"On ne comprend jamais tout à fait une langue avant d’en comprendre au moins deux." It took 43 years for me to finally learn the French alphabet, and when I say learn I mean how to properly pronounce each letter, even after taking French classes in college and then again taking French 102 and 103 back in 2016 at our local community college. After sharing this with someone recently, they looked at me perplexed, but you see I never enrolled in French 101 as it was a fall course, and during the 2015/16 school year I was head-first transitioning into my new teaching position here in Bend, so waited until I was settled with my own schedule to explore French classes. Backtrack to college, as explained in detail in my first book, a similar situation; I began my studies during winter term rather than fall due to a shift in my life journey and needing to acquire the necessary prerequisites to study abroad in French the coming summer. With that said, learning the alphabet, and singing the French jingle to help cement the sounds of each letter into my memory was one of the most exciting and appreciative moments of my novice French learning experience thus far. As I shared above, in 2016 I enrolled in evening French language courses offered by our local community college. I shared in this three-part series - the first two parts draw from my experience as a student in class, and the third how I continued to learn on my own during the summer that followed. Life then seemed to take off and become busier and busier (work began on my second book, the cooking show premiered and between teaching full time and a growing blog that I was overjoyed was doing well, my focused turned to these two focuses and I was unable to continue my French studies); however, over the three years that followed, I had the opportunity to travel to France twice which further instilled in me the determination to not give up trying to become an intermediate speaker of the French language as each trip took me out of Paris and into the countryside, where I fell further in love with the French culture. Beginning today is a return to the series I began in 2016, so today's episode/post is labeled as Partie Quatre (part four). As I make my way through my courses - a new quarter/course each season - look for future posts/episodes to be shared. You can explore all of my French-themed posts and episodes via the respective links.   The Simple Sophisticate, episode #349 ~Subscribe to The Simple Sophisticate:  iTunes | Stitcher | iHeartRadio | YouTube | Spotify | Amazon Music