Ne Parle Pas Francais

So far, I love my French class. I hadn't meant to start taking it so soon. I went for a placement test, and the placement officer was appalled by my lack of French facility despite all the French lessons I've had.

"But it's been more than 25 years," I told her.

"Why did you not continue it? You should be in a much higher level given all the French you've had. I have to put you in a beginner intermediate level." she said.

"Well, if I had, or if I had moved to France and lived there for 25 years, then I wouldn't be thinking of taking French classes now," I said. What gives? Does she give grief to everyone who can't speak French even though they've taken classes in the past?

"You start class tomorrow," she said in that brusque French way.

I had planned to take classes in November. But I thought, why not now? So I enrolled. I had my first 3-hour class today.

The class instructor seems alright, though I wonder if he's tired of teaching or if he had hoped he would be doing something more with his life than teach adults to speak like children. There were nine of us in class. Somehow, I plunked myself down between a ceramic artist from Stratford (she drives in for the class each week) and a visual artist in Toronto. So when it came to the part where we said where we worked (I claimed to be a freelance writer), all three of us said, "Je travaille chez moi."

The teacher initially didn't believe us. But after learning about our professed metiers, he let it go. After class, I found out that all three of us are taking French for the first in over 20 years! I tell ya, how did that happen?

Earlier this month at our girls' cottage weekend, Outrageous quoted a passage from a David Sedaris book where he talked about taking French lessons. I can't remember what the passage was about. I just remember her entertaining me endlessly by quoting something like,

- Do you like my shapely jug?
- Yes, I like chicken.

And no kidding. This is the exchange that went down in one of our classroom exercises:

Student A: Where were you born?
Student B: My nose is in Winnipeg.