I had my second French class at work today. I work at a bilingual organization, so they offer classes for us anglophones. Totally awesome in super-anglophone Toronto. I don't get to take them very often because I'm not on the official list, but I get to fill in when people are sick or on vacation. Today I got a one-on-one class!

I haven't taken French for four years, so I was quite afraid that it would be very bad. It's been a really good experience. My French came back a lot quicker than I thought it would, and a lot more than I ever expected it to. My passé composé and imparfait are in good working order, and I'm remembering random words like plupart and blague. Our teacher is this incredibly enthusiastic Québecois woman, which is very good accent-wise for those of us who take calls from Quebeckers. I had a nice chat with her today about making curtains over the weekend, about Chris's trip and online gambling in general, about crazy American politics, and about using tu and vous as terms of respect/familiarity in Quebec.

A coworker took the class after mine and came back telling me that I'm the new "chou chou" (teacher's pet, in this case) and that she raves about my vocabulary and insists that they speak to me in French. It's funny, because they asked me in my interview how my French was, and I never know how to answer that question. It's okay, but I feel that I'm missing a LOT of vocabulary, and my accent really varies depending on how long it's been since I talked to a francophone. But from what she's saying, it's much better than she expected, and she would put me in the advanced class at work. So that's encouraging!

Labels: french