Parlez-vous français?

 Photos from Paris by moi.

In 7th grade, when we made the transition from elementary school to junior high, we had to take a language, as I'm sure many kids do (or maybe did, do kids still take a language with all of the educational budget cuts?). Given the options of Italian, Spanish and French, I immediately chose French. Looking back, Spanish may have been more useful, but ever since I was a little girl, there was something so magical about Paris and I wanted to learn the language.

I did pretty well in my classes. Alright, very well I suppose, since my grades enabled me to join the Foreign Language Honor Society. I loved my French classes. We always had so much fun rambling about my cheveux violet (yes, I had purple hair at the time) and poussée du docteur dans le fromage (yeah, we were goofy). And I'm sure it helped that my BFF had class with me starting in 9th grade and she is a genius with languages (as a opera singer, it's not a big surprise). These classes went on for 7 years, until the end of 11th grade. I was given the option of taking an AP French Lit class senior year, but turned it down to focus more on art.

Ever since these classes, and even before, I dreamed about going to Paris, particularly with my BFF. Unfortunately, we haven't gotten there together yet, although we did get to spend a week together in Ischia, Italy (AMAZING!) a couple of summers ago when she was there for a opera workshop.

Well, my French wasn't of much use in Italy, but then two summers ago, I did get the chance to go to Paris. The hubby was going for work, so we extended it and turned it into a late honeymoon. Once I was there, I realized the French I remembered wasn't doing me much good. I could read things, but had trouble conversing with people. Luckily, almost everyone I ran into spoke enough English that we could understand each other. And being a "pretty American girl!" worked to my advantage.

So last week, I came across a "Fast, Fun French" class in a listing of community classes. I decided to sign up. My first class (of 4) is tonight and although I don't expect to be fluent after, it will be nice to brush up. And I'm pretty excited to put all of this free time to some good use.

My BFF and I are still planning on going to Paris together soon (I need to get a job first, so I can actually afford it). Once we do go, I'll finally change the wallpaper on my phone. It's currently a picture I took while drinking in the park under the Eiffel Tower one night. And isn't going to change until it's a pictures of the two of us in front of it.