HON HON HON: or how I came to love French

Since my wee childom, I have loved languages. I will credit this with learning that my Great-Grandmother had been of Welch ancestry, but I suspect it began much earlier. I oft wished growing up that we went to the Greek Orthodox church across the street so I could learn Greek (what a great use of church! learning another language!). I had two Usborne First Thousand Words in [Language] books and I thought they were the best things ever. I had the German and the Spanish and loved looking through them for the little duck while "learning" German and Spanish. My mom quickly caught on that I was interested in languages and gave me possibly the best gift for a 90s child with a passion for languages: Rock 'n Learn French volume 1 (with cassette!). I tore through that shit and had the whole cassette memorized. "Hello. Bonjour! Hello Bonjour! How are you? Ça va?Fine, thank you. Bien, merci. What is your name? Comment t-appelles-tu? My name is Jean. Je m'appelle Jean." This tiny book ignited a love of the French language. Though the other books had helped me in my love of languages, it was probably hearing the French language (and on-command... all the time) that led to my particular admiration for French. (As a side note, I would make my mom read me Rottkäppchen in German a lot when I was a kid, but there's only so many times you can ask that of your mom. :) )

Ignoring an extended foray into Welsh (which included the creation of a website dedicated to learning Welsh which I can't link due to it having been on the now defunct geocities), I focused on French. Then, one day, fifth-grade-me got extraordinarily lucky. A new neighbor moved in... and she was French! and she taught French! So my mom's friend, my mom and I began to take group lessons in French from our neighbor (heretofore to be referred to as Madame. While there are sure to be many more Madames in this blog, she is and will always be my first Madame). I cannot express how lucky I was to learn from Madame at such an early age. Using le nouveau sans frontières series, we learned in a very oral-focused fashion. Writing and reading can be learned later with practice (and, trust me, I got my comeuppance later when I took my first French class in college and realized in Pre-Revolutionary French that I had never written an essay in French. Oy. I learned quickly), but learning early on that it is possible for you to communicate with a native speaker of your target language is incredibly empowering. I'm not going to pretend like I don't get really shy about speaking to French people (scratch that, new people), but my French beginnings definitely have kept me going where I might otherwise have stopped.

This is not to say French was never uncontested for my admirations. Junior year, my high school offered the opportunity to take Chinese after school for college credit. Hello I was all over that, but my parents insisted I had to drop something from my schedule. The only thing that they would agree to was French. So for a year, I did not take French. BUT I wanted to go to Paris through a program that summer, so I studied on my own. That year, yeah, I learned some Chinese, but my French grew leaps and bounds. I bought a giant French workbook (that came with cassettes! Yeah!... in a weird way I think they make me more committed than CDs or mp3s). That year, I worked my way through the entire workbook, learning, finally, how to spell and write all the grammar I'd been hearing the past six years. For the first time ever, I began to really read in French. There were two books that were "breakthroughs" for me: Le petit Nicolas and La cantatrice chauve (suivi de La leçon). The first was my first "chapter book" I ever read the whole way through in French, the second (two plays by Ionesco) was the first real "adult" book I read the whole way through in French. That summer, I went to Paris for a month to study French and learned all my studying that year had payed off. It was an amazing experience. I still can't describe what it was to walk along the Seine and just be in France. I even got to see both La cantatrice chauve and La leçon at the famous Théatre de la Huchette (and then again two summers later). It was a summer I'll never forget. Now, though, it's time for me to get to know France beyond the Seine.

Yayyyyyy Me (left) and Ionesco (smiling, right), 2006.

Also, today I got a haircut so I'll look more professional (hah). Here are a couple pictures of me practicing teacher looks, too bad the glasses aren't real.

Nice teacher.

Not-as-nice teacher.

Please note the scary mound of packing behind my left shoulder. Aiyo. Gotta get to work.

And apparently I've reverted to 2006 me. I got the same haircut. Huh.