Alice M. verhaal

I stepped into my first French class about, oh, 50 years ago, in seventh grade. This was the first opportunity I had to learn a foreign language through the public school system. I loved it; I took up Spanish next, and I graduated from high school with 6 years of French and 4 years of Spanish. My dad decided to spend a year in Germany during my last year of HS, so I chose to delay college for a year in Europe. I spent 4 months taking intense German lessons. At the university I studied linguistics, with more French and German and 4 semesters of Arabic (which I have totally forgotten). Then I turned into a bureaucrat. My big regret is that I never mastered any language to the point that I can read literature easily. I will never work in a francophone office or furnish a home in a francophone country, but I will read and travel. L'aspirateur, c'est un mot dont je n'ai pas besoin.