Change

by Ang

This blog has been very quiet.  I can’t speak for my sister, but things have gotten way busier at our household and blogging (sadly) was the first thing to go.  But now that we seem to be settled in our new routine, hopefully my posts will become a bit more regular than they have been lately.

The biggest change that is happening with us right now is that we changed congregations and are now learning French!

This is huge.  I took 3 years of French in school and I learned a lot, however school was a long time ago.  And if you don’t use it, you lose it.  However, a lot of it is coming back to me.  I know the basic rules of pronunciation and can stumble through a reading and comprehend at least 50% of it.  So I have a pretty good head start.  But there’s still sooooo much that I don’t know.

I knew it would be a big adjustment, but I don’t think I fully realized how much TIME it was going to take.  Silly, I know.  Studying for the meetings takes at least 3 times as long (studying first in English, then reading over in French, then preparing a comment and learning and listening to the proper ways to say it multiple times if it’s a verse or just a sentence in a magazine, book, etc.).

Tuesday nights we (me, husband and mother-in-law) have a little French lesson at our house after dinner.  It’s usually an hour and a half or so.  But we have homework each week from our workbook that we are working out of.  I also try to print some extra handouts of various things (numbers, pronouncing that pesky French ‘r’, etc.), which require extra research and time.

Saturdays are a full day now.  Service from 8:00 (we start early) to 12:30, then French class from 1:00 – 2:00 (although it usually goes until 2:30).  It is also out of town a bit, so it takes us at least 30 minutes to get home.

I have amassed a collection of ‘learning French’ books, mostly by hitting up the 50% off sales at Hastings on their used books.  We have a designated cabinet now in our dining room (we sit at the dining room table for our study) that is our ‘French’ cabinet.  I also had some that were my own from years ago.

Learning a new language is hard.  But we are really enjoying it.  We’ve been at it for one month now.  And it’s actually pretty amazing to see how much we’ve learned already.  We’ve got all of the numbers down which is super helpful when looking up scriptures.  It’s nice to follow along.  And our comprehension increases a little bit with each meeting.  I’ve talked to a lot of the friends who have been doing this for years, and their advice was to just throw yourself into your studies.  And listen, listen, listen.  We have one friend who has been doing this for 7 years (she is fluent).  She told us that to this day she still doesn’t know the French alphabet.  She learned the language by listening.  And reading.  But mostly listening.

So we're trying.  And hey, maybe in 7 years we'll be fluent too!

(p.s. - sorry there's no pictures.  I tried to upload some and I got the message saying we were out of storage!  So Amy and I will get it figured out and get more storage)