It's invigorating walking around Montreal. Apart from the fact I love to travel to new places, and people watch, it's been four years since I was in a country doesn't just speak English. My brain is more engaged as I walk down the street, eavesdropping on the conversations, and trying to translate them as I go. It's mostly impossible. The last French class I took was 1996. It was taught in Baton Rouge, a name that would imply French, but is in Louisiana. Another French-sounding name. And yes, there's an influence left over there, but it's pretty distant now. The class was taught by a short, squat woman, whose name I can't remember, but she was from Algeria or Tunisia or somewhere. The French I learned there was a repeat of the French I started learning in England. But that repeat was years ago, and over time my French has grown rusty.

This is the first time I've really had to use French in years, then. It's not the French I learned. There's a different accent, different dialect, and it's not as easy to understand, especially when two native speakers are in discussion. But for the most part everyone here is bilingual, and if you try to speak French but are obviously having trouble, they'll switch to English and help you get there. Cuts down on listening to conversations in the street though.

It's tiring. It was a lot like this going to Vorstetten in Germany for dad's sixtieth birthday. No one really spoke English there, so I spent a lot of the time translating for my brother and sister, neither of whom speak German. But at the same time I remember a sense of accomplishment that I could actually converse with someone in their language. It was the first time in my life I've thought in a different language, not had to think about what someone said, translate it in my mind, work out a response, translate that, then reply. It was also the first time in my life I was in a country that spoke a different language (that I had learned) and NOT while I was in school.

This is the second, and I feel the same sense of satisfaction sifting through the years of memories to just exactly what the MRS VAN DER TRAMP verbs were, and remembering enough of them to get by. Don't remember them all, but it shows that those years of school weren't a waste. I've always said that most of what I learned when I was in school I learned outside of the classroom, and I still think that's true, but I guess unbeknownst to me, and despite my best efforts, my teachers were able to force some knowledge into my stubborn brain.

It makes me want to learn a new language. It makes me want to get better at the ones I hack my way through, buggering up the tenses and genders and still managing to communicate. It makes me want to immerse myself, disappear for a while to a place like Vorstetten, where they don't speak English, and use my brain.

Mais je assis ici, sur mon balcon, et je bois une biere, et le semaine prochaine je retourne aux Etats Unis, pour oublie tous que j'ai . . .bugger. Unforgotten. Relearned. Never learned that.

Guess I've got three more days to find out.