Aix
Tuesday, 14th October 2008
“I booked with Cactus because my daughter has used your company very successfully. The school and classes were excellent. Our two teachers, Christine and Florence, were great and the course was very well organized with a good variety of exercises.
Aix-en-provence is super. Large enough to be inordinately interesting and attractive but small enough to feel ‘homely’. Wall-to-wall restaurants of all types and price ensured we didn’t starve! The locals are extremely nice (but then I like the French anyway) and Aix is just ... well, so French! Sounds daft but it epitomizes Provence. It is also a good autumn destination due to its fine weather.
Loved Aix - can’t wait to go back. Now that we are home, we can say that we loved the course - although at the time, there was lots of anxiety and ‘blue’ air at the time we put into the homework (mind you, we wanted it to be good so probably spent more time than necessary - particularly on my presentation which I wanted to be perfect! I did not realize how much homework there would actually be and how ‘difficult’ it would be to be ‘thrown in at the deep end’ so to speak. But, it worked - there is no doubt that we have gained in confidence where oral French is concerned and our listening skills have improved enormously - personally, I’m not afraid to actually ‘listen’ to French people speaking to me now because, even if I don’t understand every single word, I certainly know what they are talking about. It was nice working with a group who were in the same situation and being able to realize, after a day or so, that they were not ‘really’ better than us - they just seemed to be at first!
What we enjoyed least about the trip was just the ‘fear’ of making absolute plonkers of ourselves!!! We cannot think of a single thing which went wrong or which we would have changed. Loved every minute of it and you may certainly quote us on that!”
(Marianne E Corlett, October 2008)
Tags: aix, provence, aix-en-provence, french
Posted by Augusta 2008-10 under Success Stories,
Permalink
