I took French when I was in high school and somehow managed to test into a high level class in college. That 5-6 year education has been the crutch I've been leaning on the last few weeks.

While I'm no longer conversational, I can certainly get us around, have brief exchanges with people and generally haven't managed to embarrass myself too much.

Learning a new language is hard. Trying to remember a language you learned 15 years ago is pretty tricky too, and I'm constantly frustrated with myself. Fortunately, with a few exceptions, all the French people I've met have been lovely and helped me communicate accordingly. (There have been a few people that are, in general, pretty annoyed with my English and obviously American accent. Oddly, it usually happens between the glass at the bus or train stations, where one might anticipate that someone would have encountered many travelers from all over the world.)

Prior to leaving, my wonderful boss and friend, Julie told me to just dive right in with it. I also downloaded Duolingo, a pretty good app that helps you with your language lessons, so that has allowed me to reacquaint myself with the language. So here I am. We are in our sixth French city and I'm trudging along just fine.

We did just schedule part of our trip to Portugal, which neither one of us speaks, so here's to hoping we can muddle through that in a few weeks. Any Portuguese-speaking friends with pointers?