Parlez-vous français ?

French… my next feat. Why am I doing this to myself - learning another language and taking a class. Once I graduated last year with my Bachelors in Anthropology, I vowed I would never ever sit in another formal classroom again. I guess that I have failed but its a good kind of failure. I feel like to fully embrace my book, learning French is a must (its set in Paris so what better thing to do than learn the language).
I figure if I can learn Mandarin Chinese then I can do anything. Seven years ago, I lived in Taiwan for some time and was able to learn the language. I swear Chinese took 10 years off of my life. It was incredibly difficult. How many years will French take off of my life, I wonder?
Funny story, a few years back, there was an ASL class straight after the one I attended. They would only sign when they were in the class. Automatically, my mind thought, “If you want to communicate with them then you should speak Chinese. They will understand you for sure!” At that point, Chinese almost came out of my mouth (once it actually did).
The same thing happened last year when I traveled to France and Italy. There was numerous times where I almost caught myself trying to communicate with the natives in Chinese. Of course, I thought, they for sure will understand me. It made me laugh every time that Chinese did come out of my mouth.
Hopefully, learning French will help me to communicate with French speaking people instead of whipping out my Chinese to them. The problem now is not to speak FreChinglish while learning.