making progress

A couple of months ago, we discovered that there is a good bit of programming on tv that has closed captioning for the hearing impaired. It mostly works for documentaries, which suits me fine, as I'm more likely to watch those as anything else. This has helped me tremendously, since my biggest difficulty with French is listening comprehension. Now I can put spoken French together with the text on the screen, and I can already tell that it's making a big difference.

Did I mention that I've decided to go back to the choir at the Conservatory in Troyes? Yes, I think I did. So yesterday I went after my French class to register for the class. I went to a rehearsal last week, and I thought that my sister-in-law had said something to the director about my coming back, but in fact, she hadn't said anything at all - or else I would have tried to contact her outside of rehearsal time to ask her about coming back. Luckily, she didn't have any problem with my coming back, but did ask me to get registered as soon as possible.

So, I went. Happily, the secretary's office was still open and I was able to do everything on my own. As I was sitting there, signing off on the paperwork and writing a check, I remembered that a year ago I'd had to drag Steph with me to do this. I hadn't even been able to understand what was going on.

But the real trick was when I had to give the secretary our new address. Our new street address isn't a proper name (often streets are named after famous people here) and, if said badly, can be heard as at least two or three other words. The first time I gave the new address, I had to correct myself, and even Steph has had to correct someone. But yesterday I said it perfectly, and the secretary typed it correctly into the database. I very nearly skipped out of the office after that.

I may not be fluent yet, but I am definitely making progress.