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From the beginning of May until the end of June, I had the opportunity to go to a French language school in the northeast part of Paris.  The institute I attended is called Campus Langues.  The program there was primarily focused on exposure to the French language in a semiformal classroom setting.  It was a unique program for a couple of reasons.  First, the institute had around 200 students, most of which were from Asia and the Middle East, while some come from South America.  There were only four Americans that I heard of or met.  This being the case, I was forced to make friends from all over the world, which was definitely a highlight of the summer.  Secondly, the institute tries to give the students as much ability to improve their French as possible.  One way they did this was assign all students to a class for the mornings that was chosen based on a student’s level of French.  However, in the afternoons one could pick from a large group of activities to attend.  These activities could be linguistically focused (I had the choice between phonetics, grammar, and vocabulary classes) and culturally focused (they often had evening walks through historic parts of Paris or trips to see French films).  Overall, the experience at the institute helped improve my French significantly, as I ended up skipping a year of French.     

While I was not in school, I explored Paris and was able to make several friends.  One of those friends I made was a book seller named Kevin.  He is an Algerian immigrant who became a bouqaniste (a book seller who specializes in rare books) because of his love and extensive knowledge of rare, used books.  He was one of the few venders who sold copies of my favorite author, Georges Bernanos, and I ended up finding several very rare first edition books (one of which was signed!) that I couldn’t have found elsewhere.  Kevin and I ended up spending countless hours discussing early 20th century French literature, French culture, and Christian-Muslim relations (of which he had a unique point of view growing up as a Catholic in a heavily Muslim populated area).  In the end, I am very grateful for this opportunity that would not have happened if it was not for the CWCTP. I learned a lot that I could not have otherwise. -- Jessee Kilgore