Sunday, January 30, 2011

Back to Basics...

Tuesday will mark the 1-month anniversary of my TAPIF application submission.  To my delight, the month went by pretty fast but I think agony and anticipation are starting to creep up on me; plus it doesn't help that I started the spring semester and I'm ALREADY over it after getting a 200 page reading assignment (in cell biology may I add) due in 3 days.

So after certain sequence of events, I came to an outstanding realization.........I, Ugomma Nwachukwu, am losing MY FRENCH!!! Yes! It's true, it's really true!

I don't even know how it happened! I mean it happened soooo fast! It felt like one minute I could have a almost full-on conversation about a wide variety of topics and now, I can barely get my conjugations in order! I blame myself really, I mean the last time I was in a formal French class was in June and based on the college level French classes I'm only really only up to an intermediate level and at that level you either keep taking French until you are fluent or quit and forget about it.  Of course I wanted to do the former but as life would have it, I ended up doing the latter.  I have not been diligent in doing things to practice French like listening to music, the news or even having conversations in French, plus Spanish dominated my life again and now it seems Italian my invade my linguistic repertoire!

But...NO MORE! Like the beautiful album by Christina Aguilera, I have decided to go back to basics. How? Easy, I dusted off my neglected French book from college and opened the book to page 1. I decided that every day, I would read 4 pages of my French text book until I finish the book (it's about 490 pages).  A lot of the pages have exercises so that will be extra practice.  I'm going to do this hopefully into the summer time, which I will then hopefully take another French class before jetting off to France (Lord willing, if everything works out with my acceptance!).  I made this new resolution to myself on Sunday and already I have failed.  I've only done 3 days worth of reading instead of 6; BUT that is nay the point. I promised myself I would not be so hard on my self and beat myself up for slacking off, I can't change the past, all I can do is keep trying to fulfill my resolution. 


bonne chance à moi....

3 comments:

  1. Hi,

    I just read your questions on my blog. I used lodgis.com to find my place, and yes, it is rather expensive. I know a couple of other people that have used this agency, too. In general, agency fees are around half a month's rent to a full month's rent. Out of my friends, one of them found a place by using local listings on pap.fr after she arrived here, and all of the others found au pair jobs, mainly through craigslist. Personally, I'm not going to mess with trying to get the CAF.

    I hope you find out about your application soon! And don't worry about the French - once you're here it comes back so quickly! And the extra practice you're doing will help a lot. I was gone from France for a year, and focused only on Spanish in that time, but once I returned I realized I still knew a lot more than I thought I did.

    Bon courage!
    Whitney

    http://wackywammy.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ahhh! J'ai besoin d'etudier le francais aussi! Je n'ai pas une bonne excuse, parce que j'avoir beaucoup le temps!

    It's sad because I honestly love studying French, and find it fun, but I've just been too lazy to push myself to get up and do it! :-/

    I can't wait to find out the results! We still have 3 months to go!

    -Francesca

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hello, Ugomma! So nice to hear from you on my blog today. I look forward to hearing about your French endeavors :)

    ReplyDelete