It's a date!

A perfect intro to award-winning French director Claude Lelouch, the streets of Paris and the petit_foufou road to learning français: C'était un rendez-vous.

Let Lelouch take you on a non-stop 8-minute drive through 1976 Paris and then decide if you want to take a seat on the couch and spend more than an hour on him and his movies.

You can also, as I did, find it a metaphor for your learning style. I've been on the road to French since last year. While it hasn't gotten me to parler couramment le français à dans grandiose Paris (Nice was a "nice" start, though) and the road has definitely been bumpy, I've realized that it's been great fun so far. Sometimes I'm going full speed ahead and I feel the exhilaration of comprehension only to realize in hmmm, less than 8 minutes that, uh, hm, ah... Non! Je ne comprends pas plus. Somebody (m_ff?) hug and console me!

Like Lelouch's wild unstoppable ride, even the red lights of mastering conjugation (stop to learn them before going on) are blown at the expense of sounding like I am speaking a foreign language- only it's not French.

I am still watching French movies with the subtitles on, still conversing partly in English with my French teacher, still can barely manage simple dictation but I AM still having an amusing, entertaining and dare I say - educational - ride! Paris, me voila!



C'était un rendez-vous It was a date

parler couramment le français dans la grandiose ville de Paris
to speaking fluent French in the great city of Paris

Non! Je ne comprends plus No, I don't understand anymore

Paris, me voila literally "Paris, here I am"
but can be used to express Paris, here I come!

Bonne Valentin!

To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Rousseau, the famous French philospher and writer, might also be describing how I've been doing my French homework. Leafing through past assignments, vocabulary I once knew escapes me now. I'm left wondering at what my French self has written. Code-breaking with my French dictionary is gladly postponed for another day: Aujourd'hui- c'est le jour de la Saint Valentin!

It's time to turn to the ones we love, long to love or if you're Filipino anyone you care about (it could be their loved ones, office mates, friends, or even those who have hurt their feelings) and let them know how you feel.

Even if you aren't en France, français, ou un francophile, you know French is not a romance language for nothing. Sprinkling your Valentine's greeting with one of the "five loveliest French words to say" (or hear for that matter) will surely melt more than a box of chocolat. So without further ado my valentine's Haiku:



Mon amour: c'est toi!
Monsieur Foufou, j'taime
You and only you.


La Photo: Monsieur_Foufou sous-marin en Hawaii, septembre 2002
Photo by diving school instructor