Bon Jour

O.K. I will admit I am a bit of a Francophile.  I have a passion for the life and style of France if only it weren’t for the language barrier!  I haven’t given up on the goal of spending at least part of my year living there.  I have spent the last 15 years gathering words in my brain and studing the language resulting in minimal success!  I have absolutley no idea why I studied German in school?  I don’t have a German bone in my body and have never been there, where as, I do have French bones and spend a fair amount of my travel in France.  Go figure, youth.

Recently we decided to house three French exchange students for several weeks.  I put my tapes in the day before their arrival and was communicating beautifuly with my French instructor (who understands everything I say).  The problem seems to be that no one communicates like that.  When you speak the lines you’ve learned on the audio tapes they look at you as if you are speaking Greek.  The other problem is I know these phrases in there complete form and cannot break them apart…so, I either have to say it as I know it and hope they will understand or butcher it and enjoy their giggles as I distroy their beautiful language.  Years ago while reading “Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris, I found myself laughing out loud through much of the book as he struggled through the language creating an Eng-Fre version of the language.  Today I find myself asking my dear sweet French girls if they, “you like want me you go him with ready soon?”  They look sweetly at me then at each other and smile and say, “oui” and off we go.  Bon Jour.