Mike and Rion went to Paris and I've been following their stories ever since. Mike recently described how he had a language breakthrough when Rion was out of town and he was out drinking.
Which of course reminds me of a story. Way back in college, I had a relatively early morning French class. Why French? I had taken Spanish in high school and felt like really mixing myself up. ie: it wasn't where I was focusing, and I especially had a hard time with the accent since the 1/2 hour of listening the professor didn't help nearly as much as if I had spent more time with native speakers.
During greek week, I sometimes participated in the wonderful tradition of "sunrise cocktails". At some point I realized my French class was starting in a few minutes so I took the pitcher of lemonballs I had just made and headed downhill. My professor was a young French woman who was probably wondering what the hell she was doing talking French to us. She liked us well enough, but I dont think anyone in the class was destined for mastery. As she talked, she wandered over and asked what I had in the pitcher, so I offered her some. She took one sip and her eyes bugged out. All of a sudden she realized I was 1/2way to drunk and a significant portion of the rest of the class was as well.
At the end of class, she asked me to stay for a second. In english, she explained that while she didn't want to see me like that again, that she had been extremely surprised to see my accent improve dramatically as a result. I'm pretty sure it somethiing to do with altered perceptions and greater ability to not overthink "how" to say something.
which reminds me, I should sign up for classes again...