Parlez-vous Français?

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!