How to teach myself...

Living in a small country, there is something you learn very early in life... there is a lot of foreign soil out there. Where people do things differently, talk differently and all together are different. This either makes you extremely curious about everything, some would say obsessively so, or it makes you just very anxious about everything and everybody that is slightly different from you and yours.
I definitely am a fully paid up member of the first (tribe, I was almost going to say) kind of person. It makes me very happy that I can read, speak and understand Dutch, German and Englisch equally well, to me all three are interchangeable. However, my knowledge of French is lacking far behind. I did quite well in school with it, then abandoned it altogether, on account of the fact that I did not understand the French and therefore that I was never going to France anyway for exactly that reason ( I am the queen of warped logic)... But then for no apparent reason, everything changed late last year.
I had been thinking that I really wanted to go to Paris for a few years, and last November I finally was brave enough to do so... and I fell hard for it. But, I also discovered that my rusty school girl French was really not taking me anywhere. It is the odd word I understand, and I usually can get the gist of what is being said, but I am not able to hold my own in a conversation.
So, being me, that frustrated me no end. I felt I had to do something about it.
I discovered the Petit Nicolas books in Paris, then through some other means discovered that I really love Sempe's drawings, so there was an easy choice. Also that they are children's books made me think that they would be good to start out with. I also got an audiobook with Petit Nicolas stories, to help me get a feel for the rythm of the language. To learn something about the French in general, their culture, way of thinking etc... I got myself a few newspapers, because they are brilliant for that. And just because I am addicted I got myself a few glossy magazines as well.
And there you have it, my self-styled teaching method ( should I patent it?) I really enjoy learning this way. And who knows, one day I could be fluent in French...
A little follow up on my sunflowers. They started to droop a bit, and even though I managed to revive them a couple of times, by the weekend they started to get a bit tired. So... I removed them from their stems alltoghether and put them on this blue plate, as I really like the colour combination. This way, I get a bit more wear out of them and they can cheer me up a bit longer.

Have a great, sunny week!