Andrew is going to Germany to work for three months. While he’s gone, I have decided to try again to learn French. I’ve taken French courses before. I audited a semester in uni but didn’t work at it much. Then when we lived in California, I took a year of French at De Anza College.

I never got very good at speaking French and got discouraged by memorizing vocabulary. I also never tried to listen to French radio or movies, or speak to my Franco-Canadian husband! He found my accent hard to take and I got embarrassed to try to speak with him in French. I’m actually surprised by how much I remember of the novice-level stuff but I never got past the simple past tense and my vocabulary is very small.

This time, I’ll be able to take a very intensive course (2 weeks, 5 days a week, for a total of 30 hours) followed by a semi- intensive course (5 weeks, 2 days a week, for a total of 30 more hours). 60 hours of French in 7 weeks is pretty good, and I’ll be able to listen to French podcasts and watch French films too. I’m taking my courses at the Alliance Francaise de Brisbane, and they have a nice library of booms, music, and movies I can borrow. I’d like to be able to have simple conversations at the end of the 7 weeks, and maybe understand some of the RFI news broadcasts.

Tonight was the first class. I felt like it went very slow. Most people had zero exposure to French, so I hope we pick up the pace. We learned the alphabet and how to say hello, and about formal and informal address. We also talked a bit about body language. We learned some acronyms. I have a tiny homework assignment.