Never let your schooling interfere with your education

This quote (I think by Mark Twain) was advice given to us last summer during our 2 week training on language acquisition techniques. The main point of the quote for language learning was, don't forget that your goal is to communicate with other people, not to ace a verb conjugation test (although conjugating verbs correctly does help get your point across to people better). Thus, don't spend all of your time doing homework and studying for a test. Get out and talk to people!

One way that I've been able to do this is by basketball. I've begun practicing with a team and it's been great so far for getting practice in both listening to French and speaking. 

Probably the neatest part of this opportunity though is that the coach is from the same city we're moving to: Thies, Senegal. Last night, she was trying to teach me some Wolof phrases (the main African language in Senegal) using French (she doesn't speak English). Needless to say, we didn't cover much.

It's pretty cool to think that playing basketball is a great way for me to achieve my main objective in France, learn French. It doesn't hurt that I'm getting back in shape at the same time either (actually, it does kind of hurt today).