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miscellany (french, tandem & abbey)

September 3, 2010 in Abbey Q. Howley, FSI, Tandem Issues by Alex | 2 comments

Ch- ch- ch- changes

Andy and I have been driving one another increasingly nuts, so… we’ve decided to split up.

Did I get you?

No, not split up like that. Here’s what I mean: we’ve decided that being in the same French class is no longer benefitting either one of us (yes, in terms of learning French, we are driving one another nuts), so on Tuesday I’m moving to a different class. And because I’m moving out, some new people will be moving in, so Andy will have a different class dynamic too.

Patience, my friends

This should be the motto of the Foreign Service.

It seems we won’t have any information about what the tandem couplehood gods plan to bestow upon us for quite some time. My Career Development Officer wants to wait until Andy’s actually on the Register before we explore the possibilities. That could happen as soon as two months from now or as long as two years from now; you just never know for sure with security clearances. Mine took four months, so we’re banking on revisiting this topic in early January…

SOS!

Help! Somebody! Please! This is Abbey, by the way. First, a warning for all you diplo-pets out there: don’t believe it for a second when your owners tell you not to worry, that you’re not going to be boarded this time. (Boarding=jail, in case you haven’t learned that one yet.) Don’t believe it when they say that you’re just going on a little vacation and it’s actually going to be a ton of fun. Let me assure you, it’s not.

For reasons I simply cannot comprehend (wedding, airplane, out of town… I don’t know or care what any of that means), my owners have abandoned me in a house that, yes, is much bigger and nicer than my house. And yes, it has two very nice people who seem to like me a lot, inexplicably, since I am being a pretty big jerk to them. And yes, there is a deck and a yard. And lots of toys. But before you start thinking this place couldn’t possibly be so bad, let me cut to the chase.

I’m living with dogs! Two dogs. Beagles. Who bark. And want to play with me. And want to sniff me. And who can’t take a hint that I don’t like other dogs and just want to be left alone to sleep. And who also steal attention from those two very nice people, who I’d prefer to have all to myself.

Just because boy owner won some big test, he thinks he can do whatever he wants now, abandoning me like this. Well, I’ve got news for him: if I ever see him again, I’m chewing three socks as punishment. Maybe four. That’ll teach him.

But in the meantime, I’m serious: can someone come get me? Someone without any dogs? And no cats either. Please?!

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enough is enough

August 22, 2010 in FSI, French by Andy | 3 comments

So after a hard day of French class and language lab, what do two French students do when they get home? Well, speak more French, of course.

It’s been a big advantage that both of us can speak to each other while we’re at home. It probably doubles the amount of time I spend actually speaking French each day. The drawback, though, is that sometimes enough is enough. My language consultant made it a point to tell me that one or two hours after class was sufficient. If I worked any harder, he said, my brain would explode. Ok, he used words like “inefficient” and “overuse” but you get the idea.

Alex didn’t.

And so we invented a game. It’s one in which we take a short break after class, then we only speak French for an hour. Then we take another break followed by our final hour of French for the day. Since she wasn’t sticking to the rules, I implemented a new one – every time she accidentally broke into French during our designated English time, we delayed French time by five minutes. On Friday I got out of a solid 15 minutes of French because she couldn’t stop herself from saying “merci” or “avez-vous les cles?” or “ou est Abbey?”

As tough as it is to come home and speak French, I’m glad we have the opportunity. It’s been invaluable. Of course the fact that sometimes we can’t help but to speak French is also a sign of just how intense this program can be, and how important taking a break can be.

After all, the last thing we want around here is for any brains to explode. I mean, to be inefficient with our studies.

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slowly but surely

August 20, 2010 in FSI, French by Alex | 4 comments

This week Andy and I both had our first formal progress evaluation.

We’ve been doing fine on in-class tests, and although we of course wish we could just know everything already, we can see the progress we’ve made. So we weren’t really sweating this evaluation, but still, when it comes to language testing at FSI, you just don’t know until you know.

Now we know.

The good news: We both got exactly the same score (despite each of our best efforts to one-up the other).

The even better news: We both scored slightly higher than the target for this point in training.

Phew. Knowing we’re totally on track and even a bit ahead takes off some of the pressure. Not that we plan to stop working hard. Everyone keeps telling me that language learning is a strange beast, with both strides and plateaus when you least expect them. I believe it. Still, if we keep at it, we should have no trouble reaching the level we need in time to apply for an immersion trip. Yep, always thinking about the important stuff.

Curious just how much (or little, as the case may be) French we speak at this point? Check out this video of an English learner at a comparable level to ours:

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Here’s where we need to be by early October in order to apply for an immersion trip:

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And, most importantly, here’s where we need to be in mid-December to pass the end-of-training exam:

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So… yes, we still have quite a ways to go. Back to the books for me.

P.S. Click here if you want to see the whole spectrum of FSI-designated levels, with detailed written descriptions too.

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french, french and more french

August 4, 2010 in FSI, French by Alex | 2 comments

Proof we’re taking this French stuff seriously:

  • Abbey now answers to Abi (said with a ridiculously exaggerated French accent, of course), and has also taken to wearing a beret (okay, okay — not true).
  • We’ve accidentally said merci or pardon to random strangers more times than we can count.
  • We speak to one another almost exclusively in French at home, using caveman-like sentences of course, but is that really so different from usual anyway?
  • Andy downloaded a Sherlock Holmes audiobook en Francais and now spends more hours a night doing “homework” than I’m sure he ever did in high school or college.
  • Alex has traded People for Paris Match. (Well, mostly. Paris March doesn’t cover The Bachelorette.)
  • Our idea of a wild night out is the French conversation group at a nearby coffee shop.
  • Our Facebook accounts have been set to French long enough that we’ve got the translations for “wall post” and “…is now friends with…” down pat. (Useful stuff, eh?)

Although we of course wish progress would come more quickly (Can’t we just be fluent already?), we’re actually doing pretty well. Our class shrunk to five people at the beginning of this week, so we’re getting more conversation practice than before. And we both have a good enough grasp on the grammar we’ve been taught that we’ve been moving ahead to more difficult stuff on our own. (If only there weren’t still like 1,343 tenses left to learn…)

It’s easy to push ourselves that extra mile when there’s so much at stake.

My motivation: my job depends on it.

Andy’s motivation: the millions that await him when he’s fluent enough to create a universal translator app for the iPhone, à la Star Trek. (Yeah, yeah. I know. But let’s let him have his dream.)

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give me five

July 28, 2010 in FSI, French by Andy | 3 comments

So far, French has had its ups and downs. There have been sessions where I thought I was really getting the hang of things. Then there were others where I couldn’t understand the homework at all. And by that I don’t mean the homework was difficult, I mean I literally could not understand the French my teacher was using to tell us what the homework assignment was.

Today, though, was a first. I wish I could say it was the first time that I found myself thinking in French instead of translating, or that it was the first time I made it through a class without any pronunciation problems. But it wasn’t either of those things. Today was the first time my teacher gave me – gave anyone – a high five for excellent French.

Why did I get the high five, you ask? Well, during an exercise when we were practicing ways to tell someone that you did not understand them, I found myself unable to figure out a way to rephrase my question in another way. So instead I simply told my speaking partner (in French, of course) that I would repeat myself, but more slowly. And then I began to repeat myself, more slowly.

Alex thinks I got the high five because the teacher was impressed with me. I think it’s because I finally said something right and he was throwing me a bone.

Either way, I think a high five should be worth at least half a point on the final exam. I hope I can cash it in.

alex vs. the french r

July 14, 2010 in FSI, French by Alex | 6 comments

After four years of Spanish in high school and then three semesters in college — just one semester away from fulfilling my language requirement — I quit. I started all over again with Zulu.

Why?

Well, a lot of reasons, but let me tell you about one of them: that stupid rolled R. It was my nemesis. I could never get the hang of it, and as a result I sounded like a silly American no matter how much grammar and vocabulary I mastered (which wasn’t all that much anyway, but that’s another story).

Doesn’t Zulu have click sounds, you ask? Aren’t those worlds more difficult than a simple rolled R? Well, maybe for some people, but not for me. I can click just fine; I can’t for the life of me roll.

Fast forward almost a decade to today, two weeks in to my French training. For the most part, it’s going fine. I’m catching on to the grammar quite well. I’m remembering more and more vocabulary every day. I can say nasal vowels. I’ve gotten the hang of the fact that half of the word isn’t even pronounced. And most importantly, I know more than Andy. (Nothing like healthy competition to speed up the language learning, eh?)

There’s just one problem: the letter R.

Determined to conquer it once and for all, I first did some research. Turns out it’s quite different from my old nemesis the Spanish R, which is apparently spoken from the tip of your tongue. The French R comes from your throat.

Here’s the most useful advice I’ve found about saying it:

  1. Open your mouth.
  2. Close your throat as if you’re going to gargle or to avoid swallowing a mouthful of liquid, and say K carefully, several times.
  3. Pay attention to where in your throat the K sound is made. We’ll call this the K place.
  4. Begin slowly closing your throat, until you can almost feel the K place. Your throat should be only partially constricted.
  5. Tense the muscles around the K place.
  6. Gently push air through your partially constricted throat.
  7. Practice saying Ra-Ra-Ra (where R = steps 4-6) every day.

Truth be told, I’m not really sure how useful I can claim this advice to be, since after hours upon hours of practicing in the language lab, all I’ve achieved so far is a sore throat.

I’ll keep at it, but in the meantime I’m also dreaming up a plan B. Think it’s possible to learn a synonym for every word with the letter R? Hmm…

Au revoir! Er, never mind. I mean, à bientôt.

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je parle un peu francais

July 10, 2010 in FSI, French by Andy | 4 comments

I started French this week. Yep, there was room for me. Thank goodness! I was getting pretty tired of hanging out with Abbey.

We had Monday off of course, and because this is the government we spent all day Tuesday doing administrative stuff. So I’ve really only had three days of French, but I can already see how it’s possible to go from nilch to proficiency in six months.

  • Sheer time — You spend four hours every day in class and four hours every day doing homework or in the language lab. (Yes, it’s as tiring as it sounds.)
  • Immersion – In addition to what we learn, we pick up stuff from our teacher who speaks to us mostly in French. I hear that soon she’ll drop the English completely so we’ll be forced to pick up even more.
  • Even more serious immersion — Word on the street is that at month four or five you have the opportunity to go on a several-week immersion trip to somewhere like Martinique or the south of France or Montreal. They haven’t mentioned this to us yet, and it seems in poor form to ask while I’m still working on saying that my name is Andy and I’m not a diplomat, but you better believe I’ll be taking advantage of this opportunity if rumors are true. (Don’t worry — it’s not on your dime. I’ll have to pay for it, and Alex will too, but she’ll still get her salary and not have to use vacation time while we’re away.)
  • Resources — The language lab has so many tools it’s unbelievable. Certainly no high school and probably no university language department has this much stuff at their disposal. And while you’re using the programs an instructor is listening to you and pipes in your headphone from time to time to help. Weird, but cool.
  • Technique — In high school and college I studied vocab lists and took written tests. I could read German alright, but speak it? Not so much. Here it’s different. We spent a ton of time on pronunciation and pay much more attention to speaking than writing and reading. We’re getting a good amount of speaking practice now when we’re in a a 15-person class, and after next week we’ll break down permanently into smaller classes of only 4-5, so we’ll be talking in French all the time.

Also worth noting is that Alex and I aren’t in the same class. There are a few other couples starting French too, and they’re all together. Curious. Alex promises she didn’t request that we be in different classes. Despite what she thinks, I didn’t either — I would have had no idea who to talk to. But I think it actually worked out for the best. We learn slightly different things and it’s great to compare notes when we get home. Plus, since she has the later class she has to walk the dog in the morning.

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muffled messages

July 2, 2010 in FSI by Alex | No comments

I just finished a one-week class called “the Fundamentals of Supervision,” and I’d like to share one piece of information gleaned from it:

  • When you speak, your words actually only convey 70% of your intended message.
  • The person listening to your message only processes 50% of it.
  • So if you express 70% and your listener captures 50%…
  • That’s right: only 35% of what you want to get across actually gets across.

I must admit that I’m always somewhat skeptical of models that generalize the behavior of all mankind. I mean, I have to believe that you and I communicate more effectively than, say, Miss Teen South Carolina.

Andy also took some issue with the model when I explained it to him, but for a different reason. He offered another version: “When you tell me what you want me to do, you express 25% of what you think you do. I in turn interpret 125% of what you say.  Pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. But this unfortunately still results in only 30% of your message coming through, despite my best efforts.”

Whatever the specific percentages, the main point is a good one: none of us are getting across nearly as much as we think we are. And imagine how much less we get across when communicating across languages and cultures.

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gap days galore

June 21, 2010 in FS Life, FSI by Alex | 2 comments

I finished public diplomacy training. I haven’t started French. So what am I doing now?

Well, aside from a one-day class here and there, I have what are called gap days.

If you have more than two weeks of free time between classes you’re given a bridge assignment, or a temporary job at Main State. I don’t have a stretch of two weeks in a row, so I’m free to spend the down time as I wish. Actually, not totally as I wish; gap days aren’t vacation days, after all. But I can fill them with work-related activities of my choosing.

Pretty cool, right? It is, except after the first or second gap day it gets sort of exhausting brainstorming and coordinating what to do.

Questioningly work-related: kayaking, also known as practicing getting to work during Cotonou's rainy season. (Okay, okay. I'll save it for the weekends.)

Some things I’ve done with my gap days so far:

  • Rosetta Stone (official verdict: worthless)
  • Online FSI classes (about topics like managing Fulbright programs and monitoring the media)
  • Meetings (ahem, “consultations“) with various people at Main State who I’ll be working with once I’m in Benin

I have a full week of gap days ahead of me, and I’m not sure yet how I’ll spend all the time. In addition to more Rosetta Stone (ugh) and a few more online classes, here are some possibilities:

  • Getting my diplomatic passport
  • Africa-related documentaries at Silverdocs
  • Lectures at think tanks and museums
  • Reading official info about Benin
  • Reading official info about parts of the world that may interest Beninois, like Afghanistan and Sudan

Does that sound like 40 hours worth of work to you? Me neither.

Send any more gap day activity ideas my way!

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i’ve got class

May 27, 2010 in FS Life, FSI by Andy | 2 comments

In addition to being the place where FSOs go for their training, the Foreign Service Institute also offers a number of classes that EFMs are eligible to take. The classes range from raising bilingual children to security courses. They are a nice bonus and help keep EFMs plugged into the State Department.

So far I’ve managed to take a few. First was a general spouse orientation which was useful not only for some of the information but as a chance to meet other spouses as well. Also we got donuts.

Then I took a two hour class that went through the details of shipping a pet overseas. Since it is unlikely any airline will allow Abbey to travel in a basket of clothes, I thought it was important to attend.

Last week was an evening class about legal issues. I found the section about renting property and becoming a landlord in Virginia particularly interesting. Did you know Virginia is one of the most landlord-friendly states? This is very different from NYC where tenants in our old building bragged about not paying rent for years. Try that in Virgina and you’ll be on the business end of an eviction notice.

I was batting 3 for 3 with the classes. Sure not everything in the pet class was relevant to me, but some of it was. But even if I don’t remember all the information, I’ll at least know what questions I should be asking.

My streak ended this week, however. I took a class about developing virtual job opportunities. You know, working from home. I’m loath to complain about a free class, but I really can’t let this one slide.

First, the positives. Our two presenters run a legitimate website that highlights work from home opportunities. They do a great service and weed out all of the scams from con artists and flim-flam men. They also gave us some interesting tips on how to find work from home opportunities using Google (hint – don’t search for “work from home”).

That paragraph above took me about three minutes to write. Our class was seven hours long. See where I’m going with this?

So now the negatives. We spent at least 20 minutes talking about Second Life. Not how to develop job opportunities with Second Life, just what it is. For all the talk about how innovative and cool Second Life is, there was no mention of the fact that Second Life is estimated to have hit its peak number of users three years ago, and that even then, it had fewer than 1% of the users that Facebook has (note, we didn’t talk about Facebook). This did not help me get a virtual job.

Then we had a lengthy discussion about being careful when replying to emails. We were warned to make sure we didn’t hit “reply to all” by mistake. We were warned not to forward emails to the wrong parties. Good advice. Not relevant to developing virtual job opportunities, but good advice.

Next we learned how to reformat our resumes from Word Documents to plain text documents. I’m still not sure why.

Finally, we were taught about scams. They could have just told us that no one is really going to pay us $300 a day for one hour of work and left it at that. Instead we were shown a half dozen scam sites and were given the details of how each scam worked.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to post this because I didn’t want to come off as negative or like I thought all the classes were worthless. Overall I’ve been pretty happy with FSI. But I wanted to warn others that if their time is limited, this might be a class to cross of their to-do lists.

Oh, and remember those scams they taught us about? Apparently the perpetrator of one made over $7 million before being caught. And then he only had to pay a fine of $150,000. Now that’s what I call a virtual job opportunity.

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