Alliance Française

Last night, my husband and I went to an "Alliance Française" meeting. I heard about this association from a French gentleman that I met at the career consulting firm I go to. Luckily, the meeting is held every second Thursday of the month at a Mexican restaurant in Santa Clara, which is only few minutes drive for us.

The meeting started at 6:30PM, we got there around 6:45PM. There were only 2-3 other people there. We were nicely greeted by the organizer. Then, we ordered dinner and socialized with the other members. Many people came afterwards, I think by 8PM, we were about 30. The purpose of that meeting is to network and practice French. The group was very diversified with people from different background. We even met couple of Americans who learned French in school and wanted to practice it. One of them never lived in a francophone environment and I was pretty impressed by his good vocabulary and grammar. There were people from France, Algeria, Italy, ... We were the only French Canadian last night, but I heard there are usually a couple others. Overall, we met interesting people working in interesting fields. We even exchanged contacts... My husband would have to bring his business cards next time ;).

It was a lot of fun, we stayed late and the restaurant had to kick us out. We got home around 11PM. I was so tired, but very pleased by the productive evening. First thing that my husband did when we got home was to set a reminder on his Google Calendar for this meeting, I guess he has intention of going back every month :D. I think I have gone to more social activities in the few months then he did in the 6 years he lived in California! He also started attending free workshops with me, especially the ones offered by the Entrepreneur Center in downtown San Jose. On Monday, we attended a workshop called "Get Top Positions on Google/Yahoo - Increase Your Sales!". It was free and we got to learn and meet people. Yup, since I got here, I've found enough activities to keep me busy and entertained.

However, I still miss home...