la français and an Italian wedding

Have I ever told you guys about my best friend from school? She's the coolest and I don't know why I've never mentioned her but seen as though she has just invited me to her wedding IN ROME this summer it seems right to tell you how très cool she is!

I first met her when we were 14 or 15 (around that age). I'd seen her around school and heard she'd come to England from France but that was all I knew about her. I used to see her sitting quietly with the group of people who had been asked to show her around and I just assumed she was shy or something. Then one day in woodwork class I noticed she was struggling to hold her wood and use a saw at the same time. I asked the people she sat with if anyone had helped her to use the table clamp and the only reply I got was "I don't know - I haven't asked". So I toddled over to see her and helped her get the clamp working (it was so jammed shut no wonder she'd not bothered trying to use it!) That was the only meeting we had for a while - but years later when we were friends she told me she remembers that moment so well because she felt like she finally had a friend at school... that taught me more than anything ever before how important it is to make an effort to do even the seemingly smallest things for other because it can mean such a lot to them!

Anyway - by the time we started our GCSEs we started sitting next to each other in a couple of classes and that's when the friendship really started. That's when I discovered she had lived in Italy until she was 6, France until she was 12 and then come to England. That's when I discovered her paretns were Salvation Army Officers, that she had two younger sisters (one of whose names I could never quite pronounce correctly!) and that she loved Céline Dion (at that time) as much as I did. Oh the times we spent singing at the top of our voices, driving everyone around us insane hehe.

Her family had to move to Wales when we were 16 so our friendship really wasn't that long in person - but our friendship is one of those that lasts no matter how long it's been since you last saw each other. During our GCSE exams my friend lived with us for a glorious two weeks (how much more can you ask for at 16?) because her parents had already moved and she needed to stay to take the exams. After that we tried to visit each other once a year until she moved back to Italy, where I visited her in 2004 and she visited me in 2006. So it's been more than 2 years since we saw each other and imagine my joy when she asked me to her wedding :o) I feel extra honoured bearing in mind just how many friends she has and how hard it must have been for her to limit the number of people she invited!

So that's my best friend - and the Italian wedding I mentioned... but what about the French you ask? Well, we have a girl from Belgium working at the TIC with us at the moment and I have been making use of her language skills to help me recover the French I lost so many years ago. I gave up French at 16, which is a shame because I used to try reading my friend's books and we'd sing in French and all sorts of things like that so my French was actually not too bad for the level we were at. But now I have forgotten it all... so I'm recapping! And much to my joy I am finding it flooding back so quickly - yay. My plan is to use my job to really use my languages... my friend was such as inspiration to me - what with being trilingual when I knew her and now speaking another language on top!! I want to be like her - and so I shall be... one day... I hope!

I also work with an Italian girl who is going to help me brush up some Italian skills before our Italian break - fancy getting to go to Rome for a wedding... ooh I love it so much!