I toyed with the idea of dressing up in pigtails and pleats for a gag ‘first day at school’ photo.
I eventually thought better of it – because, of course, I am an adult. A grown woman. I may have bought coloured pens in a novelty pencil case, but I am, technically, an adult.
I signed up for a semester at the local university because I am an adult making an adult decision to further myself with a new language.
A very specific language, very pertinent to my current situation. Why not?
When I was actually in school, we had the option to learn Spanish, Japanese, French or Maori (the native language of NZ). Living in a rural blip of a town as I did, I figured I’d never need to know another language to use outside New Zealand. Because I couldn’t possibly ever live in another country, obviously.
I managed half a year of Maori, and I don’t mean to make excuses, but the rest of my class was filled with kids that were brought up speaking Maori; who were taking the class as a ‘glide’ subject.
Let’s just say; I started on page one of the workbook, and they didn’t even need workbooks.
In a pinch, I could ask you to ‘pass me the pencil’, or recite the words for ‘stomach’, ‘yellow’ and ‘sweet potato’.
Years later, living two hours north of Tokyo (because I end up frigging living everywhere but New Zealand), I was eventually forced to expand my linguistic repertoire, floundering with every interaction in a flurry of hellos and thank yous and goodbyes and please don’t say anything else to me that’s all I got.
Teenage me: ‘Japanese?? That looks way too hard – and when would I ever need Japanese??’
I was assigned a tutor. I bought a Hello Kitty pencil set. I miraculously found the language school in a city with no street names.
In just two short lessons, I could ask for a beer, I had memorised two lines of one of the three alphabets and I could count to ten. Infomercials taught me everything else I needed – ‘awesome’, ‘really’ and ‘cute’.
Then we decided to move to France.
Teenage me: ‘French?! When would I ever need to know French!?
And suddenly, I needed to know French.
Armed with my already solid artillery (ohh la la, fromage, bonjour; etc), I went to see the French tutor.
Who, in his infinite wisdom, spent the first two hours explaining and demonstrating all of the different (read: incredibly similar) sounds of all the different letters with all possible different accent combinations.
Frazzled, I retreated to my little French abode and stayed there, ignoring the doorbell, and only venturing out when absolutely necessary; ordering deux baguettes for fear of misusing an ‘un’.
(FYI, despite looking like giant man weapons, baguettes are feminine. Because nothing is ever the gender that it should obviously be)
Once I’d recovered from the shock of it all, I decided to go deep-end.
Fall semester: beginner’s French.
Off I went, no trace of that morning’s joke pigtails, crisp new stationery tucked into my very adult, matte black tote.
Feeling like the dinosaur I had now become, I discovered that my new classmates were straight out of high school, or college, and did drinking and had backpacks and lived in dorm rooms.
I waited a week before speaking to anybody.
Eventually, I found that despite their youth, my classmates were great, and together, we learned French, and we learned it hard.
At the end of the semester, we sat our exams together, and we passed, ready to tackle the next challenge, and the next level; for we were no longer ‘beginners’.
But my time at school was over.
As a French acquaintance put it: ‘You cannot be a pregnant schoolgirl! C’est trop cliché! HAHAHA’
Still, I waddled out of there, head held high, knowing that I’d finally made a real, proper effort at being able to communicate with people other than your run-of-the-mill English speakers.
Just please somebody promise me I won’t end up in Spain.
