After Explore: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

 

This past summer, I decided to take advantage of an opportunity that the Canadian government offers to students: the Explore Program. It’s a spring or summer program that allows students to move to another province and learn the other national language. For me, that obviously means I was learning French!

The Explore program is a great opportunity for someone to learn French or practice their French in a Francophone environment. I wrote a post about half way through my time in the program which you can read here.

In that post, I detailed exactly what the program was, why I chose to do it, where I was, etc. As such, I wanted to write another post about my thoughts on the program after I’d been home for a while, so let’s dive in.

After Explore: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

How would you describe your experience?

I would describe my experience as one filled with lots of learning. I learned a lot throughout my 6 weeks in Quebec. That includes some French, but mainly, I learned how to deal with circumstances I wasn’t comfortable with and how difficult it is learning a language. I also learned just how much culture Quebecois people have, which to be honest, I wasn’t expecting at all.

There were times I wanted to go home and times I was having tons of fun. It was a mixed bag, that’s for sure.

Did you actually learn French?

I’m not going to lie, I went into the program with unrealistic expectations. I 100% thought I was going to come out of the 6 weeks bilingual. When I look back now, I realize how unrealistic it was to think this. A whole language in 6 weeks… not likely.

However, even though I can’t say I’m fluent in French, I can wholeheartedly say that I am MUCH better than I was before I left. I could now feel confident traveling in a French speaking country and getting by in French.

After explore, I can say that I came out of this program with enough French to get me credit for 2 university courses. That’s a LOT of French!

What were the good, the bad and the ugly parts?

Let’s start with the good. I met a lot of really awesome people while in Quebec, I was able to learn a language for free, I got to experience living in a French speaking place like Quebec for part of my summer. There was a lot of good that came from this experience.

The bad is next. Since you’re in such a small place, going to school in a high school (even though it was university courses), it felt like I was right back in high school again, catty girls and all. It’s unfortunate that even at this age, some people still feel the tendency to make others uncomfortable. I was not pleased how much it felt like high school.

I would also say that I made a mistake with the place I chose to apply to. They said that living in a small town would help me better learn French, and while I think that’s partly true, I think it was much harder to have a good time as well. It made it difficult to make friends when everyone else is fluent in the language. There were more students there that were fluent than those that were not so it made it really hard.

And finally, the ugly. Because I chose Trois-Pistoles as my place of study, I stayed with a local family where I had a room and I also ate at their house. It was great to be in a homestay because it forces you to speak more French with your host parents. On the other hand, my host family was not the cleanest and the food was questionable at best. But the people were so nice so it half made up for the questionable living.

Overall, are you glad you did it?

100% YES!

Even though I can’t say that it was my favourite part of my summer, I really did learn a lot. As I said above, I was able to live in Quebec for 6 weeks, free of charge and take 2 university level classes for free. When in your life does that happen to you?! The answer is pretty much never. It almost felt like I was stealing!

I made some awesome friends from all around the country and got to experience Francophone culture for 6 uninterrupted weeks. It has also inspired me to pursue learning French here in Edmonton. It’s always been a life goal of mine to speak French and this led me one step closer. Can’t beat that!

Explore is an awesome program that I really think more people should take advantage of. Please comment or send me an email if you have any specific questions about the program because I would love to help more people go!

xx Victoria