JE PARLE; TU PARLE; NOUS PARLONS . . .

We should never let two weeks go by without writing a blog post!  So much has happened here, and it will be impossible to tell it all!  I will just give a few highlights and lowlights from our recent experiences!

"Dying like a true Frenchman--with my scarf on!" 

We left you with the bells of Notre Dame still echoing for the first time on Palm Sunday weekend.  And if Tom had asked “for whom the bell tolls,” he would certainly have been told, “It tolls for thee.”  That Tuesday, he and I met at Gagliani’s English language bookstore near the Place de la Concorde.  I’d been in French class all morning, and if he wasn’t yet feeling under the weather when we met, there was certainly a cloud on the horizon.  We walked home from Gagliani—about two miles—and he was feeling really tired.  By evening, he went to bed with a fever.  Wednesday he continued to be really sick, running a high fever. unable to eat.  Thursday there was still no improvement, and I insisted that he go to see a doctor.

After checking in with insurance, we headed to the American Hospital in Paris—and that was a bit of a trek.  But they didn’t even hesitate when they saw him—they put him on IV fluids (once they found a vein—that was another adventure, given his dehydration), ran numerous tests, and concluded that he had some kind of bacterial infection—perhaps food-borne, perhaps just something he picked up on the Metro or in his wanderings.  They got him started on antibiotics and sent us off with two further prescriptions, and for our troubles we were allowed to make a substantial contribution to the French economy (in the form of the hospital payment).  And we got to take a cab home at 2:30 a.m.

Aruem and Alina

I was up early the next day to fill the prescriptions and to head off to meet Stonehill College student Alina Favazza and her friend Aruem (Boston College student) who were visiting for the weekend.  They are studying in Grenada, Spain, and are using some of their weekends to trek around Europe!  I took them to our favorite crêperie for lunch, and then we walked from there to the Pantheon, to Notre Dame, and on to the Louvre.  After stopping for coffee and a tarte tatin, I left them at the Louvre to go check on Tom.

Katie & Alina outside Notre Dame

Tom healed pretty slowly—he didn’t leave the house again until Easter Sunday.  And not for long that day, either, since we were inside hosting dinner.  We had invited my friend Maggie for a mid-day meal, and we added our new friend Eavan into the invitation as well.  Eavan is a young Irish student who is studying abroad in Paris.  We met her at the Ambassador’s Saint Patrick’s Day party, and then we ran into her at the Irish Mass at Notre Dame.  We’re not sure if we adopted her or she adopted us, but she is good fun, and we felt reminded of all the care people have given to our daughters as they’ve traversed the globe.  So we asked her to join us.  At the last minute, we added Maggie’s friends Jake and Dorli into the mix, and we had a very nice gathering.  Jake is an American novelist living in Paris, and his wife Dorli is a singer and actress.  We had never met them before, but we all got along splendidly, and we talked and laughed at the table for hours.  (In fact, we were so wrapped up in talking and laughing that we forgot to take any photos!)  And Tom was pretty much back to himself, though his dinner was a blander version of ours!

Easter!

The following week was differently consumed with what has one been one of my principal goals here—getting a handle on the language.

“Regrets, I’ve had a few” . . . and one that I will mention is that I never learned to speak French.  When we were kids, we Conboy girls all learned German because we lived in Stuttgart, Heidelberg, and Berlin between 1966-1970 (and then again in Heidelberg from 1978-80).  I think perhaps I was the only one who kept my German polished up a bit, taking courses in both high school and college. 

My sister Máire majored in French, and she used to amuse herself by teaching me to say preposterous things en français.  I had a very good accent, and she liked the idea that I could say a few sentences perfectly (including Je suis désolé; je ne parle pas franćais!), but then have no more to say when people spoke back to me in French. 

Of course, our daughters are fluent in French and all majored in French in college!  I kick myself that I didn’t begin a course when Mairéad began French immersion in Grade 1.  And, as a Canadian, Tom has lots of French in his head (he took French for 11 years in school!), but he has not put all that language to much use himself.

So one of my personal goals was to get started here in Paris, and I signed up for a class (je m’inscrire en un cours) at the Alliance Française two days after we arrived.  My course was the (beginner) A1-level extensive course—which was scheduled for three mornings a week from 9:00-12:00.  And I had four fabulous weeks—with a great class and a wonderful teacher. 

Katie & her teacher Anne-Lyse

But at the end of those weeks, my teacher recommended that I skip the next four weeks of that course (half of the A1-level), teach myself those four chapters over a long weekend (!?!?), and jump into the A2 level intensive class that meets five days a week (for 4 hours a morning).  So I did it.  But I am kind of drowning in French at the moment (je suis à mon cou en français!). I’m now in my second week of three intensive weeks.  Then I will have two oral workshops in our final week.

All this language study—in the midst of our own “immersion” experience—has made me think a lot about what we encourage students to do: take languages, study abroad, encounter other cultures. I’m an ardent advocate of study away programs, but I have recognized that these experiences are not only exciting; they are also vexing and overwhelming.  It’s alienating to be in a city where so much of what is being said around you is essentially just background music. It’s frustrating to accumulate considerable knowledge—only to find yourself unable to put a sentence together when you need to!  And it’s humbling to be a complete beginner at something when you’ve already figured out how to be good at other things. 

But it’s also exhilarating!  I am amazed and thrilled at how far I’ve come in learning to speak at all (je parle!).  And I am incredibly impressed with how much French Tom knows, and how he has gone out on a limb to use it (il parle!).  We have even made some extended efforts to speak to each other only in French—with our French alter-identities of Sylvain and Sophie (nous parlons!).  After all, we’re here, and part of our mantra is: “when in Paris . . .”