Who am I? I am a Francophile.

Do you ever catch yourself singing the national anthem of France?

No?

(see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K1q9Ntcr5g if you're unfamiliar with it)

Well, I do...not that I know the words as yet, no, but the tune?  Stuck in my head.  All the time.

Why?

You might think it's because my musical brain just catches things in its trap to release into song at a later date, and you wouldn't be far off.

But the fact that it's the anthem of France, and not some place like Argentina or the UK, should tell you something.

That something?

I am obsessed with anything and everything French.

It started out as an excuse to take something other than math or science or even English in high school.  Why take those boring gen eds when you can take a foreign language?

(I took French, German, and Spanish, because I could)

It didn't take long for me to realize that French was the language for me.  It flowed off the tongue like water from a pitcher, it involved creative (and therefore difficult, making it more impressive that I accomplished it) spelling, and it turned out that most of my favorite fairy tales came from the French lore.

(think Sleeping Beauty, Beauty & the Beast, Cinderella...)

I quickly cast aside my other languages and delved into the beauty that is French.  I learned songs, I read books, I started writing my diary in French...

(though I laugh at all I wrote, but I digress)

I found my first love in a high school French class, which only solidified my love for the language (though I'll always have a better accent than him, haha), and the romanticism never died.

When I was about twenty, I had the opportunity to travel to Haïti (before the earthquake), and within ten days, I was speaking like a native, and life was damn near perfect.  Why wasn't I born a Frenchman? I thought.

Six years later, French still holds a fascination for me.  I often find myself watching Disney movies in French (thanks to that first French class, and Madame Jennifer, who let us watch La Belle et la Bête), I have several shelves of French books in my library, and when I'm having a really bad day, I just tell myself, someday, Em, you're going to run off to Paris.

And life will be great.

Because I am a Francophile.