Je m'appelle Isabelle

Isabelle is the name I will be known by in my new French class.  I will be going 4 (sometimes 5) days a week for 4 1/2 hours a day.  It is complete immersion with no other languages allowed in the classroom.

My first day went something like this:

I had my travel plans written down.  Take the tram to the bus then on to the school.  I had forgotten to write down the tram number but wasn't too worried because they have charts with the tram lines at the station.  Unfortunately they had charts of all of the tram lines except the one I needed to take.  I missed the first and second tram trying to figure out which one I needed to go on.  Luckily Ryan was just a phone call away and directed me to the right one.  It was a windy, snowy morning which meant that the tram signs stating which stop you were at were covered with snow on one side.  I stepped off the tram at the stop that I thought might be mine, went to see the name of the stop on the side of the sign that was still legible and realized I got off one stop to soon.  The tram was about to take off again and the doors would not open to let me back on.  I walked along the tram line to the next stop where I was supposed to get off and found the bus stop there, with the bus.  I ran down the road (because the sidewalk was too crowded to move fast) to catch the bus because I was already running late but I was too slow and it pulled away without me.  I caught the next bus and was able to make it to the school, although I was late.

At the school papers were posted with the class lists on them.  Being able to read the lists took more pushing and shoving then I am comfortable with.  The lists were outside on a wall with people pushing their way through to read them.  I would compare it to a mosh pit.  I decided to wait out the crowd rather than be squished to death.  Once I could see the lists I realized that my name was not on any of them.  I went inside and checked any lists I saw and found my name on a door for more testing.  It was, of course, in French and I didn't do too well.  I was confused and tried to ask for help a couple of times from the teachers in the testing area.  All of them were busy and would hurriedly say something to me that I didn't understand as they walked by.  Eventually, after what seemed an eternity, someone stopped and spoke to me in English and after looking at my test and telling me I had done it all wrong, handed me a slip of paper to meet in the cafeteria in 2 hours.

2 1/2 hours later we were put in tables based on the language we spoke.  It was very interesting to see the number of different languages.  Arabic wins for the largest amount of people.  The number of Americans (out of about 100 people):  1.  That would be me.  Number of people at the English speaking table:  5.  Three from Africa and one from The Czech Republic.  After we were sitting at a table for a language we could understand it was explained to us how the class would work, in French, with a translator at each table.  Then the translators left and we were split up into different classes.  The languages were all mixed up so we wouldn't be tempted to speak a language other than French during class.  It is very effective for me.

We then went to our new class and picked a new French name.  I shall now be known as Isabelle.  (In French class at least.)

Let the fun begin!