French?

I think that my French has improved. Noticably, at least in my mind. After the intial huge learning spurt that came after arriving here, things have been pretty much the same, with gradual improvements, I guess. But in the past week or so (ironically since around the time my family came), French has started to become the language in my head, more and more. The past few days have been pretty intense immersion days, since I haven't spent significant time with any anglophones, and I've been either in class or working on my paper...plus my language hour with Jeanne, the meeting with Sahar, a long meeting with a tutor today, and daily chats with the host fam. I don't think my vocabulary or actual grammar/language skills have improved that drastically, but I'm becoming more and more at ease talking. At least to people I'm comfortable with. Talking to strangers is another story, but even things like ordering food are getting easier. Or at least less difficult.

Last night I had a great dinner with the host family. We ate in front of the television, but for once we weren't watching politics or an old movie that's either dubbed or French. Mme. Beguin chose a documentary on Buddhism, which was not too difficult to understand and quite interesting. I didn't know very much about Buddhism before; but I always thought of it as humanistic, peaceful, searching for zen, etc. ...all those stereotypes. Now I'm slight disillusioned with the religion, as it appears quite sexist (lots of things are forbidden for women, although that's changing). It also seems somewhat idolistic (is that word?), as they built enormous statues as tributes to the Buddha. Anyways, I had lots of reactions to the documentary, and I made several comments while we were watching. It was practically a real conversation with the host fam (lng. barriers plus their outgoingness plus my quietness make this generally super difficult). Point being, for once I had something to say during dinner, and I enjoyed being involved in the conversation, and hopefully we'll watch another documentary tonight (or at least talk about things that I understand and can comment on).