My Daily French Connection

Bonjour!

Look at that, I’m writing French. Ha! I have so little time in my life right now, but as I have said before, I always like to put a little more jelly on my bread. So I decided to broaden my horizons and learn French. I am doing it online.

This is the new and improved me. My plans are that on the first day of each month I will start a new chapter in my life. Do you know how long of a book that would end up being! Actually, I will look at it as 12 chapters a book for how ever many books I can write. Granted, though, the first day of each month may not be much of a start of something. In fact, it may be something very minute, but it will still be something. I do not want to become stagnant. So this month, yesterday, I started to learn French. I am not going to go at it at a very fast pace because it might be too overwhelming and then I would not accomplish what I had set out to do.

For now, it is 3-4 words a day. Yesterday, it was greetings and goodbyes: Bonjour (hello), Bonsoir (Good evening), Bonne nuit (Good night) and Au revoir (Goodbye).

Today, my lesson consisted of sociable niceties: Merci (Thank you), Merci beaucoup (Thank you very much), S’il vous plait (Please) and De rien (You are welcome).

This just makes me feel so good all over. And there is something to be said for that. It has been a long couple months dealing with my aunt so this is just a little something I can do for myself. That is what everyone should do once in awhile. Feel selfish. Say, "I want to do something for myself," and go ahead and do it. It doesn’t mean you have to go out and spend a million bucks on yourself. This is costing me nothing. I am learning free online at www.bonjour.com and yet it feels like I have spent a million dollars on myself (okay, maybe not that much -- but at least a few bucks). Really, I think it is never to late to teach an old dog new tricks, and most of my tricks are pretty old, so I need some new ones.

I've had this "project" in the back of my mind ever since Brady's girlfriend, Jenne, took off for a six-week adventure across Europe last summer. It was something most people don't get a chance to do or get up enough "gumption" to attempt. Kudos to you, Jenne! (Yea, I should have used a French word there instead, but I haven't gotten that far yet!)

I may not ever get the chance to use it for a trip to Paris, but in the meantime I can entertain the animals on the farm. When I got home last night and got out of the car, that is how I greeted the cats. "Bonjour, Pinky; Bonjour, Bootsy; Bonsoir, Simba; Bonsoir, Shaggy." And then as I was going into the house: "Bonne nuit, Midnight; Bonne nuit, Sunny; Au revoir, Paws; Au revoir, Mr. and Mrs. Blacky." It makes for good practice because they look at me just for the attention and they are not correcting my accent or if I fub, I don't feel embarassed.

Once I got into the house, I greeted our dog with a “Bonjour, Pongo.” He just looked at me funny because all he cared about at the time was getting out of the house to pee. Oh, well! I’m holding back on throwing some of this at Bob until I can say a few things and maybe make a sentence or two. He’ll probably just give me the same look as Pongo.

But, for now, this is my plan. We’ll see as the year progresses how well I do at being good to myself. In my mind, I see Paris, I see France, I see ... (okay, let’s not go that route).

Au revoir!