Rows of tables, whiteboard, overhead projector, whitewashed walls... yes, I was definitely back in a classroom!
Having worked for a French company for the last year, I finally decided that I was sick of listening to my colleagues speaking in french and not being able to make sense of at least half of what they were saying, so I enrolled for one of Warwick University's Lifelong Language Learning french courses.
I don't technically need to speak french for my job as most of the people I work with speak extremely good English, even those based over in our company's head office over in France, however I still got this nagging feeling that I was expecting my colleagues to fit in and speak English all the time, and yet as over half of our office based employees are French, I wasn't making much of an effort to fit in with with them.
Finally though, I enrolled in a uni course, and when I went along to an assessment (what seems like an age ago now) I was surprised to learn I came under the category of 'lower intermediate' - showing that I hadn't quite forgotten as much of my GCSE french as I thought, either that or I'd been picked up more from my colleagues than I'd originally realised!
Tuesday was the first day of term and walking in to see a young girl speaking fluent German was quite disconcerting at first - if she hadn't taken a minute from her conversation to say that she was doing french as well and not to worry, I'd have thought I'd got the wrong room! After a while as more people started to arrive, I was glad to note that although it was quite a small class there was good diversity of age, gender, nationality and occupation, which thankfully meant I wasn't the only non-student there.
I really enjoyed my first lesson, and although I was a bit unsure whether I'd been put into the right ability group, I found I had less trouble understanding things than I thought, and at the end I was given my first piece of homework for 10 years! It was great to meet some new people, however ultimately it felt nice to be part of something that would be beneficial to me personally, if not professionally.
Oui, je parle français... un peu!
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