Trip to France: Learning the Language

Imagine a warm Paris cafe with the sweet smells of pastry and caffeine, and a view of the city of lights. That’s what Juliana and her mom have been planning for after she graduates. That’s also why she has been learning French with her mom and sister for the past 2 years. 

Including croissants, macarons and other french pastry she loves, she wants to visit the french exchange student that came last year who brought these sweet treats. The exchange student has visited her family many times yet Juliana wants to visit the student in her home country and town of Anecey. “I feel like I'd want to go and see her because it was probably hard for her to come down and hang out with my family, mostly because my family is insane and I think it’d just be fun to go and visit her if I had extra time, because it's really expensive to go france so I think that if I had extra time I'd probably go visit her.” she had answered. Another thing Julliana wants to do while in this country is visit the Louvre, Eiffel tower and another place her mom wanted to go. Julliana and her mom plan to go after her 4 years of learning French in high school. 

“For my graduation trip we're going to go to Paris. I guess I just decided that I would start now rather than start later because it's just always been a language that I wanted to learn because not a lot of people speak French in Eugene.” That’s another reason why she started learning the language a few years back. “My sister's learning French in high school so she teaches me a lot of things and then I'm also on Duolingo. I know that it's not the perfect thing but it's just nice. My mom's been learning for a couple years so she knows something about it and she helps me with it” This is how Juliana’s been learning it at the time being. 

There are some other countries she would like to go to if she is in Europe, “I've always wanted to go to Germany because I have German in my blood and my grandpa is from Germany and Italy. Italy would always be fun cuz you know I'm also part Italian so that would be a good place to go to also.” She’d like to visit a couple other countries as the continent is quite vast and culturally unique. 

If France or Europe interests you here are a few other things you can do there. As she mentioned, the Eiffel tower and Louver are great places to start, as well as the Notre Dame and Arc de Triomphe. Those places are great if you love culture and art, but if you are more into food and views, other places to check out would be Bordeaux, a city with flowing rivers, the Sainte Chappel with its gothic architecture, and Le Cinq in Paris. Julliana wants to visit many wonders, “If I were to go to France, so I mean obviously you know I'd want to see the Mona Lisa and stuff, but I just don't really have a specific one that I like or a specific amount that I want to see. I'd really just want to explore it all and just see new things that I haven't seen”.

This is all achieved through her hard work toward learning this complex language, and another tool she used that you can use too is Duolingo, “I'm also on Duolingo. I know that it's not the perfect thing but it's just nice,” she explained to me. This is a way that she and you can both learn this complex language. Learning another language makes you bilingual and is a very important skill to have when traveling. One last thing she remarked is “it's just always been a language that I wanted to learn because not a lot of people speak French in Eugene.” So if you live in Eugene, you can add another person to the people that know French here!