As of today, I've been in France for six months, and am exactly halfway through my language studies here. It's been a good six months overall, sometimes difficult at first when it was hard to communicate and hard to figure out how to do things that had seemed so simple in America, but it's also been a time to make some great new friends, and to learn and grow in the Lord as I depend on Him to help me adjust to my new life. I'm looking forward to what the Lord will teach me through the second half of language school!
In the meantime, I'm in the midst of summer school. It is different in some ways from the semester courses: the classes are not graded, so they are somewhat less pressured and less systematic - though I am still learning a lot and being stretched in my French skills. Since there are only three levels instead of six, there is a much wider range of skill levels in my class, with some of us barely keeping up with the material, while others are nearly fluent speakers of French.
Also, interestingly, there is a difference in what regions of the world my classmates are from: last semester, at least half my classmates were from eastern Asia, but in my summer class only a small minority are from eastern Asia, with most being from Europe, the Middle East, or the Americas. I'm not sure why that is the case, but whatever the reason, it is interesting to meet a new set of people from places I've never yet visited. In addition, there is a wider range of ages in the summer classes, ranging from 16 to middle-aged. So my class is diverse in many ways.
Besides the diversity, another difference is the number of class hours per week - about 20 in the summer, compared to about 16 in the semester classes. Those extra four hours a week do make a difference, and even though I love studying languages, I am glad in the afternoons and evenings to come home and put my feet up for a little while. But by God's grace, all these hours of immersion in the language will be fruitful and help me to understand and communicate better in the French-speaking parts of the world.
