This French immersion will be based in and around Foix, Ariège, which is a gorgeous area in the French Pyrenees. Meet me here on the morning of Monday, January 18th and we will embark on a joyful, cozy week of French immersion.

We'll start with breakfast around the best brioche I have ever tasted: a perfect opportunity for spontaneous conversations at every participant's level. We'll continue with a moment of "show and tell" so that each group member can produce French no matter how skilled. The morning will be wrapped up with a creative activity or a game.

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We'll have lunch at a local restaurant. In the afternoon, I will show you around the medieval town of Foix, our base, with its 1000-year-old castle that sits in the middle. If you're feeling gourmand, we'll stop at the best pâtisserie in town: their desserts are perfectly refined and unique.

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Cooking is a great way to learn a language because it has constant visuals and context to help understanding, lots of repetition, and always an immediate use for the language (plus a good motivation to understand what I say: a scrumptious meal). For those reasons, we will cook dinner together.

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Nights are spent in shared apartments (one bedroom per participant), one of them being our basecamp for morning activities and for dinner cookouts. (Separate, private lodging available for a surcharge).

All 5 days will work on the same model: we meet at our basecamp apartment at 9 am for breakfast together and spend the rest of the morning all cozy inside, as the wintery world slowly wakes up. We leave plenty of room for organic, spontaneous conversations, and French practice is also guided by a daily "show and tell" and a creative activity or game. For maximum practice no matter what your level of French is, you will be asked to show us something and tell us about it every day, and you will also have the opportunity of leading an activity once in the week if you would like to.

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Lunch will be a good opportunity to discover more traditional French food at a different local restaurant each day (you'll be amazed by the quality!), and the afternoon will be dedicated to an excursion to explore Ariège. As for dinner, we'll cook it together for contextualized practice of the language.​

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On the afternoon of day 2, I will show you the beautiful valley where my house is, to admire the wintery beauty of the awe-inspiring landscape. We can even stop by the majestic waterfall up the road! After all, Ariège is known for its wonderfully thriving nature!

You'll see, at our daily shared breakfast, I'll regale you with amazing local products, including old-fashioned sourdough bread from my favorite bakery, delicious local sheep and goat dairy, cozy jams made of local figs, quince, chestnuts, currants and more.​

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Are you wondering if you'll get breaks? Yes, of course. We often take a break after lunch, and/or after our afternoon excursion. I only lead immersions for groups of 3-7 participants, for optimal language acquisition, but also so that we can follow everyone's flow organically. So rest assured that we will take care of your needs so that you can focus most of your energy on having a great time in Ariège, and on acquiring lots of French.​

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On the afternoon of day 3, I will take you to Mirepoix, a beautiful village with the allure of Beauty and the Beast, with a striking cathedral, and a definitie gastronomic flair in its restaurants!​

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All along this Deep French immersion, I will pedagogically guide you towards progress, by talking at the pace and vocabulary level that is right for you, and by using lots of visuals and context. To diversify your language input and opportunities, I will also occasionally invite guests who will tell you about their local lives. Ariège is full of potters, artists, musicians, and folks with work and pastimes you did not even know existed!

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In the afternoon of day 4, we will go to Ax-les-Thermes, a town that is representative of a whole era in the Pyrenees: when in the 1800s the urban upper classes started visiting for health vacations in hot spring resorts. Just like other such towns, Ax-les-Thermes benefited from that economic boost and the thermal baths are still here today, along with winter sport galore. You will get a chance to dip your feet in the hot spring foot baths in the streets, or to go in the hot spring resort for a well-deserved 2 hours of relaxation (extra €25 fee for those who choose to go to the baths).​

​If we're still cold when we return to Foix, I will teach you my different ways of making yummy hot chocolate. Well, actually, I'll most likely have shown you a few different ways on previous days already. 

Friday is market day in Foix! So after breakfast and morning activities, we'll take a tour of market before heading to our last restaurant for lunch. You'll see that even though it's winter, market stands boast nice local goodies of all sorts. And if we're lucky, we'll witness the local cireur shout out local announcements.

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In the afternoon, I will take you on our last excursion: a guided atelier around wool. Indeed, wool is harvested yearly from the many herds of sheep that populate the Pyrenees mountains, to be spun and turned into sweaters, scarves, house insulation, and even mattresses!

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The immersion experience will end around 5 pm so that participants can go on their return journey smoothly. You can extend your stay by staying one or more extra nights in Foix, or by touring the beautiful urban center of Toulouse, just one hour north.

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When you leave, you'll be surprised how much more French you are using, and you will probably feel a certain brain fog: "am I supposed to switch back to English?" Most likely, you will feel that French is much more an integral part of you than before you came.