Speaking French

I can get by fairly well in French.  There are buckets of things that I don't know, buckets of actual words, let alone, colloquialisms -- when do you say mois dernier and when do you say dernier mois, for example.  My pronunciation sucks. 

What brings this to mind is a conversation I had today, about 70% in English, with a woman who's a law intern in Paris.  She's pretty interesting just for that -- I consider that kind of thing exotic -- but it turns out that she is very thoughtful about some very deep concepts, like why are we here, and what is it that we're supposed to do with our lives.  The sort of thing that, when you're her age, seems perfectly reasonable, and when you get to my age, you think should we have pizza tonight?  So I like talking with her, and I want to do more of it.

Only, I want to do it verbally (she's very reluctant to do more than text) and in French -- at least, my half of the conversations.  And when I think that, I lock up, because, hell, I'm doing good to be able to say I want to go to the market and buy some milk -- discussing the great themes of life scares the living daylights out of me.

But I want to try, anyway.  Because thats the whole idea of Conversation Exchange -- to speak in each other's language, no matter how badly you suck at it.  Even if your sentences end up sounding like You like go it this thing, thing you said yesterday? It's got to start somewhere.