What is it like? Well, the first day was so overwhelming! If you know anything about me then you know that I like to be early for everything so I left an hour before class would start. Finding parking is NEVER easy here so I wanted to make sure that I had ample time to park, find the right building, etc. It felt like the first day of college all over again, except nothing was in English and the parking is even worse than on a USA college campus. Imagine that. Finding parking here, and in Switzerland, is worse than finding parking in downtown Miami. I hate it. Luckily, I have gotten MUCH better at driving my new car so that relieves at least some stress. Anyway, I had no trouble finding a parking spot even though it was almost in a ditch, and I easily found the correct building. Allez moi!
When I entered the building there were tons of other students waiting and soon after we were all gathered in a large classroom together in front of 6 professors. They introduced the professors and then called our names to join the professor teaching our level. I was assigned to Marie-Agnes, a sweet middle-aged lady from Bretagne. After we were assigned to our professor we were bustled to our classrooms to begin class. My class had about 10 students on the first day and I was the only American, and I say "was" because since then more students have been added to our class who were in higher levels and found it too difficult so they moved down. Anyway, we immediately dove into the course which is 100% in French. We are not allowed to speak English at all in the class. Not even to one another on our break. We have to go outside if we wish to speak in a language other than French.
When I took French at university my teachers used English to help explain things to us, but they do not do that here. Part of the reason is because we will learn faster if we have to work harder, and we all come from different countries so we are not all native to the same language. If our professor used English to help explain things it would't help someone whose native is Spanish or Italian and vice versa. We have students from Brazil, Spain, Italy, Taiwan, Portugal, Canada, etc. It is a very diverse class but we all have two things in common: 1) None of us are native French speakers, and 2) we are all Au Pairs!! Yes, that's right, its a school full of Au Pairs! There are a few exceptions but about 98% of the students are au pairs from around the world who have come to France or even Geneva, Switzerland. Most of us, however, are in the Rhone-Alps, France. Greta-Lac is the only language school for many, many miles and since it is a requirement to attend French School for our visas, some of the students drive an hour or so so get to school. If they don't drive they have to take a bus or train and in the rural areas this means it will take them even longer to get to school. I feel sorry for those students, and especially the ones who were promised that they would be taught how to drive a manual car and their host families backed out on the deal. There is one girl in particular who I feel very sorry for because her family does not seem very nice and with them going back on teaching her how to drive has put her in a tough spot. I think I have learned enough that I could certainly help her.
The hardest thing about the class (aside from NO English) is that our professor does very little writing on the board for us. Writing helps me so much and when she talks for 15 minutes without writing anything sometimes I start to get a headache. Haha! Overall, I like the school and every day gets a little easier. We are a smallish class, most everyone is as nervous as I am, and our professor is very kind. I'll be fluent before you know it! HA!
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