Don't panic...PANIC!

Nothing like preparing to move to France to make you realize the cold hard truth of how little French you actually know.  Oh sure, I can sing along with Le Roi Soleil, order a croissant, and ask vital political questions like, "où est la plume de ma tante?"  (and hopefully you were all thinking of the correct response, "elle est sur la table.")  But when it comes to any kind administrative issues, I still feel like a French 101 student. I've been taking French for 14 years, and I don't know the right vocabulary to open a bank account, for example, without sounding like an idiot child ("I need to...start...I mean, OPEN....the thing...for putting my money").  Yep, I'll definitely be walking into the bank with some vocabulary notecards.  Please don't be jealous, I know I'm quite chic.  I do remember one unit about how to rent an apartment, but in general throughout my schooling there was a lot of emphasis on things like "how I spent my vacation", which is useful, but I also would have liked to study "how to speak to my landlady on the phone without sounding like a total tool" (my crippling "French phone fear" not withstanding).  Maybe there needs to be a special class for people getting ready to move there.  Now there's an idea...

But hey, improving our French is one of the reasons we're all doing this, right?  Well, other than the cheese...and the croissants...and the wine...wait, what was I talking about again?

Ohhhhh yeah.  Come to mama.