I ran into the coolest Congolese car guard the other day who started this crazy rapid-fire conversation with me in french while he was helping Ric and me pack our groceries into the car. It's been ages since I've spoken french but I was surprised at how much I remembered and it was so refreshing (read: terrifying) to be speaking it again. So, thanks to Bernard, I went to Alliance Francaise in order to join its library, Dibuka.
The place has an awesome collection of (really messed-up as only french film can be) movies, books and music and you don't need to be a student there in order to use the facilities. I used to do classes there while I was at varsity and it was wonderful being there again; you feel cultured by proxy as soon as you hear people chatting away in french and you're like "chouette dudes et dudettes!"
So I've been doing some self-sponsored refreshment courses consisting of reading hugely geeky french graphic novels (who thought they could be so engrossing?), listening to sugar-sweet french pop (which somehow never sounds as cheesy when it's in french) and watching (predictably) stomach-churning french films.
Ric is going to take the beginners course in french next year so that while he learns, I can refresh and eventually we can chat away in french like Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. yep. just like that.
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