As many of you know, I just returned from some time away in the South of France. It should come as no surprise that I love spending my travels learning new things, and this was hardly an exception.
Several months ago, I got the idea of going to France for an immersion-style getaway where I would stay with a family during my time there. The hope was to improve my French speaking skills, and what better way to accomplish that than by living with at least one native speaker? I had been looking around, but wasn’t really finding anything that felt like the right fit.
In doing additional research and talking to coworkers, I stumbled across something even better. A French school called Centre International d’Antibes. They’ve been around since 1985, so they’ve been doing this for quite a while, and it seemed like it was worth looking into. Especially because they are accredited by my airline in the event that I decide to take our language of destination (LOD) test to be a French speaker.
I looked over what they offered, submitted my intent to enroll, took my placement test, and a few months later, I was on the nonstop flight from Atlanta to Nice.
Several people asked me to recount the experience after I returned, and I figured the best way to capture this information was on my blog. I mean, let’s face it: I stuffed my face along the way too at some pretty incredible restaurants. I’ll include the names and links to those at the bottom of the post! For consistency, of course.
But first: a recap of my week as a student in the South of France!
The first thing that comes to mind is just how happy I am that people arrived from all of the world to study a foreign language that wasn’t English. We’ve come to a time where English has become the default language around the world. You say something in a foreign language to be polite or try your hand, and the person invariably replies in English, because they also want to practice. But sitting in my French classes (where, of course, everyone in the room spoke English in some capacity), it wasn’t allowed. We were there to speak French. Et c’est tout.
My class was filled with all walks of life from around the world. It was fun to be one of the only Americans, and they were shocked that I came from so far away for just a week’s worth of classes. But such is the life of a flight attendant, which I explained to them on day one when we introduced ourselves. We had someone as young as 15 years old in our class; a young girl from Switzerland spending three months studying. All the way up to a 65-year-old hoping to better his French skills. It was an all ages affair.
And because I enrolled in the Cultural Program, where we went on field trips each afternoon post-class, I met even more people. As a quick recount, there were students in the program from Denmark, the UK, Bratislava, Brazil, Norway, Botswana, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, and several from both Switzerland and Germany. Plus, I’m sure many more.
There are actually two school campuses, and most of us spent our week down in the Port of Antibes location. It was really cool because we were right in the middle of it all, and could go grab a croissant and something to drink on our quick, mid-morning school break. I even had a laid-back lunch or two before rejoining the group for our afternoon excursions. I will say that it was quite a hike from the “Dormtel,” a word that I made up to capture the spirit of where we lived. Was it a dorm? Was it a hotel? Who could know. But this is where we were assigned to live for the week near Juan-Les-Pins, and we braved the heat and humidity each morning on our journey to school. I suppose that’s how French women don’t get fat; they walk. Everywhere. Rain or shine. C’est la vie.
Some other observations I had were just how many returning students there were! One guy in my class (a train conductor…how cool is that?) comes every year, and he knew our professor, Patricia, and also knew that it was her birthday the final day of class. So he brought Swiss chocolates as a gift that we all shared in the classroom.
Another new friend, a Lufthansa flight attendant named Suz, said she plans to come back monthly and pop-in for a week here and there. You can only imagine how my geographical jealousy took over when she told me that! There were actually a number of flight attendants (past & present) who I met during the week. Maren was the first person I spoke to while we waited for our rooms to be ready in the “Dormtel” courtyard. We got to talking, and she had been a flight attendant for 27 years with various European airlines. Suz, Maren and I swapped stories all week at dinner, while the others laughed and listened to our wild tales. And Maren got to live vicariously through us since she now has an office job.
The real takeaway here is just how big the community of international travelers is who take foreign language holidays. It was really incredible! I almost cried on the last day of school because I was genuinely sad to leave. It was by far one of the most rewarding and fun experiences I’ve ever had. I made fast friends with a small but unique group of people who I have no doubt I will see again. I’ve already started brainstorming work trips to see some of them. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there’s nothing like this job if you’re an international citizen with friends in all corners of the globe.
But back to the classes. My class was level A-2, and it was taught rapidly and entirely in French. There were only 12 of us in the tiny (and sweltering) classroom with varying degrees of French speaking ability, so that made the classes both fun and challenging. Occasionally, we would whisper something to each other in English for clarification. And Google Translate helped us search for words we didn’t know or needed to see for ourselves. It was so weird to be a student in the 21st Century with technology at my fingertips!
Would I go back and do this again like some of the friends that I met? Absolutely. In fact, I plan to. Maybe even with some of those friends. But I will definitely go for longer than one week next time and I will stick with an Airbnb in town. The one I rented for my first two nights in Antibes was less than a three-minute walk from school and it was perfect. I would choose that next time without a doubt.
I also want to speak on Antibes, where the classes were held. I didn’t do a ton of research ahead of time, which is unlike me, and I didn’t really arrive there with any expectations. But I kind of liked it. It allowed me to take it all in and form my own opinion with boots on the ground. And that opinion is, Antibes is magic.
It’s not flashy at all. It honestly reminds me a lot of Newport Beach before so many nouveau-riche people moved in and have changed it for the worse. It’s really just a beach town with a giant port (2,000 slips, to be exact) attached. That makes it the biggest anchorage in Europe, so you can bet that there were some pretty incredible yachts bobbing in the harbor. But you would never know it on-land. On the last day of class, our assignment was to take a list of questions and interview people around town. Three of us set out, half expecting to be shut down at every turn. But it wasn’t like that at all. People were friendly, interested and truly excited that we had come from three different countries to learn their language and enjoy their port city.
After Antibes, I took the train to an even smaller town to the west called Bandol. The French rosé we love most in the world hails from there, so it seemed like a logical choice since I was already so close. I stayed for two nights with assistance from an amazing Airbnb host. She helped me correct an idiotic oversight that almost left me homeless there for a night. I guess there are worse places to be without shelter than a beach town on the Cote d’Azur though! In fact, the little town is so small that I think it only has one Uber. She was appalled when we looked up the price to go five minutes back to the train station on Monday morning, and she couldn’t take me because she had to work. So, she phoned her Mom & Dad and they came and picked me up. When I tell you that I continually run into the most hospitable people around the world, I mean it. They spoke very little English, and were thrilled to hear about my courses in Antibes as they whisked me to the platform for my train to Marseille and then onto Paris.
The takeaway here is that you’re never too old to be a student if you really want to be one. And as a lifelong learner who has intense intellectual curiosity, I’m always going to further my pursuit of education, whether that’s with a whisk in my hand or a pocket translator hidden from my professor’s view. Because let’s face it, there were probably just as many lessons learned outside of the classroom along the way as there were inside of it.
Important Links & Recommendations:
Centre International d’Antibes
L’Arazur (Didn’t make it here but it’s on the list for next time)
Culinary Hopscotch 