Getting Comfortable

Week one has run its course and already I have found myself slipping a little more into the groove of Montreal living. Every morning the sun pours into my bedroom and wakes me up, I make my peanut butter toast and drink my glass of O.J. then pack by bags for classes. It is so simple! I find myself doing the same things I would be doing back home in such a foreign place, and this I am coming to love. It is almost startling how quickly a person can go from feeling like a total outsider to feeling more in place.

I can in no way say that my French has miraculously gone from nil to beautiful prose, but even being able to say the most simple things in the native language has made a huge difference. Going to the gas station to buy ice or a magazine and trying so hard to avoid an English word may be difficult, but once I leave that store and recognize that the clerk never once suspected I was not a local is an amazing feeling. Yet there are still some obstacles I have had, and still am, working on to overcome. Take for example the arrival of my new roommate, a student from France who speaks almost no English. Once that was clear I tried resorting to the big hand movements and slow speaking I blindly assumed would instantly turn my English words into words the new roommate would understand. The result, you can be assured, was not so. My clumsy and ignorant attempt had only made her think that I was insulting her, or so I could have guessed from her gaze. Who knows, maybe I was misinterpreting her too?

Now I need to figure out how to make a connection that goes beyond language or cultural road blocks. I believe that this is not a lesson I am going to learn from French class or any other course I am taking at Champlain. This is a type of learning that must go on outside of the classroom and between people instead.
--b--