à mi-chemin

This Monday we returned to school for a second set of tests, written and oral, to see which class we'd be put in for our remaining weeks. It was noticeable how much easier we found them, and were pleased to be bumped up a level. Thankfully our classes are still 9am - 1pm, but with a new teacher, Michael (who did the walking tour of the 15ème a few weeks ago). It was immediately apparent we we are now in a different, more difficult class! We've basically covered most of the grammar so we are just speaking, speaking, speaking. It's exhausting but kind of exhilarating when you realise you've been successfully communicating with other people in a different language for 4 hours every day. Of course, as soon as I need it in the real world, I never know what to say! But hopefully practice will make perfect. I'm certainly becoming more confident.

Tourist! I am the only person wearing yellow in Paris.

We finally got around to going to Louvre this week. We were slightly underwhelmed by their customer service, to be honest, especially as we'd had such nice, relaxing experiences at other museums here (my top tip for Paris is to go to museums at 4.30pm!). We saw the Mona Lisa (of course - surprisingly we didn't have to fight our way to the front, there wasn't a huge number of people there), found the lovely Roman sculpture section for Patrick, and wandered the vast and wonderful paintings galleries. It is a beautiful museum.

Admiring Mona from afar.

We also made our first trip to a French cinema - we went to see The Favourite (original version with French subtitles) which we thought was excellent! We want Olivia to win an Oscar. But what was the most pleasing about the trip was how well-behaved the audience was. Cinema-going is much more of a respected cultural event here, the cinema was almost full at 4.30pm on a weekday yet not a single person rustled (no one had food or drink at all) or talked during the screening, let alone got their mobile out to check the time ( or text - something that happens deplorably often in the UK). It was such a pleasant experience (very different from Mary Poppins Returns at the Windmill Cinema in Littlehampton, Mama!). We're not quite brave enough for a French film yet though!

On Friday after class was the traditional "welcoming all the new people who started at the beginning of the month" apéro, where Patrick was delighted to meet and hold a three month old baby girl, Téa, who fell asleep on him. That evening headed out for a drink with some classmates and some alumni of our language school, which was great fun. Pretty much everyone there lives in Paris now, and it was so interesting to hear what people were doing or planning on doing with their lives here. On Saturday we had Claire (one of the French girls I lived with in South Africa) round for supper which was nice. It was good to catch up.

Happy boy at our favourite burger place!

Two more weeks of French left! I can't believe how quickly time is passing. We have to give short presentations in this class; I gave one on Artemisa Gentileschi earlier this week (with a PowerPoint presentation obviously) and Patrick will be doing his on Ovid tomorrow. Hope you all have a happy week!