I guess not exactly nothing. I have heard from people in Ohio and New York who’ve been contacted by investigators, but no one in DC has been called yet. And no one in Michigan either, where I lived for five years. So I assume there’s still quite a bit of work to be done. Thank God I haven’t lived a move exciting life. Then the wait would be even longer.
I guess I should be used to waiting around. There’s a lot of that in my life these days.
It’s a go! The wheels of bureaucracy don’t turn quickly, but they turn nonetheless. We’re officially approved for an immersion trip the first two weeks of November!
Look out Nice, France. We're coming.
Lest you think this will be a vacation… rest assured that we’ll actually be in class as many hours as we would be in DC. In fact, since the French don’t celebrate Veterans Day, we’ll even be in class on a day when our FSI classmates won’t. So there.
Then again, in the interest of full disclosure, I should probably also tell you that the French just so happen to be celebrating two other holidays while we’re in town (Armistice Day and All Saints Day), so… we’ll have those days off instead. One holiday for two isn’t such a bad trade, eh? But, don’t worry, we’re making up the missed hours by adding more class time to our other days.
As fun as we hope this trip will be, our main purpose really is to improve our French. We’re both doing a decent enough job of picking up vocabulary and grammar, but we could definitely stand to be forced to use what we know more, cementing it in our brains and allowing us to speak more fluidly. (I mean, we’re not the most talkative people in English, so you can imagine what it’s like in French.)
As you may recall, for a while we were really good about using French with one another around the house. Lately… not so much. But we’ve vowed to speak only French in France. And to really take advantage of the many opportunities there will inevitably be to practice outside of class.
After all, I have my scary end-of-training exam coming up in mid-December. You know, the one I need to pass in order to go to Benin. And the one that — lately — a frighteningly high percentage of test-takers have failed. And Andy wants to get to the 3/3 level too so he can pass a phone test and get some bonus points to bump up his spot on the Register, once his security clearance comes through.
So, this is serious business. Really. I promise.
Lounging around at cafes is educational, truly.
And so is navigating our way to Marseilles.
And trying our best not to go broke in Monaco.
Andy’s sitting beside me right now. “It’s going to be awesome,” he says.
“Yeah right guys. It’s going to be horrible,” counters Abbey.
Do you have to go?
Abbey, you see, will be going on an immersion trip of her own: she’s off to the Midwest to hang out with Andy’s family for a whole month, until we’ll be back there over Thanksgiving and can get her. Truth be told, she’ll probably love it. Last time she was there she was particularly impressed by a local foodstuff called “Snausage.” That stay, however, lasted only four days. Even Abbey can fake good behavior for that long. But a month? That’s a whole other story. We’ll see how many Snausages she earns this time…
Because I’m an EFM, there was always some doubt as to whether I’d be able to take French at FSI. There might not be enough room, I was told. We’ll have to wait and see, they said. In fact, up until I saw my name on my first professor’s roster, I still thought they were going to boot me from the class – that the only French I’d know was from them saying “Au revoir” as they escorted me out the door.
That turned out not to be the case. There was actually plenty of room for me. In fact, for the past week, I’ve been in a class with only two other people, and one of those is the professor.
The way language classes work at FSI (at least French, and probably all the other languages with more than just two or three students enrolled) is that you are put on one month rotations. At the end of every rotation, you switch teachers and maybe some reshuffling is done with the students. This is so you get used to hearing different teachers speak (different accents, different vocabulary, different styles) and so you are always with students who are at the same level of language learning.
Somehow, my current rotation only has two students. Part of me feels like I won the lottery. I get four hours per day of one-on-two tutoring. Another part of me can’t wait for them to add more students to my class on Monday. Having only one other classmate is exhausting. I walk out of class each day feeling even more drained than usual. And on Friday, when I also had a one-on-one session with my language counselor, I’d had enough. I hardly touched my books during our lunch break.
I can’t really complain too much because I’m getting the opportunity to learn French – something that might come in handy once I’m finally placed on the Management Register. But I’m hoping on Monday a new student or two will make class a little more interesting. Or at least make it slightly less exhausting.
Posted inFrench, FSI|TaggedFrench, FSI, register|Comments Off on three’s company (but five might be better)
Okay, let’s be honest. If I’m still worrying about this business come Christmastime, I’m not going to be a very happy guy. Maybe I could be grateful for my security clearance on Thanksgiving? Or better yet, it could be the best treat ever on Halloween? (Well, except for Good ‘N Plenties. Those things are pretty great.)
I got calls from two different investigators today working on my case, so it’s officially up and running. How long it will take is anyone’s guess, but I’m hoping not very long. The way I see it, I’m at least twice as honest and upstanding as my wife, and her clearance took less than four months. So I think two months should be more than enough for me. I like that logic.
(Christmas is actually a fairly realistic — maybe even optimistic — goal date, as much as I wish it weren’t.)
Today marked the end of 12 weeks of French training at FSI. Know what that means? I’m halfway done with my 24-week training program. Woo! In fact, technically, I’m more than halfway done since my end-of-training test date just so happens to fall at the beginning of week 24. So… that’s exciting. And also scary.
The good news is that I had my second semi-official progress evaluation today, and despite some admitted slacking off as of late, I’m still trucking along just fine. I’m “a solid 2/2.” Here’s a video that shows what that means (through the progress of an English learner):
The important thing about reaching the 2/2 level, is — you guessed it — I’m cleared to apply for an immersion trip! Expect to read much more about that later.
Allegedly I’m ahead of schedule, but I’m not totally sure I believe that since the next 12 weeks will be spent getting up to this level, and I don’t feel halfway there at all:
Even if I am able to pass my end-of-training exam, I’m still not so sure that I’ll be proficient enough to, say, give speeches and tough interviews in French, which as the Public Diplomacy Officer, could very well be required of me. I’m banking on the fact that the Beninois are a kind, patient and forgiving people… especially when it comes to the French ability of a certain new diplomat at the American Embassy.
1. Sometimes your professor doesn’t show up for class, so you find yourself spending all day in the language lab, not really motivated to do anything, but also not brave enough to skip out and go home. So you decide to write a blog post about French instead. (That counts for something, right?)
2. Since the reason you’re being taught French is to perform official diplomatic duties, you’re taught only to speak formally. In French, like Spanish (and probably other romance languages too), there are two ways to say “you.” One of them, “tu,” is for family and friends, while the other, “vous,” is formal. You’re only allowed to use “vous” in class, so, naturally, it’s what your instincts are trained to say. This results in some awkward interactions when you go to French-speaking meet-up groups outside of the FSI bubble. Apparently addressing people formally makes them quite uncomfortable.
3. Also because of the job for which you’re being trained, your vocularly is a little… bizarre. You might, for instance, have a great deal of trouble doing a class exercise that asks you to pretend to be a waitress at a seafood restaurant, because you don’t know the words for any types of fish, or even any other restaurant-related things, like utensils, or drinks, or desserts. But when your class switches to discussing the recent Al-Qaeda kidnappings in Niger, then you’re golden. Of course you know the words for hostage and to kidnap and terrorism and uranium and mining industry and ransom and diplomatic negotions, etc. That stuff comes up all the time!
4. While you of course want to learn to speak French well, your immediate goal is to pass your end-of-training exam. So as you begin to learn what does and doesn’t matter for said exam, your game plan changes. For instance, you might find yourself in the language lab one particular teacher-less Thursday morning studying the subjunctive tense not because you actually want to know it, but because you’ve heard that you don’t need to know it, so you want to know how it’s used well enough that you’ll be able to avoid actually using it.
5. You share a language lab with students learning a handful of Asian languages, so there are strange unidentifiable utterances coming from every which way. This makes you feel bad for ever complaining that French is hard.
Today we met up with a few of the remaining members of my A-100 class for an apple picking excursion. (Five months after finishing up A-100, we’ve lost more than half of our class. The only people left in DC are those who needed a full course of a language — maybe a third of us? Of course, the 7 or 8 who got DC jobs are here too, but they’re mostly too busy to do anything!)
Good enough to eat. Well, after a little washing.
Hi!
On the way back we stopped at a winery. Admittedly, we’re hardly wine aficionados, but even we know that Virgina’s not exactly where one expects to find top-notch wines. Yet, everything was perfectly good. And the $5 tasting price was even better. (You can win us over with a bargain every time.)
Andy spent the rest of the day watching football, while I made this:
It looked like this for all of about three seconds before Andy promptly dug in.
And then I took a nap. So, yep, a perfect Saturday if I do say so myself.
We’ve been trying to be better about enjoying our time in DC rather than obsessing about our impending departure for Benin. So, if you have any other weekend activities ideas, do tell!
I usually don’t like these beagle get-togethers my owners drag me to, but I have to admit, I was pretty excited about this one. Why? Well, despite my admittedly overly dramatic cry for help last weekend, I ended up have a pretty alright time with those two other dogs. I kind of grew to like them, believe it or not. I was hoping to see them again.
Unfortunately, that’s not how it worked out. Instead of the other two beagles that I actually like, I was met by the howling of a dozen strangers. They were sniffing around and barking at everything in sight. It was quite undignified. I had to howl right back at them to try to keep them quiet. It didn’t work.
Instead, we spent an hour walking through the woods. I got to climb up on some rocks and drink water right out of a creek.
My owners kept trying to slow me down, but I pulled and pulled until they finally got with the program. When we got near the end of the hike, I saw something amazing. Two of the other beagles just ran around without their leashes! Can you believe it? They were pretty fast, but I think I could have run faster if I wasn’t attached to my slow-poke owners. I’d have come back with a squirrel, no doubt.
One disappointing development is that some little pup named Bagel was getting all the attention. Just because she’s young doesn’t mean she’s the prettiest! I, of course, howled in protest. That certainly got me some attention, but not the kind I was hoping for.
Tomorrow marks the end of 10 weeks of French — not yet halfway to the finish line, but almost.
My mom (hi Mom!) was asking me the other day just how much French Andy and I speak. “I mean, can you have conversations?” she wanted to know.
“Of course.”
“Coherent ones?” she continued. (Thanks Mom.)
Honestly, it depends on your definition of coherent.
We speak much more slowly than native speakers. And we stick to simple or at best intermediate grammatical constructions. And we still make the occasional grammatical error. And we evade words we don’t know by using the ones we do know awkwardly (or creatively, if you want to be more generous).
For instance, when trying to tell Andy to snap the stems off the green beans, I told him to break the green beans at their ends. Hey, it got the job done. [Addendum from Andy: I actually had no idea what she was talking about – I just smiled and nodded like I do in class and eventually she stopped talking.]
But still, we’ve gotten pretty darn coherent, if I do say so myself. Last weekend we spent five hours driving in northern Minnesota to a friend’s wedding.
Mazel tov!
During the trek, I — much to Andy’s chagrin — instituted a French-only rule. And we stuck to it. So, yes, we can go five hours at a time communicating everything we need to using only French. [Another Andy addendum: Once again, I had no idea what she was talking about. You’d be surprised how far “oui” and “je suis d’accord” can get you, especially with dames.] Of course there were errors. And of course it was exhausting. But it can be done. Which I for one think is pretty amazing after 10 weeks of instruction.
My mom’s next question: “So are you further along in French than you ever were in Spanish or Zulu?”
Zulu? Absolutely.
Spanish? Yes and no. But really, yes.
Let me explain. After studying Spanish for four years in high school and two semesters in college, I was pretty familiar with sophisticated grammar; I knew probably three times more verb tenses than what I regularly use in French. So in that sense, I was further along in Spanish. However, if you asked me to say anything — even something very simple — I turned into a bumbling fool.
Studying at FSI has shown me how misguided high school and university language instruction is, at least in my experience. I’ve chatted about this topic with a few high school language teachers, and they always take issue with the accusation that high school language instruction is sub par. But it has nothing to do with the teachers. Teachers do the best they can with the time they’re given; it’s just that the time they’re given isn’t structured appropriately. Sure, you can memorize grammatical rules and vocabulary when you devote an hour a day to language learning, but you can’t learn to speak well. Because learning to speak requires building reflexes, and building reflexes requires repetition. And an hour a day in a class with a dozen or two other students, a set-up that doesn’t allow for much speaking at all, and is then followed by a 23-hour break… well, that just doesn’t cut it.
So here’s what I propose: instead of four years of high school language classes, we should send our students on immersion trips for a summer. I’m certain they’ll learn more in three months than in four years, and then maybe we’ll be able to finally put this joke to rest:
What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks one language? American.
