On the very first day of French class, Madame spent the good part of our first hour together having everyone state their name, where they were from, what they did, and what hobbies and/or activites they enjoyed. I was surprised (and relieved) to discover that I was the only American. And in fact, one of only two North Americans! I tried to jot down as best I could everyone's name and hometown. Roughly here's the summary by country:
America (1) me!
Brazil (3)
China (5)
Columbia (1)
Japan (3)
Korea (1)
México (1)
Poland (1)
Russia (2)
Spain (1)
And what's even more interesting are the cities the group represents; the list reads like a "Great Cities of the World." Beijing, Moscow, México City, São Paolo, Shanghai, Tokyo…And of course, we're all in Paris learning French. It's pretty amazing.
Also what's even more amazing is our teacher, who seems to be able to speak nearly all the languages of her students. Sometimes she'll translate something to English or Spanish (which today tripped up one of the Chinese students, who started to ask about a word and the teacher said, "No, that's Spanish!"), when she isn't using French to define things. But she also cracked some joke in Chinese that got the Chinese students chuckling. And yesterday she surprised us all when she went to the board and started writing in Russian! Madame le professeur est incroyable!