East of Patagonia

This is a silly, childish story, and I'm not even really sure it's one I should tell, but I'm sitting alone at home and I need to unload before I hunker down for the night.  So here it is anyway.

Ten years ago, when I was overseas, I met many people who were also living away from home.  One of them was a French boy I'll call Pierre, and as my interest in the language was already blooming then, I hung around him a lot and we became fast friends.

We talked incessantly, shared stories and meals and went off exploring places together and because we had so much in common, we got along surprisingly well.  

And of course, all that's neither here nor there, but the truth is, even though we were seeing other people, we secretly fell in love; in love in the way that people who will never be together are.  We never said it, we didn't have to.  We never kissed, or even so much as held hands because back then, it was important to us that we honoured our relationships, and each other.  

There are simpler ways to love.  Once, for example, he found a way to buy me a ticket to a sold-out concert of an artist we both loved.  He presented it to me on my balcony and for moment I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.  We had to sit on opposite ends of the stadium at the gig, but he wore a flashing button on his chest so I could see him blinking at me across a sea of heads all night.  Another time, we visited a famous cemetery together and drew what we wanted our graves to be like in his notebook.

Things like that made our time together that much more special, because it was easy, limited and innocent and somewhere between all the dreams and secrets and laughter that we shared, Pierre stole a piece of my heart.  

French made it into all our conversations of course.  I learnt silly phrases and my first set of conjugations from him.  I remember lying on my stomach on the floor as he patiently explained, "Je suis, tu es, il est..." and wrote carefully in his curly, boyish hand.  "Fais de beaux rêves," we would type to each other in conversation at the end of every night.  And on my birthday, he bought me two sets of the same books in English and in French so that I could teach myself through translation.

When we finally had to say goodbye, I was heartbroken.  We casually air-kissed before he was ferried off to the airport and I laughed cheerfully and waved as the taxi pulled away and then hid myself in my room and cried.  Pierre called me from the airport and left a voicemail message saying that he had something to tell me.  "I..." he began, and then couldn't continue.  We both knew anyway. 

_______________________ 

Of course, nothing happened afterwards.  Our separate relationships took centrestage once more.  We continued to be close friends for a few years, and then not so close friends and now that he's living a completely different life, perhaps not really friends anymore.  I met him once, a couple of years ago in Paris, and he shyly pulled me aside into his bedroom and showed me some old letters we'd written each other.  He still had the drawings of the graves in his old notebook, but that was all.  

I was sad that we drifted apart, but not surprised.  After all, as we'd agreed, all we would expect was to enjoy our time together.  What more could we want?  

I never did use those books to teach myself; it was too hard.  But I thought of him, and of French, often and with fondness, and when I finally had the time, money and courage to go for classes, I found myself falling quite easily and breathlessly back into it as if my spirit had been waiting for me to return to the language all along.  

And then, one week ago in the move, I found the French version of Dangerous Liaisons that he'd bought for me.  I remembered, even before I opened the book, that he'd written a message within, probably friendly enough to be innocuous.  I remembered thinking, when I first saw it, that I would probably never learn enough to understand.

But last Saturday, ten years late, I found the page and those words came to me, easy as speaking.  You see, he took a tiny piece of my heart, but I suppose he gave me something in return as well.

Only, I don't know if I can tell him this anymore, and so I'm telling you.

So far, so good

Among the eight (yes, eight) concrete resolutions that I have this year: to plod at least three times every week and to become "fluent" in French.

Of course, I sincerely doubt that I'm actually going to be able to speak eloquently in a language I've been learning for all of six months, but I'd like to be able to understand and read as easily as possible and to be somewhat conversational by the end of this year.  

As for plodding, well, to be fair I haven't actually stopped since I started but with language lessons five days a week, three hours a morning last year, my exercise schedule ended up being unsatisfyingly irregular.  

The solution this year: French once a week on Saturdays, which leaves me (hopefully) time to read and learn and explore on my own and mornings to test drive my new plodding gear.  C'est chouette! 

Hier

Among the random things that are making me happy recently are a very girly, spontaneous manicure and round two of French lessons.  

The nails, well, I'm enough of a magpie that looking at something sparkly every day makes me smile.  And French?  Well, apart from loving the language and enjoying the daily interaction - every lesson is a revelation -, as a teacher, I relish three hours of not being the one at the front of the class.

Instead of exercising the eyes in the back of my head, I'm quite content to open my books, lean back and let someone else take the reins.  

(Plus, one of the teachers is pretty funny and I have an entire secret sidebar in my notebook for his daily jokes, for example, "When you use the reflexive, you are doing something to yourself.  Like I bathe myself, or I dress myself, but there is one verb you are not allowed to use on yourself: to argue.  Because you can't argue with yourself.  Unless you're Gollum."  Oh, you!)

On y va!

Every morning before French class, we greet each other with cheerful "bonjour"s and "ca va"s.  There are about twenty of us, surprisingly close in age but from completely different backgrounds, united by a single purpose.  

There are those who are married to Frenchmen and want to be able to communicate with their in-laws, two girls who are going to France in September to study pastry making, a young sommelier, and Edie and I, there because we think it's beautiful.  And it is beautiful.  Really tough, but beautiful.

Every time I encounter frustration in conjugating verbs or trying to remember the appropriate article for masculine or feminine objects, I learn something that submerges the frustration in awe.  Today, it was the moment we were taught that a "lucky draw" is called a "tirage au sort".  Literally translated, it means "pull your fate".  Last night, Shirin, who is extremely fluent, told us that "I miss you" is "Tu me manques".  The order of the words is different from the English (You, to me, are missing) she said, because that it means that you are missing from me, thereby implying that I am incomplete. 

And that's more or less why I've always wanted to learn this language.  Because it sounds pretty, but it means pretty too.  Sure, it's confusing that everything has a gender, but it's also whimsical and poetic that, for example, the sea is a woman and happiness a man.  

On top of that, apart from English and Mandarin, which I absorbed when I was too young to remember it, this is the first time I'm formally learning a language from scratch.  As an English tutor, it's fascinating.  I've always wondered how people would teach someone a language that they didn't know at all.  And I've never been so aware (or respectful) of grammar before.  

Mostly, I'm just happy to be a student again.  A teacher needs to be on the ball; in complete control of every aspect of the lesson and watching everyone out of the corner of each eye.  In this class, I just need to be a massive sponge.  I can write notes with my own unintelligible musings, pronounce things to myself as many times as I want, turn things over in my head again and again. 

Edie and I have lots of fun practicing random verbs and senseless questions.  After class, we wander round separately, speaking French in our heads.  As I was walking the dog today, I had an entire conversation with myself about a writing instrument.  

"Where is the pen?  He has the pen.  Do you have a pen?  Yes, I have a pen.  What is this?  It is a pen.  But where is the pen?  She has the pen.  Does she have the pen?  No, I have the pen."

Then, I turned my attention to singing.  

"Do you sing?  Yes, I sing.  Where do you sing?" and so on.

I love it.

I look forward to class every day.  For some people, it seems like a meeting point of their hopes and plans.  For others, a celebration of the ability to speak, read, understand, dream.

...And also, on a more shallow note, I get to use my amazeballs new Smiggle crayon highlighters.  Why didn't I have these growing up so my stupid leftie writing wouldn't keep smearing fluorescent yellow and green up to my elbows?

Now if only I could do something about the teensy right-handed writing desks they have in class...

One down

I have always wanted to learn French.  

When I was a child, I thought it sounded beautiful and when I was older I ended up meeting a bunch of French people when I went on exchange.  They taught me a smattering of charming but utterly useless french phrases (I love icecream!  I don't like octopodes!  I will not sleep with you unless you have a condom!  What?  Every girl needs to know how to respond to "Voulez vous coucher avec moi?") and I vowed that one day, I would properly complete my education.

Finally, thanks to Edie who signed up first, I'm going to be taking a one month French crash course starting tomorrow!  It'll hopefully come in handy for the trip I'm taking to Europe in June; maybe I'll be a little more proficient at reading menus and asking directions than last time.  

Now that it's the night before, I'm all hopped up on adrenaline.  I feel like it's my first day at school!  And I'm so happy to be fulfilling an old dream at last!

My students told me that Typo was having a discount on a pack of five French-themed exercise books and in celebration (any excuse!) I headed down yesterday and grabbed a pack.  For $8 something, I got five A4-sized Minnie Mouse/ Parisian notebooks for class.

Retno loves Minnie Mouse, so I'm giving her a couple.

Hopefully the rest of them will soon be full of notes... en français!

Now I just have to learn salsa dancing and farming and I'm set for life.