Welcome Back Laura! This Guest Adventurer writes the fun blog called CoastofIllinois.com. She is a land-locked beach bum who works days as a nurse and shares her land-locked life with her husband who recently retired from a career in law enforcement; just scratching the surface of their sit-com similarities. They have two grown children who still insist on Sunday dinner and a cat who has no interest in bettering himself, unless he can learn how to open his tiny food cans. A fixer-upper sailboat takes up a good portion of time these days, as does preparing for more travel adventures inspired by good food, Hemingway stories and Jimmy Buffet music.
Want to Learn French From Dualingo – I did it!
Salut!
Je suis Laura.
Je suis 57 et j’apprende le francais.
Okay.
I admit it. I cheated on the last half of that sentence and had to check everything with Google translate. But the feelings are solid.
I am 57 and I am learning French.
The first question I tend to get, when I admit this out loud is:
Why?
The most sensible answer is that my husband and I plan to do some pretty extensive travel in the upcoming years. We have traveled a small amount and when we have been in countries where English is not the first language we tried our best to learn at least some polite phrases: Hello, Good-by, Thank-you, Those aren’t my children…
We didn’t want to be those ‘ugly Americans’ who give the rest of us a bad name.
A more personal reason is the fact that, while I am a good one half German descent, I am a solid – one quarter, last name Jolie, drinks coffee from the saucer and loves bread, straight from Paris to the coal mines of the Midwest, French.
According to my husband, my mocking dismay of things with the typical French movie concierge ‘pftttttttt’ is genetically rooted.
The second question is sort of a quizzical, humoring, aren’t you a little old for this, HOW?
My answer to this is a little more convoluted.
The easy answer is: Duolingo. Which I will get to in a bit.
