I'm sorry for starting the post with boring french grammar book, I put the M&M's bag there to make it look a bit more interesting. But that's what I'm going to talk about here. No, I'm not reviewing the grammar book which actually amazes me because of how useful it is, I'm going to share about some things I've experienced related to language-learning and some trivial things--that are quiet unexpected upon arriving here. Well, this also could be a rant post for me.
I started learning French during second year of high school. I took extensive courses, twice a week, for one or two months (I can't remember exactly how long). Unfortunately, the institute was too far from my place, I missed a lot of classes and I ended up abandoning them.
After I graduated from high school, I decided that I wanted to study in France. I restarted my class from the lowest level until the advanced one for seven months. Time skip, here I am, in Montpellier, a lovely small town in South of France. Since Asian and European culture are not similar at all, we have some ways of doing things that are completely different and sometimes, bizarre, shocking.
I'm not going to mention it one by one, I'm not writing for a culture magazine, these are my opinions, experiences, and impressions I have. Anyways, here are some things qui m'étonnent.
1) Everyone, even the youngsters, own a card. The landlord asked me wonderingly, how do you live in France if you don't have a card? Apparently, it's very essential. Charges here (course fee, registration fee, etc) are mostly made with card or check (yes, check!). In Indonesia, it's very uncommon for youngsters to hold their own credit card, only adults and those who have proper job can have it. There were times where payment turned out to be complicated to me because I only bring cash.
2) You came to France to practice your French. You planned to speak in French to everyone, every single day. But your housemates are not in the same level as you. Oops. I didn't predict it, really. I have housemates all from different country, England, Brazil, Venezuela... Some of us don't speak French really well (like me, I'm not so bad at writing but weak at speaking, meh). We're housemates, we live together, we want to be able to understand each other well. I had difficult time trying to understand what a housemate of mine actually wanted to tell me, we ended up misunderstanding some things--which are not good because we are not just in a debate in French class, but we are trying to build good relationship as we live under the same roof. So, yeah, French during class, English at home!
3) The weather is a bitch. I clearly underestimated the sun here. Indonesia is always hot and sunny, but it's very humid and dry here during summer. I didn't even bring sunblock and sunglasses, I bought them here. Sometimes it also gets windy and cold when it's very hot, it confuses me whether I should wear jeans with a sweater or shorts with a shirt.
4) I'm slow at responding. I know the correct grammar, conjugations, and masculin-feminin. But that's the reason why I take time to respond, I create the phrase carefully in my head before I speak when I should just respond to simply make the other person get the idea of what I'm talking about. Some people are impatient, we speak in English eventually.
In short, I wanted to engage in conversations in French as often as possible. But it's not that possible. That's the main point what I wanted to talk about here---originally.
That's all for now I don't feel like writing anymore (gosh, what a lazyass). Off laying down and play some games!
