.

I realized that it's a lot easier to learn French by being immersed and always speaking it than bouncing between English and French. Now I am able to hold a conversation in French and read it, too. For me this was an adventure that I am glad I took and look forward to continuing the adventure next year when I return to Middlebury Language Academy at Pomona College.


 

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