Excerpt from a letter to P

I suppose it is night where you are, Patricia. Yesterday from 8 to 9:30 in the evening--your Sunday afternoon, a Monday here in Asia--I attended the first of 30 sessions in general French for complete beginners. Our teacher is a mid-40s genial Frenchwoman named Isabelle; our class of 20 consists of local Hong Kongers, most of them professional people, probably mid-20s to mid-30s with a very few younger ones. I expect the teenagers are in Alliance's teen classes. There were three couples in the class.

I enjoyed the first lesson! I try not to be overwhelmed by the fact that there is so much to learn, and instead think of myself like a child taking her first steps in a new language. That way it's so much more fun. Already I'm amazed that I recognize and understand (or can make a pretty good guess of the meaning of) many of the terms in the lesson books. It's the spoken part that is much more difficult, and no doubt the grammar part. At one point Isabelle had everyone speak aloud some French terms they knew, and of course everyone knew something--bonjour (also the name of a local shop), vin, bon appetit, paris, je't aime (sp?), le rose noire (a local bakeshop), bonsoir.

The French "R" stumps me. It seems to involve some vibration inside the mouth that not even Tagalog has. Or at least not the citified Tagalog that I know. I am practicing at home with the CD they provided. Fell asleep on the sofa last night listening to these wonderfully exotic sounds coming off the CD player.

Also some of the U and E vowel sounds are close to the way the Chinese pronounce some of their vowel sounds, so that is another thing I do not have the advantage of knowing.

I am beginning to 'devour' this language much as I soaked up English--that is, with a lot of enthusiam--back in our grade school days. As though I were six again and finding out what "bottle" means, learning how to say "Look, there's Spot", how to count from one to ten, how to say good morning and good afternoon.

Abangan ang susunod na kabanata. Till then, bonne nuit!


Postscripts

Remember this pair of horses that we befriended in Seraincourt? (The secret was in the apple and bits of bread)



...and the duck in the pond and your About a Boy moment?



I hope you're not throwing any more melon at those poor feathered creatures!