So it is another fresh clear day during my language immersion stay in Montpellier. After a late Saturday night with the other students on my French language course we rose pretty late and there was a less than motivated atmosphere in the student residence for the Language School. I for once was not in the worst condition and felt like we should go out, enjoy the beautiful city of Montpellier and practice our French with the locals at a cafe or something.
My positive attempts to rally the troops were being met with mostly sighs and shrugs. There were only one other French student at the residence who was enthusiastic about the idea, Rosa, an Icelandic girl from Reykjavik. We hadn’t spent much time together before so I was interested to hear her motivations for coming to Montpellier to learn French in an immersion school in France. Also we had heard about a great café in a part of town I hadn’t been before and I always like exploring more of the city. The café was called the Mary Cherry and was rumoured to be particularly amazing for cakes. Now I am not that into sweets, my waistline doesn’t appreciate them but Rosa is a HUGE fan.
A Fancy French Cake for Two Un-Fancy French Students
So we strolled towards town on the usual route but then veered off westwards as we got closer to the centre of Montpellier. It is just lovely exploring a new section of the city and taking in all the frenchness; the stone buildings towering either side of a thin street, the cafes and the boutiques. We arrived at Mary Cherry and as we approached we could already see a rainbow of different colours in the form of different cakes. The smell as you came in was phenomenal and we were greeted by Alex the manager who was cleaning down a table. He told us there were some comfier seats upstairs and gave us the wifi code. He asked us if we would prefer to speak in French or English, we said we were always eager to practice what we have been learning on our French immersion course. We got settled upstairs and came back down to choose what we wanted. There’s lots of choice here, lots of different teas and gourmet coffees but they were somewhat of an after-thought as the cakes were calling to us. I went for a lemon cheesecake and Rosa got a caramel cake that was coated in milk chocolate. Luckily we had learnt several phrases for ‘that looks amazing’ on our French immersion course at the language school this week. We took our cakes upstairs and set them aside for a bit. Rosa and I had vowed to get at least a couple exercises done and the cakes would be our reward, so we cracked on at a pace. We were working on the subjunctive today, in my French class most of us are at the stage where we can formulate it in our minds with a bit of time and I felt like just nailing a bit of repetition would get it to stick and become another tool I can use comfortably. We ended up getting on a roll and smashing all of the essential work in half an hour.
So as we promised ourselves we tucked into our cakes and oh my god! It certainly was worth the wait and tasted all the better knowing we had done what we needed to do. We were definitely going to crack on with some more while we were on a role as it feels great when you are ahead on your immersion course but it felt great knowing the essential stuff was sorted. Anything else was extra and Rosa was particularly eager to keep on it as she is preparing for her DELF exam in a couple of weeks.
We worked for a couple of hours, grabbed another drink and then made our way home. The simple reward of a cake and a coffee is surprisingly powerful for finding motivation and felt great. A technique I recommend to anyone learning French in France. We had explored a bit more of Montpellier and were ahead with our work for our French classes so we went home feeling excited for the next day at the language school.