It's good for my brain?!

Bezier, France

February 22, 2024

Dear family and friends,

My morning French lessons didn’t go well, so I have a bit of a bad attitude today. I’m now living in fear that my Rosetta Stone app is going to report me to the French government. I can see the AI email to the immigration department…“This one’s a bit slow, send him back.”

I’m not patient. My mother has known that pretty much forever, and hopefully she’ll laugh when she reads it.

It’s been just over a month, so maybe I should cut myself a little break, but I must admit that I do get frustrated trying to learn this language. The pronunciation is difficult. My mouth gets tired trying to make the sounds. They use too many letters, and barely pronounce half of them.  It seems as though they get halfway through a word and just swallow the rest of the letters. And training my ears to hear it is as challenging as getting my mouth to pronounce it.  Half my day feels like I’m stuck in a Charlie Brown cartoon listening to the teacher speak.

But then I recognize a word and a wave of excitement comes over me. It’s just a small wave though, I’ve got such a long way to go.

So far, the words that I have and are recognizable to the French are:

Bonjour

Une baguette, s’il vous plait

Deux pain au chocolat, s’il vous plait (deux is two, I can’t bring myself to order just one)

Merci!

Au revior  

Bon Journey

Je parle anglaise

Vin rouge

This is only a little bit of an exaggeration, but it is not an exaggeration to say those are the words I use most often. And I can count to 99, if you give me enough time to think about it…

I feel as though I’ve made my confession, so let me change the topic for a moment. This week I made it to the locks. I'll need to go back another day to take some better pictures, but in the meantime if you point your favorite search enging to the Fonseranes Locks, there are lots of pictures and lots of interesting facts about the locks at Beziers.

I’ve seen my share of locks before, but these locks built in the 17th century are quite impressive. The locks were completed in 1681. Because it gives me a frame of reference and helps me appreciate them a bit more, that is the year King Charles II signed the charter for the colony of Pennsylvania.

The locks also demonstrated to me how severe the drought is in this area.  It has been a warm and dry winter and the water level in the aqueduct clearly reflects it. I understand better why the locals have been talking about it so much. We could use some rain, but in the meantime, I am enjoying the sunny 60+ degree weather.

I’m learning much, and I’m told that challenging your brain to learn new things, like a language, is good for warding off things like dementia and Alzheimer’s. I certainly hope so because my frustration with my lack of retention is making me question my mental capacity at times.

Luckily all this walking about is keeping the lbs at bay even as I continue to explore the boulangeries, patisseries and inexpensive but oh so wonderful local vintages. While I always walked quite a bit in Chicago, I was never one to pay much attention to my step count. My phone, on the other hand, is quite proud to tell me that my average step count has increased by over 2,000 steps a day in the past month. I think Apple just wants me to live longer so that my lifetime value as a customer will go up, but nonetheless those little encouraging messages my phone keeps sending me do make me smile as I order “un autre, s’il vous plait.”

Bonne Journée!