Ta-Nehisi Coates is spending the next seven weeks away from his blog and in a French language immersion course at Middlebury College. Here are Middlebury’s offerings. What a fantastic way to spend the summer! I knew Middlebury was famous for teaching languages, but I didn’t know they had summer programs. It’s impossible for me to imagine leaving Julie with the kids for seven weeks, or leaving my job for so long, so I could go do this, but boy, what a Bucket List experience this is.

The video above is a whimsical clip from Middlebury, showing a Chinese language immersion student struggling with English at the end of her summer program there. Click on the link to TNC’s blog post. There is a short video of him being interviewed en français. He’s not very good in French. At all. To be perfectly honest, though my pronunciation is much, much better than his, my vocabulary and grammar is not much better. It’ll be interesting to compare that video to one he’ll no doubt make at summer’s end.

An entire summer spent speaking French. Sounds grueling, but also irresistible. Good for his wife and his editors, letting him go off and do something like this.