Heading to France

For those of you that don't know, I'll be heading to France in few days. In the 8 weeks I am there, I will be studying French in a small town.

I decided to create a blog to share my adventures and my best pictures. In this first blog, I will answer the most frequent quetions I get -- what made me decide to do this, how did I select a school and am I going alone?

The idea to do this came when a reporter was interviewing me about resigning from my prior job. He asked what I was going to do and I really had no idea. I had never not worked -- at least not since early teens. I thought about going to more baseball games, participating in a book club, spending more time with loved ones, but none of these really seemed to be big enough for such a major life change. I quickly thought of what had I wanted to do that I had not done and answered that I was thinking of studying French in France.

I had wanted to do this when I studied French in junior high, but my family couldn't afford a European trip let alone an extended stay. By the time I finished high school, I had a child. Over the next few months, France kept coming to mind. I thought my child is grown, I have the resources and I have the time but I still hesitated. With much encouragement from James, I decided it was now or never and began to make definative plans.

Selecting the program and location was tough. I identified the Coeur de France program via internet. Through the school I connected with a previous attendee who was over 40, from the U.S. After a great conversation I was convinced that this would be the place for me and enrolled. It was so busy that I had to wait a long time to get into the program. I will start a week from Monday. (The picture on the blog is my school at night. I'm eager to see if it really look like this.)

I will be living in a small town -- only about 1600 people so that may be a bigger change than being in France.

I am going alone but will participate in group French classes.

My plan is to blog about 3 times a week although depending on what is happening this may vary.

Now, I have to get back to the myriad of things that one must do before going overseas for an extended period of time. With the internet the travel arrangements were easy and no visa was required for stays of less than 90 days, however I was challenged in finding a phone that would work. Packing for 8 weeks is also a challenge. You'll be able to judge how well I did when you see my pictures.

Au revoir.