François.

Ohk, that means French. I’m going to French classes. Hurray.

Bonjour :)

I had my first day this morning. And they don’t teach things the Rapidex 30 days style. They teach French from French. All morning I understood what my teacher was trying to say from her expressions. We started with…

L’ alphabet francais

Letters pronunciation

A aa ( like the aa in paa)

B bay

C say

D they

E eh ( ble)…..

And so on and so forth. But my favourite alphabet is ‘W’. It’s pronounced as (dooblehyou)

Then there were these introductions that went like

Bonjour. Ja m’apelle Yushka. (good whatever, or hello, my name is Yushka)

Je suis ‘etudiante. (I am a student)

Je parle anglais, telogu, un peu de francais. J Sounds fancy doesn’t it?? I know.

And so on and so forth about where we stay and stuff. It had been most exciting. They even took us to this library where we could borrow books after submitting four photos and Rs.1000 refundable deposit. Considering not everyone was as self obsessed as me to carry four photos of myself in their wallets, and me being short of money. We all told we’d apply tomorrow when I’m sure we’re sure to forget something or the other.

In the library there was this book for small kids on how to make ‘tartines’ . And it was so pretty. With all those water coloured pictures in it and all. He gets wheat and all, makes it into atta, and makes a bread loaf out of it gets milk, La cre’me and butter, applies it on sliced bread. And On the sliced and buttered bread he applies fruit jam from this delicious looking red jar. And all the while keeps saying ‘This makes me hungry’ , ‘This makes me more hungry’, ‘This makes me even more hungry’. Finally when the tartine’s done. He eats it up as he walks and says what a tasty meal it was!

I fell crazily in love with tartines though I’m not very big on sweet things. And our teacher said, tartines are usually the kid food and all. I thought, kid or not. Some day I’m gonna eat the French tartine and know how the blonde boy enjoyed his food. I also want to eat bouillabaisse with rouille and all, a dish made of different types of sea animals. I just wish I’d come outta my veggie-nism by then. Then there’s this restaurant named after Jules Verne ( 80,000 leagues under the sea) where plain food with no wine and stuff it self costs a 100 euros, but I’m gonna eat there.

Then there were these discussions on all these things, on French localities and stuff. And everytime one of said some little French thing, our teacher said something like ‘tribia’. That’s sposed to be something like very good. And came out saying ‘a bientot’ or some thing like that which I cannot remember. And then I stepped into cool streets with wet roads and a very slight drizzle giving the street air a cool and sloppily moist feel. I bought a chocolate cornetto, tried to walk to the main road, found a book store where they are still renting books for Rs. 2 and Rs. 3, went around, borrowed an Enid Blyton. Well, better than the piles of mills and boons and nora Roberts the place seemed to over flow with anyway. And all evening, I had the most enjoyable reading session in a while. It’s been so long since I read Blyton’s books without counting the faraway tree audio book I listen to to sleep. If you’re an insomniac planning to do the same.. Dorian Gray’s a better choice. All European talk in huge words and lop-sided generalised philosophies. With all this on, I skipped my research time. No, I’m still skipping it. :)

Seriously, how can anyone jump to and fro between quantitative data and the French parfum de joyeaux ? I have to do just that tonight if I plan to lead a guilt free life a few hours from now.

Sayonara. ( That’s jap. Dude)