The Moment

Whenever you hear or read something that talks about learning a different language, it always says something about how one day they woke up and just realised they understood. I've always said that I can understand, but not without concentration. Well, I've had the moment.

My friend Akhir and I were at this amazing restaurant called Vino et Gusto. When we sat at the table the waitress came and heard us speaking English, she asked in French where we come from. We answered America, and she asked the simple question that always gets me excited "Vous comprenez le français?" Yes, yes I do. After we said yes, she jumped into a story about how her and her daughter created this restaurant and everything is homemade, we can have one plate from the buffet and one desert for just 9,90E. She said it all in French. And it didn't even sound strange or foreign to me. It was just natural.

Everywhere I go, I hear conversations and words and just understand them as if I've never had any difficulties. I can go up to someone with ease and ask them something without being scared of not understanding the response. I'll be honest, I've still got a loooooonnnggg way to go to fluency, but I'm making progress. The only thing holding me back now is English.

I need to stop speaking English.

It needs to leave my brain.

I'm trying very hard to speak just French, but it's so hard when everyone at my school is speaking English all the time. Some of the people are sadly not as dedicated to learning French as the others. I just need to refuse speaking English for the rest of the year. I can understand everything with ease, it's just the speaking that's killing me now. I can get my ideas across and make sense, it's just not perfect.

I went to the Air France travel agency today to talk about cheap tickets to Italy for April break. I spoke in French, the agent didn't even try to speak English, I guess he just knew that although my French isn't amazing, it's still understandable.

Galettes. Bigger than crepes, not as sweet an made with different flour. The first time I had a galette, I was at a small restaurant. I didn't really like it too much because it was too buttery and fatting for me. However! My host family made galettes last night.... they used the original recipe that the people of Bretagne used in the 17th century. An it doesn't have any butter and it's made with water instead of milk and (if the family was rich) one egg. Because way back when Bretagne was the poorest department in France, however these days it's one of the richest because of agriculture.

I have a lot of homework that needs to be done, I'll post again ASAP.

xx