So, I’ve been taking privately tutored lessons in our office 2 to 3 days a week and I think it is finally paying off. I had my first 3 days of site visits last week and the week before. The first 2 days were to a Continental Tire manufacturing plant and I was acting as a mentor/second set of eyes during the visit which was conducted completely in French, with limited translation, by my colleague. I was pleasantly surprised by my ability to understand a lot of what was being discussed. I think it helps that I know generally what types of questions were supposed to be asked and could assume what some of the answer options might be, but it was encouraging none the less. Then last week I was the lead on a visit with a different colleague who acted as translator, but again most of the discussion was in French. My understanding is improving quickly, but my speaking ability is slow to follow. I’ve come up with the analogy of a baby who knows what we are saying to them a lot sooner than they are able to coherently share their ideas and thoughts with us.
I played in my first real futbal match in several years a couple of week ago! That was great. It was 7-v-7 on a pretty good sized outdoor field. We only had 5 so I got lots of playing time. We didn’t stand a chance, but it was fun to get out there and play some real futbal here in Paris. Unfortunately the seasons all ended two weeks ago. Seasons start up again in September. I’m hoping that my colleagues continue to play after work, which we’ve been doing Wednesday nights for the past few weeks. I’ve been representing the US well. ;)
"La dernière photo de mon chat"
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