Taking on French

I love French, I have always dreamed with speaking fluent French. The kind of French that lets you slip into a conversation and make interesting remarks, or at the very least understand what's going on. The truth is, some people think I do speak French ... fluently. Au contraire, all my native French speaking friends know that I don't really speak french that well.

It's all relative ...


So I want to come clean friends ... I can speak what I call "transactional" French. I can ask for things, order stuff, do a few exchanges of pleasantries and pass as a very polite foreign French speaker (with a weird Spanish, English accent). In fact, if you see me talking you might even think I am quite good (unless you speak French fluently). But honestly, I cannot consider myself good at this. I cannot, for example, write a letter to complain to my landlord that I do not have a place to park my bike and that they should make an arrangement, since life in an apartment is already lacking convenience. [any interest out there in helping draft one in French?!]  I cannot explain (in less than 15 minutes) to the uniformed man asking for my ticket why I missed my stop. And so a lot of things go undone in this life.

That's why, I have all my trust in Sebastian. My master plan is to wait for him to get a little older and fluent in French - which should happen in a few months - so that we can catch up on all those "French to-do's". Ahh, landlord, wait until I show up in your office with my translator by my side, which happens to be a very charming young man. We should be able to find a solution for my bike ... and little-by-little my French to-do list will disappear. 

In the meantime, I have my French lessons to look forward to. Every Tuesday at 2pm for an hour.

An hour a week!? yeah, that will get me far ...

- A