October Challenge: French

Throughout my life I have struggled to learn languages. I generally consider myself a smart person and someone that can pick up on things quickly. New languages do not apply. I can learn the vocab, I can learn to read a lot of the language, but come to speak it and I choke. Being an American living in California, this is not a daily problem. However, my absolute favorite place in the world is Paris. If you know anything about Parisians, you know they are not akin to foreigners, especially foreigners that do not attempt to speak French.

It is with extreme hesitation that I put this out into the world, but my October Challenge is to work (heavily) on my French. I do not anticipate becoming fluent in a month, or by the end of 2019 for that matter, but I would like to be able to do more than order my dinner in French. My current working knowledge of French allows me to get around French cities, read menus and order food.

The end goal is to speak French well enough that I'd be able to go to some small town in France and enjoy locals' culture and lifestyle for a week or so. I am far off from that and for now I'd settle for being able to ask for directions and have a short conversation about wine.

I will start off by practicing 20 minutes per day for the month of October and then take it from there. Luckily, Ian speaks pretty good French so I have someone at home with me that can help me when I get stuck on a word or pronunciation. I have my online class that I will be using and am focusing on completing 1 unit per week. This should get me through unit 4 and on to unit 5 by the end of the month.

Wish me luck friends, I'm going to need it!