Marseille, France – Bouge De Là

After signing the contract with XYZ, I had all of August to celebrate and enjoy. I decided to go to Marseille, France and learn some French, swim in the Mediterranean and eat delicious food every night. I signed up for a French language class with Alliance Francaise and rented a studio apartment about 10 minutes from the beach.

I felt supremely confident in my body. I’d just cycled over 2000 km and run the Berlin marathon a year before. I also felt masterful in my business abilities. The subsidiary I’d come to Europe to start had – under my leadership – grown from 0 to over $1 million in annual sales by the time I left the company.

But my brain? Was my mind still as sharp as it had been 10 or 20 years before or were the cells in my head starting to die off in kamikaze-like fashion? I put it to a test. I’d learn a new language. French.

I’d already tried learning French a few times in the past, during college in the US and while living in Berlin. Now in Marseille, I’d be totally submerged, which is how I learned German 15 years before. I was quite anxious, bought a dictionary and started making flash cards. In class, I might have been the oldest but I worked 100% harder than anyone else.

One intensive class is not normally enough to really be able to kickstart speaking a new language on a daily basis. You also have to drink loads of booze. I’ll always be eternally grateful to Marseille’s bars for providing enough pastis that learning French was fun. Jokes aside, when I’d first moved to Germany, I discovered that spending time drinking beer with friends was the best way to my practice conversational German. Thus, in Marseille I spent the nights in Cours Julien butchering lovely French verbs such as “etre” and “avoir”. At a maximum, I could conjugate them in the present tense, so I wasn’t talking about much. A typical conversation would be me saying my name, “Je m’appelle Ryan” and where I was from, “Je suis Americaine”. If I was lucky, I’d find someone sufficiently drunk that they only wanted somebody (me) to listen to them. That was fine with me. I’d practice my listening skills.

After a month in Marseille, I was able to hold a very basic conversation in the present tense, but I was clearly the most improved in our class. I knew I’d have to come back to France for part “deux” but the experience, learning intensive French, revealed something new about myself. Not only was I athletic and had great business skills. I also still had a sharp, pliable mind.

I was discovering who I really am.

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