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La rentrée, and coming back to a place you have lived
Alex has picked his month well without knowing it. France organises itself around **la rentrée** — the return in September — to a degree that surprises newcomers. It is not only the school year: parliament reconvenes, publishers release their autumn novels in the 'rentrée littéraire', companies restart projects parked in July, magazines run their new-season issues, and the shops fill with stationery for weeks. August empties the cities, September refills them, and the first week of it carries a charge the calendar year's opening in January does not. This matters practically. Between roughly mid-July and the end of August a great deal of France is genuinely closed — small shops with a handwritten 'fermeture annuelle' sign, doctors' surgeries, the artisan you needed. Decisions do not get made, emails go unanswered, and nobody considers this a failure. Arriving for work or study in August means a fortnight of waiting; arriving in September means arriving with everyone else. The other thing this lesson is about is subtler, and anyone who has lived abroad and gone back will recognise it. Returning to a city you learnt a language in is not the same as visiting it. The language is still there, but a year of not using it has moved it: comprehension survives better than production, the words come back faster than the reflexes, and the first two days feel like a loss that the third day mostly undoes. Alex's year away is why this lesson re-opens the passé composé rather than pressing on — and if you have taken a break from this course, it is doing the same job for you.