Back to Chambéry
Thanks to a language-study grant from the Center for Western Civilization, I returned to Chambéry, France for a second summer in a row to continue learning French at the Institut Savoisien d’Etudes Françaises pour Etrangers. My dissertation topic involves the administration and government of the French county of Champagne in the thirteenth century, and much scholarship on medieval France is written in French. I also needed to improve my spoken French because I received a Fulbright Fellowship to spend the 2017-2018 academic year in France. Like last year’s course, my intermediate-level French class was rigorous and extremely beneficial. I learned more complex French grammar while reinforcing my knowledge from the previous summer. By interacting with classmates, I practiced my speaking and listening skills and connected with people from all over the world. We hailed from Mexico, the United States, Brazil, Slovakia, Poland, Columbia, Japan, and Syria. Our conversations and after-school excursions to natural marvels and historical monuments strengthened both our friendships and language skills, especially when the only language we shared was the one we were learning.
I nurtured relationships and furthered my French outside of the classroom as well, for I lived with the same woman this past summer as I had last year: an active and travel-loving French retiree named Marie. She speaks very little English and always wanted to learn new words. We both learned the word for “hedgehog” in each other’s language (“hérisson” in French!). Our nightly conversations over dinner were crucial to my language progress and my friendship with Marie. Together, we rejoiced over the birth of her second grandson and searched for apartments for me in Paris. She introduced me to vegetable purées and I showed her how to search for volcanoes and Ethiopian culture on Pinterest. Because of the CWC and this course, I write this post from France confident in my language abilities and enriched by the friendships I both made and continued in Chambéry. - Jillian Bjerke, 2017 CWCTP Student Grantee