Backpack in Morocco and West Africa. And when I say backpack, I don’t mean just follow the hostel trail and stay with other foreigners. Try to stay independent and maximize your contact with the local people. (I learned active French over several months hitchhiking in the region, for example. Before going, I had a decent passive reading knowledge like any bookish European). I highly recommend learning French there because the local people are much more tolerant of mistakes than in France proper. They will just be happy you can communicate. And yet, many urban Moroccans and Senegalese speak French so well, so virtually natively, that they are good models to learn from.
