Update

Classes are now in full swing and we've even had our first test. French is certainly not an easy language to learn! Especially the pronunciation! But I'm so thankful for being placed in the appropriate class for my level of French, for a teacher whose teaching style resonates with me, for fun classmates (including two of my teammates - John & Eric - read the team blog about our class here), and for being the dork that I am that I actually like school. (Course I've been in school a pretty high percentage of my life, so that's a good thing!) The highlight of the past week in class is that we've learned both a past and a future tense, so now we can have real conversations - it's hard to talk for long only in present tense! Unfortunately, though, it's not learned immediately, as was evident today when I tried to have a basic conversation at the bank and sounded like a 2 year old: "I to put money and to go home work money to buy to the internet now?" Hmmm, hopefully processing speed and consequent speaking ability will improve with time! I'm thankful for sign language and gracious people for now. :)

But language learning doesn't occur exclusively in a classroom, and I've enjoyed participating in some community activities over the last couple weekends:

A hike with some classmates to a nearby peak:

La Belle Etoile as seen from our school 

 The hike begins

 I worked on memorizing Psalm 121 in French on the way up ("I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?...) - with some very helpful and necessary pronunciation corrections from the fluent French speaker in our group (whose wife is a student at the school). An apropos psalm! 

 The peak of La Belle Etoile

 View of Mount Blanc from the top

 Another weekend event - visiting a nearby castle built literally on a rock in the 1500s

 Two weekends ago, Cropseys and I visited the town of Annecy (about an hour and a half away) and enjoyed a boat ride on the beautiful lake there