La vie est belle!

One of the coolest things I have done in my life is to start learning a new language. It was Jan 1st 2009 when I had the desire to do something new and eventually thought of learning French. I believe in Action comes before Motivation, which is then followed by further Action. So, I immediately enrolled myself at NYU for French I and thus completed my first Action.

Motivation followed a month later when classes began. Honestly, I have never taken a fun class before. My perception of taking a class relates to sitting in a packed classroom full of smart people and all of us are trying to solve some kind of 'problem'. The problem can range from a simple math puzzle to a binomial stock option model but at the end of the day, whichever subject it was, we were finding solutions to problems. On the contrary, French class had no problem to solve! It kind of shook my foundation in the beginning. It was like a huge load off my chest!

The first thing we did was to re-arrange the chairs and tables to form a circle so that we can all see each other. The concept of last benchers thus ceases to exist. On our first round of introduction in somewhat broken french, we figured that diversity was at its peak. I dont remember any 2 people from the same country. There are no two people of the same profession. Our reasons for learning the language were unique as well.

Another interesting aspect of studying French is the class location. We are at the 8th floor of a building with no elevators! No its not a walk-up but an escalator-up! Escalators are weird, you cant really control the speed at which you will go up, even if you try hard. Some people are ambitious and try to run up and down, but they really have to stop at some point. To add to this, there are 2 extra sets of escalators to reach the 1st floor so 10 rounds for 1 trip to my class!

Coming back to la langue francaise, learning a language is way harder than I thought it would be. English is my reference point, but I cant find a simple translation to everything we say in English. There is something much more important than assimilating the French grammar and vocabulary and that is the CULTURE. Cutlure lays the bricks for communication. As a result, I find myself traveling a new world through words at times. Once I am able to change my reference point from English to the French culture, I will have mastered the language.

For now, I am enjoying my journey through films like Les parapluies de Cherbourg and my attempt at throwing a few words at French speakers. J'adore apprendre la langue francaise. Il a rendu ma vie plus belle!