Another First: My French Course Begins

At last I have started a French course.  The classes are for three hours each time on Monday and Wednesday afternoons. On Wednesday there is no afternoon school but I miss the afternoon classes at Lucie Dejardin on Mondays. It’s another two-bus affair but thankfully not a lot of people seem to use the buses at lunchtime and Chantal and Guy-Michel had shown me where to go on Sunday.

I had time for a little lunch on Rue St Gilles – un petit sandwich (about half the size of the sandwich we get at school) a coffee, and I treated myself to a macaron – strawberry flavoured – yum! My first cafe dejeuner in Belgium.

Afterwards, I caught a second bus up the winding cobblestoned streets to annexe Waroux where the course is being held. As I was early, I introduced myself (in French of course!) to the others who were waiting and had a bit of a chat or as much as I could manage.

 Eventually the Prof,  Madame Demaret, arrived and we had to introduce ourselves and say why we were there. Madame corrected our French as we went around the class. She then wrote the list of countries on the board. There were 36 students in the room from 26 different countries. They included China, Japan, Togo, Mongolia, Italy, Russia, Morroco and Peru. It was like the United Nations.  Most of the students are women and married to Belgian men. They probably range in age from twenties to sixties and most have been here for several years. I think mostly they can speak okay but they need to practise their writing.

 Afterwards, we had a grammar and vocab test. While I know I didn’t score 100%, I think I did reasonably well. It wasn’t very hard but we shall see on Wednesday! Interestingly, I had befriended a woman from Togo, Florence, who had reasonably good spoken French ( i.e. better than mine) but she kept asking me for the answers during the written test and I had to tell her I couldn’t give them to her as it was a test. She kept asking though and trying to sneak a peek until Madame gave her a stern look.

 We finished early – at 4 o’clock -  as it was our first day and Madame wanted to mark our tests. I chatted to Lily  from China at the bus stop. She is here because she wants to do business in Belgium. She came here a year ago and this year has brought her 15 year old daughter over to learn French too.

I’m looking forward to the next class and finding out more about our united nations class ( and learning more French of course!).