You are learning the passé composé: you will read the scene it happens in, learn 10 words and phrases, take apart the pattern behind them (passé composé — the past tense of experience), hear them in a conversation, rehearse them, and finish by saying one thing out loud to be graded.
At Café de Flore or any Paris café, the morning after a great meal. The grammar that lets you say what happened: I ate, I tasted, I saw, I went, I loved. The engine of storytelling in French.
Café de Flore, 9h30. The stranger is at a window table with a café crème and a carnet. He is writing about the night before — dinner at Au Pied de Cochon in Les Halles, the brasserie that never closes, where he ordered onion soup and a plateau de fruits de mer at midnight.
His neighbor at the next table — a woman of about sixty, reading Le Monde — glances at what he's writing. « Vous écrivez en français ? »
« J'essaie. Hier soir, j'ai mangé au Pied de Cochon. J'ai commandé la soupe à l'oignon et le plateau de fruits de mer. J'ai adoré. »
She lowers her paper. « Vous avez bien choisi. C'est l'un des derniers grands plats à toute heure. » One of the last great dishes available at any hour.
« J'ai découvert ça hier. » I discovered that yesterday. She nods, satisfied.