LKL"s Life Story
in English | en français
I grew up in a town in northern Illinois, near the Wisconsin border. It's a place where foreign languages are not valued - in high school, you're required to take a language (a pitiful choice between French and Spanish) for only two years. I sometimes felt like no one from that region wanted to travel, much less live overseas, so it's kind of strange that I was born there.
But anyway, I learned my first French words (the numbers one to ten) when I was 10 years old, thanks to a McDonald's calendar.
At that time, my older brother was learning French in high school, and he taught me eleven to twenty. Those simple words fascinated me and I started taking private lessons with a high school teacher. Unfortunately, they were expensive and inconvenient, and my parents decided not to continue them. So I had to wait three years to start studying in high school.
In high school, most students wanted to learn Spanish, believing that it was more useful in our area, so the French classes weren't very popular. I didn't learn much my first year, because the teacher was on maternity leave and the substitute didn't speak French well. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the class, and the following year, when Mme Collins came back, I liked it even more. I clearly remember three books that we read: Le Collier, Le Petit Prince, and the play Suivez la piste.
During spring break of my sophomore year, I went to France with eight students and our French teacher. We visited Paris, the Chartres cathedral (the blue in the stained glass windows!), several chateaux in Tours, Dieppe, and the D-day beaches.
I met all kinds of French people. One fine day in Paris, while wandering through the marché with my class, I got lost. I asked a French woman for directions to the "marké" - she was astonished by my question, since the marché surrounded us. Despite my very limited French and lack of politeness, she tried to help me find my class. On the other hand, a few days later a man in a tourist shop refused to speak to me in French - he just kept answering me in English.
I have to tell you the story about my first faux pas in France. When I arrived at immigration, it turned out that I'd made a mistake on my immigration form. The man to whom I gave the form explained the error to me, but I didn't have a pen. So I asked him, "I can use your pen?" (Don't forget that I was in my second year of French, so I didn't speak very well.) He ignored me for a few seconds, then he repeated that the form was wrong. I repeated my question, he looked at me and said very clearly, "Please." It was a good lesson on the importance of politeness.
I was drawn by an artist in Montmartre. We did a wine tasting. I drank cider (to my great surprise it was alcoholic). I ate real baguettes, crêpes, and chocolate croissants for the first time in my life. I looked out over the entire city from the top of the Eiffel Tower instead of visiting the Louvre (we had to choose between these two places to visit). During those nine days, I fell madly in love with France. I was 15 years old.
At the beginning of my third year, I started studying Spanish too. At that time, I realized that I wanted to work with language, but not teach it. I discovered simultaneous interpretation as a career and was very impressed by the difficulty of that task. I thought that must be one of the most difficult things that a human being could do, and wanted to become one of these "superhumans." The college counselor explained that I needed to learn another language, such as Japanese, to gain a competetive advantage, so I chose a college that offered French, Spanish, and also Japanese.
I went to Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. It's a small, private college that offered the classes I wanted, and gave me a partial scholarship. Aside from required classes like science and history, I took a lot of French, Spanish, and English classes. (I'd forgotten to tell you how much I like the English language as well - in high school, I took 5 years' of English classes in 4 years.) In addition, in Galesburg I worked nearly full time (in a crêperie).
Cette page en français
I grew up in a town in northern Illinois, near the Wisconsin border. It's a place where foreign languages are not valued - in high school, you're required to take a language (a pitiful choice between French and Spanish) for only two years. I sometimes felt like no one from that region wanted to travel, much less live overseas, so it's kind of strange that I was born there.
But anyway, I learned my first French words (the numbers one to ten) when I was 10 years old, thanks to a McDonald's calendar.
At that time, my older brother was learning French in high school, and he taught me eleven to twenty. Those simple words fascinated me and I started taking private lessons with a high school teacher. Unfortunately, they were expensive and inconvenient, and my parents decided not to continue them. So I had to wait three years to start studying in high school.
In high school, most students wanted to learn Spanish, believing that it was more useful in our area, so the French classes weren't very popular. I didn't learn much my first year, because the teacher was on maternity leave and the substitute didn't speak French well. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the class, and the following year, when Mme Collins came back, I liked it even more. I clearly remember three books that we read: Le Collier, Le Petit Prince, and the play Suivez la piste.
During spring break of my sophomore year, I went to France with eight students and our French teacher. We visited Paris, the Chartres cathedral (the blue in the stained glass windows!), several chateaux in Tours, Dieppe, and the D-day beaches.
I met all kinds of French people. One fine day in Paris, while wandering through the marché with my class, I got lost. I asked a French woman for directions to the "marké" - she was astonished by my question, since the marché surrounded us. Despite my very limited French and lack of politeness, she tried to help me find my class. On the other hand, a few days later a man in a tourist shop refused to speak to me in French - he just kept answering me in English.
I have to tell you the story about my first faux pas in France. When I arrived at immigration, it turned out that I'd made a mistake on my immigration form. The man to whom I gave the form explained the error to me, but I didn't have a pen. So I asked him, "I can use your pen?" (Don't forget that I was in my second year of French, so I didn't speak very well.) He ignored me for a few seconds, then he repeated that the form was wrong. I repeated my question, he looked at me and said very clearly, "Please." It was a good lesson on the importance of politeness.
I was drawn by an artist in Montmartre. We did a wine tasting. I drank cider (to my great surprise it was alcoholic). I ate real baguettes, crêpes, and chocolate croissants for the first time in my life. I looked out over the entire city from the top of the Eiffel Tower instead of visiting the Louvre (we had to choose between these two places to visit). During those nine days, I fell madly in love with France. I was 15 years old.
At the beginning of my third year, I started studying Spanish too. At that time, I realized that I wanted to work with language, but not teach it. I discovered simultaneous interpretation as a career and was very impressed by the difficulty of that task. I thought that must be one of the most difficult things that a human being could do, and wanted to become one of these "superhumans." The college counselor explained that I needed to learn another language, such as Japanese, to gain a competetive advantage, so I chose a college that offered French, Spanish, and also Japanese.
I went to Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. It's a small, private college that offered the classes I wanted, and gave me a partial scholarship. Aside from required classes like science and history, I took a lot of French, Spanish, and English classes. (I'd forgotten to tell you how much I like the English language as well - in high school, I took 5 years' of English classes in 4 years.) In addition, in Galesburg I worked nearly full time (in a crêperie).
Cette page en français
