Dominion
Post New Zealand
"Bon jewer Villefranche" by Patricia Donovan
When I
climbed the hill to the tiny flat I’d rented for a
month in Villefranche-sur-Mer and looked out over
one of the Riviera’s most beautiful bays, I remembered
Mrs Wickham, my third-form French teacher. « Bon jewer,
» she pronounced each morning. « Come ant allay voo
? »
Mrs Wickham mangled the French language and I loathed
reciting what at the time seemed meaningless conjugations.
Yet something of those classes resonated and by the
end of high school all things French had become a
passion. Arriving in Villefranche to spend a month
at the Institut de Français last northern summer was
the realisation of a long-held dream.
There is a huge range of language schools in France.
Most offer classes in the morning, leaving the afternoons
for sightseeing. At the Institut de Français, they
take things much more seriously. This was total immersion.
My day started at 8.15 a.m with breakfast and finished
at 5.30 p.m. And French only, s’il vous plait. Anyone
heard speaking anything other than French was fined
instantly, $2 a word. Happily this was a rule easy
to keep because our limited French was the only common
language.
The institute has about 70 students at a time, with
eight to 10 a class, and they come from all over the
world. My classmates included university students
from Germany and Britain, retired school teachers
from Norway and the United States, an economist from
Argentina, a fashion designer from Russia and a policeman
from Switzerland.
I regretted not arriving a few days early to give
myself time to get over the jet lag because the course
began with a three-hour oral and written exam, an
ordeal that set the tone for the next four weeks.
You can attend a course for two or three weeks ; I
chose a month.
It doesn’t matter how much French you have because
the school caters for speakers of all levels. I was
somewhere in the middle and each day was a fairly
demanding round of classes, discussion groups and
language laboratories, followed by homework in the
evening.
Sometimes we returned to school after dinner to watch
and discuss a French movie. Some evenings we walked
into the village to one of its many marvellous restaurants,
or took a 20-minute bus ride to Nice, always speaking
only French.
But it wasn’t all hard work. The Institute’s excellent
teachers were good company and discussions over lunch
each day were interesting and topical. An exemple
of a meal was onion soup followed by trout with almonds,
with a cherry savarin for dessert, all served by the
school’s chef.
The lessons were always fun. Each afternoon, for example,
started with two classes coming together to talk about,
say, French wine and cheese (with plenty of both to
taste) or what was in that day’s newspaper. I found
this particularly helpful for understanding the news
on French television.
There were parties and guided tours. We took trips
to Monaco and to the medieval villages of St Paul
de Vence and Tourette sur Loup.
Just living in Villefranche for a month was a joy.
I walked to school each morning along cobbled streets
lined with old stone walls dressed in riotous hats
of pink and purple bougainvillea. Across ochre rooftops
was the soft blue haze of the Mediterranean, St Jean
Cap Ferrat to the south, Nice to the north. In the
weekends I swam in the bay, wandered through the themed
gardens of the Villa Rothschild or, best of all, sat
in cafes and watched the local world go by.
I missed the end-of-course party, the champagne financed
by those fines, $12 of which was mine. It was hard
to leave but I had an early plane to catch to Paris
where I spent the weekend revelling in the use of
my much improved French. It has come a long way since
those tortuous classes at girls high !
