Truly INTENSIVE Study

I went into this thinking I would be attending French class maybe three days a week, without a schedule or anything. When I arrived, we had class Monday through Friday, alternating between half days and full days of all French. This really put a damper on my experience, as I felt like I didn't have much time to myself. What saved the trip were the excursions with the onsite director to several famous sites, as well as welcome and farewell dinners at fancy restaurants (le fromage et l'eau pour moi, merci). All the time spent on these excursions were the high points of my two and a half months abroad, not including my few solo trips outside of France which were also wonderful. If I could do it again, I wish I could have just done the excursions and spent the rest of the time traveling by myself (which isn't to say the education wasn't good--it was, but I didn't know ahead of time how much there would be).