Je peux!

The other day I was talking to another exchangie here in Switzerland, and we hadn't seen each other in a while so we were catching up on stories, all in french. She stopped me half way through a story to tell me that my french has improved a lot. She reminded me of our second day in Switzerland. We met for the first time and she asked "comment t'appelle tu?" (what's your name?) and my response was a blank stare. I had no idea what she asked me and I told her that I couldn't speak french.

Recently, I've had numerous people telling me that I haven't progressed, that my french sucks, that I'm not trying and the list goes on and on. and sadly, I believed them. I was disappointed in myself and began to think of all the things I still couldn't understand. But all I needed was a slight reminder of where I was on my first day, completely lost and understanding nothing. I couldn't conjugate verbs, I could only speak in the present tense. I had no idea what I was doing. So for all the people telling me I suck, please keep in mind that although I'm nowhere near to fluent, I can still do it and I've worked so hard to be where I am. I just read a 400 page book in french and understood it all. If that's not improvement, I don't know what is.