(Note: I was going to write this post in French, but I got stuck at ‘my wife and I are going to learn French’. Maybe I’ll update this in a month or so.)
My wife and I are going to learn French.
At least, that’s the idea. We’ve come to the conclusion that if we really are interested in an international move at some point, perhaps we should put a little more effort into it than just crossing our fingers and waiting. The first, easy, step is to learn a bit of the language. Even if the move never pans out, at least we’ll have some ability to converse in our nations second official language (I wonder what the numbers look like in French vs Mandarin speakers?).
The course is 10 weeks long through the UBC Continuing studies program. Our first lesson was this past Monday. Next lesson: tomorrow night. This evening? We are procrastinating completion of the homework assigned last week. It’s good to be able to procrastinate doing my homework again.
So far, so good. The lessons are immersion style (no English allowed in the class) which was scary for the first few minutes, then 12 years of French lessons came flooding back to us, along with some pangs of regret that we didn’t pay attention for 11 of those years.
The general construction of a simple sentence is still up there somewhere. We are severely lacking in vocab though. I have no shame RE my accent. It is awful.
sacré bleu! you guys need someone to speach french with? we could do “le outing”
apparently my problem is english. french is still fluent though.
but then again, your idea of French is “le outing”…;)