I grew up going to a French school. For a significant portion of my early education, I had every single class — except English class — in French. But to be honest, I never really loved it. I had started midway through elementary school and so I always felt like my French was never quite good enough.

I was behind relative to my classmates. I needed special tutoring to get caught up (while my classmates were off learning a third language). And so I used to constantly beg my mom to take me out of French school and put me in a, you know, regular English school. I know this was tough for my mom, but her response was always steadfast: “You’ll thank me when you’re older.”

At the time, I couldn’t possibly imagine her ever being correct with this statement. But it turns out, she was. Today, I’m grateful to be able to travel to a place like Paris and kind of speak the language. (I say kind of because, hey, it’s been a long time since high school!)

And I’m grateful that when I go into Mabel’s Bakery across from Junction House that I can order a coffee and a croissant in French. (Most of the people there are from France. Try it for yourself. They’re lovely humans.)

In fact, I enjoy it so much that I recently decided to enroll in a French class at Alliance Française here in Toronto. (Fresh $80 textbook pictured above.) Obviously the 9-year-old version of myself would be completely shocked with this absurd decision. But I guess this is just what happens when you’ve been indoctrinated from a young age.

Or maybe I just really want to build something in France one day.