On April 5, 2008, I made a trip from Paris for an hour by TGV watching beautiful Burgundy’ s views, such as, bright green just starting budding, fresh meadows and undulating hills.
Claudine-sensei waited for me at the station and took me to the lovely classy stone building. An apartment with 3 rooms was fully equipped and ready all for myself. As I requested to have breakfast by myself, I cooked food in the fridge and made coffee and toasts and bread by myself.
Claudine came from upstairs to my apartment every morning at 8:30 sharp saying “Ça va ?”, then the lesson started. Her carefully detailed and repeating exercises organized my French brain nicely. Although my memory would be a question, the memos Claudine gave me during the lessons become a precious guide for my studying French in future. With a short coffee break, the morning lessons lasting until noon were very exciting and gone very fast. Learning pronunciation, grammar and hearing and speaking French at my level in the actual life scenes improved my French with a huge progress, in spite of only a week stay. As of the communication, my funny French wordings sometimes brought huge laughs between us or confusions to Claudine, but every time, she tried to use simple wording or even using Japanese, so I was comfortable with our communication perfectly.
Short trips in the afternoon were very interesting, like meeting a pilgrim visiting to Compostelle. I visited Semur en Auxois, Noyers sur Serein, Vézelay and l’Abbaye de Fontenay and had many impressive experiences. One day, we were invited to dinner at a local artist living in a small village near-by.
Moreover, Claudine is very good at cooking and prepared lunches and dinners as the Burgundy local food. At every meal, I could not help myself repeating “Yummy! Yummy!”. Claudine even cleaned and put away dishes for me, so it was the week I felt as if I became a queen who had her own tutor, chef and guide.
Kimiko Yasui (68 years old)
