Lemme
juz narrate you a bit of my childhood. It was my favorite summer
season and my last working day before summer vacation. I was in
Kindergarten. “Where are we going for the summer vacations? What
will be our plans???” Some exciting questions that were popping-up
in my mind, when I was on the way back home from school. I stayed
with my family in France, my father was posted there in one of the
government concerns that manufactured carpets in the year 1986. As
soon as I reached home, I saw my mom sitting on the sofa with all our
luggage packed.
Fascinated
by the new language that I have been learning in school for a while,
there were some common sentences that I had definitely managed
learning. Since my maid was also French, how I learnt French was not
a difficult task for me, I interacted a lot with her. I asked my
mom,” Qu'est-ce qui s'est passé à vous?”, which means what
happened. She said that we were shifting to India because of Summer
1992 riots in England. We basically belong to India. As French was an
all new exciting language for me, so was Hindi.
But
soon I grasped the new language and forgot the one I had learnt as a
toddler. Days passed, so did the months and years. I had completely
forgotten how to speak French. But do you know, one can never forget
how to write any language that you have once learnt, throughout your
life. Inspite of our settling down in India, I had always dreamt of
going to France, listening to the tales and lovely time, my parents
had spent in abroad. What wine, what high-fashion, and what art? How
I learnt French? My mother always missed France.
And
finally I had made it. ISA offers the Carlos Castaneda Memorial
Scholarship. This scholarship was awarded to me based on the academic
achievement. To be eligible for it, the students must have some
knowledge of the foreign language with good ranking. By the grace of
God, I had both. My little knowledge about French had minted me a
great opportunity. As soon as I reached Bellegarde - Vouvray
Aerodrome airport, I came across several advertisement boards with
French written all over them.
I
tried putting up the alphabets together. It did work. From words I
learnt phrases and from phrases, I made sentences. In a few days, I
was almost through with the basics of French language. To add on to
this, a brand new app has come up on iOS, that teaches you alphabets
of the world. Phonetic is also a wonderful feature of this app. With
the app and my little knowledge almost as a toddler, I had really
made my dream come true and also got back the time my parents had
longed for. How I learnt French so easily was sometimes even
surprising for me. Today they were coming to spend entire week with
me and cherish the memories.
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