We live in a small town house, built in the 1950's, so it is not a nice historic building - just a concrete building painted white. It's a bit like what the English used to call a 2 up / 2 down, ie 2 rooms upstairs and 2 rooms downstairs. It adjoins similar houses on both sides. We are literally on the corner of the street, so the side on one corner is part of our building, but a different house. It is occupied by a very nice elderly French couple. Our front door is right on the footpath. We walk into a small entry hall. To our right is the staircase, with storage space and coat hooks under the stairs. Straight ahead is the lounge room which is small but adequate and this leads through to the small courtyard (really a small concrete backyard). Also off the lounge is the kitchen which fronts on to the street. The letterbox sits between the window and the iron railings. Up the stairs are 2 bedrooms, a bathroom and a separate toilet room. Our bedroom is quite large and sits over the kitchen with a window on to the street. The other bedroom has a door off the landing and also a connecting door into our room. The bathroom is off the 2nd bedroom. The toilet is at the top of the landing. The house is quite well equipped. The only complaints would be that the bath / shower is very narrow, split level, and the shower is a hand-held one mounted on the wall, so you do not really have any space to move around in. It took about a week to find the best way to operate it. At least the water pressure is okay and the hot water is hot! The washing machine is in the kitchen and works well now (we had to ring the owner in our 1st week because it failed - see below). We have a small tv, radio and free wi fi for the computer, which is great. The area we live in is a nice quiet suburban area. As we said in one of our emails, we look straight out on to the arceaux (aqueduct). We thought it was an ancient roman aqueduct and one of the English tourist guides even says it is, but having been to a fabulous museum on the history of Montpellier last week, we found out it was actually built in 1748! It is still impressive, adds character to the area and is a fabulous landmark so that we cannot get lost! At night they light up the arches with blue lighting which looks great. They turn off the blue lights at 1.00am. (I know because I went to bed at that time one night).
As we have said, the local men play boules under the arches most evenings and on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and there is a market under the arches every Tuesday and Saturday. The arceaux (and our street) lead from the end of the Place Peyrou, a great open space on the edge of the historic centre to one of Montpellier's many universities and is located just to the west of the city. There are several shops at the other end of the street to us, but an easy five minute walk. To walk to our classes, we have several routes, but the most direct is straight along the road /arch, climb the 90+ steps up to the Place Peyrou and then walk up a couple of the main streets of the historic centre of town. The 20 -25 minute walk (and stair climb!!!) each morning is definitely getting us fitter and I am losing weight which is good.
Further west from us are more suburbs, the closest area having a lot of north African and Arabic populations, which means I have lots of halal (like Kosher) butchers and of course we have all the lovely Middle Eastern pastries as well as the French pastries to choose from. (We really need that morning walk!).
We can also walk through this area to get to the school, so often come home this way as we pass by our closest supermarket.
The washing machine story
We did a wash perfectly the day after we arrived and the machine was fine. We went to do another wash a few days later and the machine would not work. It looked like we might have inadvertently put the child lock on but couldn't work out how to take it off, even with the French language manual and Alan's mechanical expertise)! So we called the owners, who first sent their 18 yr old daughter round. She couldn't fix it, so called her dad. He came round and couldn't fix it, so he called the servicemen. They came a few days later when we were still at school (earlier than agreed - why do tradesmen never come at the time arranged?). Anyway it worked fine when we got home that evening, so we set the machine going and put a roast lamb on and just when we started to relax, the power blew! Oh no we said, what now???? Alan flipped the trip meter and off we went again, but 5 minutes later, the power blew again. After several attempts at flipping all the levers on the meter box, the power still blew every five minutes, so with a reluctance to bother the owners again so soon, Pam decided it was a good opportunity to meet the neighbours to see if they could help or knew what the problem was.
As stated they are a very nice elderly French couple who can speak Spanish and French, but no English at all. It was a great opportunity for Pam to practice her French! Between Pam's French, sign language and Alan's practical mind, we discovered there was a second meter box. We tried all that, but still had problems. The couple offered to ring the owners for us, just as we were showing them our lamb wasting away in the oven, when a smile lit their faces and lots of French exclamations, only for us to find that the power supply to these houses is very small, so you can only have one large appliance going at a time!!!!!! We already had the fridge going (of course) and we had been working on the computer (fortunately it has battery backup, so we didn't lose anything), so we could not operate the oven and the washing machine at the same time. It was an interesting experience!!!!
Still we eventually did end up with clean clothes and a lovely roast lamb for dinner.
Here are the photos of our place. Alan is planning a video of the inside, so keep your eyes open! He is still working on the editing software.
The 1st photo shows the Boulevard des Arceaux as it runs by the side of the aqueduct,the next photo shows our house looking through the arceaux, then there are a couple of the outside of our place including Pam leaning out our bedroom window, then the view of the boules from our bedroom window, a photo of the arceaux lit up at night and lastly, several photos of the Place de Peyrou and the Chateau D'Eau as they are located at the end of the Arceaux. This is the area we climb the 90+ steps to reach and walk through to get to town. We will provide other photos down the track I am sure, but hope this helps in the short term.
French Lessons
In short - Pam is loving her lessons and improving daily. Alan is enjoying his lessons, but finding them very challenging and tiring, but he is improving. I will let him write about his classes himself - see below. I have to add that Pam is managing to get up on time, leave the house on time and get to classes on time every day so far! (The 8.00am start was only on the first day as we had to sit a test to grade us for the appropriate class) The rest of the week the classes start at 9.00am Tuesday - Friday and subsequent Mondays at 10.00am (far more civilised!!!)
Pam - The grading test was a very good test and very frustrating for me because I understood all the questions and the examples, (the whole test including the instructions and questions was in French) but I could not remember my grammar and conjugations to write the answers!!!! In the end, I answered the questions that I could and did manage to write 8 or so sentences on one of the short topics we were given to write about (Our favourite holiday and why, etc). I also wrote a sentence at the top saying I could understand it but didn't remember my grammar, so that the blank sections were just not taken as "I do not know anything" It was enough to get me away from the beginners class and into the elementary level, which is pretty accurate. There are 4 levels - beginner, elementary, intermediate and advanced. If I keep improving at the rate I am going, I hope to advance into the intermediate class before I finish up. This would be great and is a good aim to have.
The classes go for a full 3 hours from 9 - 12.15 (with a 15 min. break). Everything is in French - the teachers do not speak English or any other language. All our instructions and all the explanations are given in French and if we do not understand, she will find another way to describe it in French with a bit of sign language, and as a last resort will write stuff on the board and draw a picture.
My classes usually include a lesson and exercises on grammar, for eg a particular tense, the verb conjugations and when you use it, a listening exercise and lots of exercises where we pair up with another student and write and then present to the class a dialogue or a reading on a particular topic, often using the tense we have been learning in the grammar exercise. We also do an exercise on vocab, for example one day we did the weather as a theme. We were given a map of France, had to name various places marked on the map, were given an exercise sheet to learn all the names for weather conditions as nouns, adjectives, and adverbs and the grammar used to describe the weather for eg, "There is snow" is very different to "It is snowing". We then had to each get up and do a verbal and diagramatic weather presentation for our country. We usually get a set of exercises for homework and I am managing them okay. The teacher recommended a fabulous grammar book that gives all the verbs and their conjugations for every tense. It is all in French, but it has been very useful (I bought it of course).
In addition the school provides excursions 3 or 4 afternoons every week. We went on 2 last week, but it is unlikely that Alan will go on many more, because they are all in French and he gets nothing out of it. I am finding them excellent. For instance on Friday we went to Nimes. The tour guide spoke all in French and took us around to several of the sites (a 1st century Roman colluseum that is still used for concerts, the 17th century Jardin de Fontaines, and an ancient Roman Temple, etc) and then we had free time to look around on our own. I could understand about 60 - 70% of what the tour guide said which thrilled me because my listening skills used to be appalling.
Also, as alluded to elsewhere on the blog & in some of my emails, I am speaking French to all the shopkeepers and any other locals I meet. The shopkeepers are very patient and are willing to repeat what they say or slow it down. I can now hear and understand the prices, eg 5 euros 87 cents would be said quickly as "cinq quatre vingt sept". They don't specify which are euros or cents, a bit like we would say it's two fifty for $2.50, so you just have to hear all the words and be able to differentiate where euros end and cents begin. I can also ask the price and order items in French and clarify if they ask something. For example, today one of the market stall holders asked if I wanted a bag and I could say no thanks I have my own. The fact that I could understand the question (easy and short as it was), spoken quite fast as he would to a local really pleased me and the fact that I could reply and he understood was also nice!
Anyway I think you'll get the idea from this that I am very happy with the way my total immersion is going.
The students in my class are ok but they are all very young - a 20 year old Austrian called Marc whom I get on with quite well, 2 Irish girls who are nice but who are changing classes next week, a Swiss (German Swiss) girl who changed class after a few days because she was too good and a young Columbian girl who I find very difficult to get a connection with. We have also met a lovely middle aged Dutch couple around the school and on the excursions whom I hope to get to know better. They have excellent French - she is in the Intermediate class and he is in the advanced. They live in Holland but also own a small winery in the Burgundy region of France - definitely worth getting to know!!!! I also met a nice Swiss lady on the Nimes trip, so will hopefully meet her again.
Alan will probably go in to more detail on this, but we lose out so much in Australia. All the Europeans we meet can speak at least 2 or 3 languages incl. English and they often come to schools like this to learn another one. It is such a pity that our culture and the western culture as a whole is so English centric!
I'll let Alan write about his classes now and he will give you a slightly different picture!
Alan: Well, as Pam alluded to, my experience is different. I have classes all in French and most of it remains a mystery to this day! My fellow students are 50-50 old and young. The young ones are very quiet, but they seem to understand a fair bit, while the oldies are forever asking questions and getting things wrong. I feel quite at home. An interesting observation is; the older Europeans who are abject beginners at French like me, are all fluent in about 6 other European languages! They all learn the languages of all their neighbouring countries, plus English, but not French! While I still find French speaking to be an impenetrable wall of meaningless noise, my vocab and understanding are both markedly improved after only one week. Still, I was very tired and thoroughly sick of it by Friday afternoon!
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