Unexpected Asian Friends in France

I'm loving my time at the little French language school. The instructors are fantastic teachers, and they are also excellent actresses. Actresses? Why? Because there are two Asian girls in my class who don't have the luxury of all the French/English cognates. And the teachers take great care to ONLY speak French while inside the building, so sometimes, in order to get their point across, introduce or explain vocabulary, they must play a game of charades. It's quite entertaining for me to watch. It makes the four hours of sitting at a table go by quickly.

I asked the girls today if I could take a picture with them. They were beyond delighted. Missu is from Japan (she is the girl in the black). She is living with a French family for the six months she is here to learn French. She is hilarious and expressive and very hard worker. Chun Ping is from Taiwan (she is wearing glasses) and is in France because she is going to marry her French boyfriend very soon. (I asked her how she communicates with her boyfriend because she doesn't speak very much French at all...she told me he speaks Chinese). Chun Ping is much more reserved but she too works very, very hard.

As I sit there in class I'm amazed at how hard these girls' brains must be working. I mean, they don't even use the same characters...looking at the alphabet is all foreign to them. They both have electronic dictionaries that they furiously type words into in order to follow along with the class. And they too are excellent actors as they too try to find words to be understood.

Today, Missu discovered Skype for the first time. The other American in the class had his laptop with him and in order to explain it to her, he just dialed her home phone number in Japan. What happened next made me cry....she was able to talk to her Mom for the first time in two weeks. (She had just been buying calling cards--which are very expensive here--and so she wasn't talking with her family very much). Anyway, you can see from the pictures what a big deal it is for her. She asked the teacher to come and say hello because she wanted to assure her Mom she was at school!

So, I'm learning tons and tons at my school. Like a nerdy, nerdy student, I totally love every minute of it, and I am smiling for nearly four hours straight. As I sit there, I'm reminded of how big the world is...which is a good reminder for me not to be so obsessed with my little "world". I'm very thankful for this opportunity to meet these new friends.

PS--hearing French with an Asian accent is just too funny to explain.