A little bit of quid pro quo

So I decided to sign up for some conversation exchanges yesterday. Despite being in France and surrounded by the language my French is still really CRAP. I'm annoyed at myself and I feel so stupid. When is it all going to sink it? When is it just going to click? To be honest I probably speak just as much English here as I did back in Sydney - especially with everyone from French class. And we really do try (I swear we do) to speak in French with each other but it gets to that point when the conversation just can't progress any further and we have to revert to English. Besides, it's not much of a conversation when all you can say is 'Did you have a good weekend? What did you do? I did this, that, the other...etc'

But it's interesting how the brain works. Mine is definitely playing against me. Because it seems that once I find out someone can speak English, my brain conveniently forgets every French word I've ever learnt. On the other hand if I know someone can only speak French, all these French words and phrases seem to come out of nowhere. Huh.

The aim of the exchanges is to meet up with a native French speaker wanting to learn English - you spend half the time speaking in French and the other half in English. That way, you both benefit. I've already got a ton of replies after posting up my profile yesterday, yay! The magical phrase seems to be "I'm from Australia". It seems so many people here have a dream to go to Australia one day and they're really fascinated with our country.

One risk of all this is that the person could turn out to be a complete weirdo. But I realise I can always just make some excuse and run away. Looking forward to my first meet-up tomorrow.