je suis américain
You know how some people have a collection of exercise equipment in their basement from unkept resolutions? I have a small collection of French textbooks. My first was acquired almost five years ago in Moscow: a cheap paperback that I could travel with. While learning through Russian was not a problem (in fact, helpful in certain ways), I found two many errors in the book to trust it any more. My second was a gift (book and CD), but I never made time for it. Later I invested in an overpriced textbook with exercise book (and CD), and made it through a chapter or two. But still never found time and motivation to concentrate.
But then, in December, I disovered the Alliance Française in Dublin, conveniently located downtown, not far from work, with courses twice a week in the evening, two hours each night. Put this together with my employer’s benefit of reimbursement of up to €75 from my employer for a personal-enrichment course (every little bit helps!) and it starts to sound like a pretty good deal.
So my first class was last night. Thanks to my years of not actuallly practicing, I started with a beginner class. Naturally you have to start with simple phrases and expressions, so we learned how to say our name, where we live, and what our nationality is. So, our of six people, we had:
- indienne
- brésilienne
- irlandaise
- italienne
- espagnole
- américain ← That’s me!
So … only one Irish person. And it came out that her father is Dutch, so, you know, she’s only half Irish.
Reminds me of the staff at work: one Canadian, one English, three American, one Italian, and one Irish. Or of a meeting I had at NUI Galway in August: four American, one Hungarian, two French (or was one Italian?), and one Irish. “Typical Galway meeting,” they said. Wikipedia tells me that 10% of the country’s population are foreign citizens, but someone I keep running into all of them!