Back To School

Back To School Night at the middle school tonight. They make the parents follow the kids' schedule, with ten minutes allotted to each class. M's schedule this year seems to involve a lot of crossing the campus: the only two consecutive classes he has near each other are PE and English/History. 30's wing to 80's wing to gym to 10's wing to 90's wing to 50's wing.

My project this year is to learn French along with M, since we're planning a trip to Europe next summer. I like the pace of middle-school French: they take two years to cover a single year of high school French :-) So far, so good--assignments are posted on the web site, and the book has come home, so I've memorized the alphabet and the basic greetings that I didn't already know. I've been to France before, but since I was surrounded by English speakers on my business trips, the only French I learned mostly revolved around ordering lunch and dinner (un boule vanille, anyone?). M is having some trouble wrapping his tongue around the language. I avoided singing in French for a long time, but after the first concert I did with S&P in 2007 (almost entirely in French), I think I'm finally comfortable with the pronunciation.