Upon moving to Paris I decided that if I wanted to successfully integrate into this new life the first thing I was going to have to do, even before tackling my first novel, was to learn French. I enrolled in the venerable Alliance Francaise. Started by such luminaries as Jules Verne and Louis Pasteur, Alliance Francaise is the language school for French as a second language.
The (Mis)adventure Begins
My first attempt at expressing something in French was when I wrote an email to my French girlfriend, and proceeded to mistakenly tell her I wanted to have sex with her ears, her eyes, her lips. Not an auspicious start…
This happened early in our relationship, and while still living in Los Angeles. My girlfriend was away on a business trip, and I decided to impress her by writing a romantic email. Mind you, at the time, I knew exactly zero French, but I was going to give it my all. I pulled out a French-English dictionary and looked up the word for ‘kiss.’ It informed me that the correct word was baiser. Okay, here we go… “I can’t wait to see you and kiss…”