Je m'appelle Elodie

I love speaking French. I love the way it falls out of my mouth, and the surprise I feel when I say a string of words that sounds particularly beautiful. The last time I was in France was almost exactly 6 years ago, Christmas 2004. So, during my first couple of days here, I was feeling a bit timid. I would mumble my speech in case I was using improper sentence structure, or I would speak extra quickly in order to appear at ease with the language. Both attempts at masking my linguistic shortcomings simply resulted in poor communication. But now after a couple of days, the language is coming more fluidly. My vocabulaire is still lacking, but I stumble less, and speak more freely. My favorite is that words that I've forgotten even exist seem to fall out before I can realize that I'm saying them. (I just noticed that the word "vocabulaire" in the sentence before last is underlined in red zig-zags, indicating incorrect spelling... It took me a minute to realize that this word is not English. I'm leaving it that way!)

Tonight, we went out to dinner with four of my mom's friends, who are French-speaking Congolese men. Apparently, since I speak French, they gave me a code name, for when they want to (most likely,) make fun of me. :P Elodie. I like it. Maybe I'll start introducing myself as that when in France. We started discussing various English and French phrases, and eventually the conversation turned to Lingala. I spent a large portion of the evening jumping from French with the Congolese, to translating into English for my mother and her friend, to learning words in Lingala, and back again. It was fun - I felt like I was hopping around on one of those techno-dance video games with tiles that light up. I didn't really know what was going on, but I was making tiles light up, and enjoying it, so I just kept going. Now, I know how to say two very important things!: "Hello" is "Mbote", and "You are attractive" (man or woman) is "Oza gitoko". What else does one need to know how to say?! ;)

Oh - and, Happy Thanksgiving!

For you French speakers... Perfect example of French's effortless beauty. This isn't from a fancy restaurant: