I installed Skype. The video window was black. Tried Photo Booth, and sure enough, my camera was not working. A Google search suggested I reboot the computer, and now the video seems to work. I need to find someone to try a chat with before I actually book a lesson with the teacher I picked. I'll ask around at the canoe club tomorrow morning. There's bound to be someone who has Skype and who will try a chat with me to see if it works. Then I'll book a lesson. There are lots of teachers to choose from. For starters I picked one who is a native French speaker from France and whose speaking in her intro recording is clear and easy to understand. Skype has a feature for a test call, and the audio works, but there's no video in the test call.
I'll probably start a thread to report on how it goes and, eventually my progress, or failure.
Before I enrolled in Spanish class around the mid-1990's I tried several teach-yourself methods, but none of them worked. I needed an actual teacher and a structured study plan. We had three classes a week, and for each class (or each week?) there was a vocabulary list to learn, and a grammar subject. Then in class we (mostly the teacher) talked, using the vocabulary and grammar we had learned so far. After a year and a half I enrolled in the exchange program and went to Mexico. After about another year and a half, I was enrolled in a history class taught in Spanish for Mexican students when I realized one day that I had actually understood everything the teacher had said in his lecture, though I still couldn't understand him when he switched to informal Spanish for digressions or to describe the homework. I think I'd been in Mexico for three years when I realized I was using compound verb tenses without thinking about them. And at about the same time if I was startled by something, Spanish came out instead of English. And my bilingual Mexican friend, Ana, started asking me, in English, "How do you say X in Spanish?"
I cannot hope for easy fluency in French in one year. But maybe I can learn enough to get by in French Polynesia when I go back there in a year to swim with the whales again.