My French home

The next day featured a 3-hour train ride south to Montpellier, where we will be for three weeks. After arriving at the train station, I met my host mom—Madame Lawrance Dreyfuss. She is a political science professor at a University in Montpellier, and all that that entails. Picture this: a skinny French woman with frazzled black hair, smoking cigarette in hand, jabbering in half French, half English, leading me up three flights of stairs to her flat. Once in the door, I’m greeted by the most eclectic array of décor I think I’ve ever seen—political posters all around, walls painted clashing colors, books in stacks in every corner, gizmos and gadgets of no apparent purpose cluttered all around, the entire collection of James Bond in French stacked by the TV, creaking floorboards, and even a box of “Obamamints: Yes We Candy” on the table. This is my home for the next month.

My room is a corner section of the flat, featuring a small couch and lofted bed—where I sleep under a rainbow PACE flag. It’s pretty awesome. The picture above is one view of the room.

Madame Lawrance is quite friendly to me, helping me with French by using her English skills. She’s quite direct and blunt—a French quality I think—but sometimes it’s a little intimidating. She works a lot in her home office, grading papers and calling colleagues, so I’m on my own most of the time I’m at home. We eat meals together in the kitchen though—vegetable soup, pasta, salad, potatoes, ham and bread, and some sort of meat thing I couldn’t identify but ate nonetheless. She makes coffee every morning for me, so that’s a definite perk.

In the mornings, I walk just one block down the street the ILP Language School, where I take three hours of French language class with the others from Westmont. We’re divided into two groups—French 1 and French 2 (obviously I’m in French 1). Our professor, Frank, is a super nice lanky Frenchman who teaches mostly in animated French. I’m enjoying learning a new language, but find myself slipping into a Spanish accent at times…old habits. For only two days of class, I can put together a few basic sentences and conjugate about two verbs. It’s fun though, and I’m hoping to pick up more French every day. We have class every week morning except Wednesdays.