by 冰溪
Trip to Canada
About a month ago, we took a vacation and drove to
Here are a couple of things about this trip.
1] There is Something Good About not Knowing French
Beforewe went on the trip, Daddy had taught Olivia a couple of French wordssuch as "bon jour" and "merci" and we encouraged her to usethem whenever it was appropriate.
I also have this thing about French language. I think it sounds so beautiful and sexy that
I even attempted to learn it… twice. Well, if flipping a tape into the car on the way to
workcan be considered "attempted to learn". While listening to French canbe an enjoyment, reading it without understanding it is a totallydifferent feeling.
Driving from
Ialso felt the need to confirm with Daddy for some of the signs I saw onhighway especially when there was a detour as I was getting more andmore...uncertain / clueless. It was like when you looked at the sign"Ouest",you said to yourself: "Okay, West". A second later, you lookedat it again, you went: "Ouest,it's west, right?"
BecauseI didn't know any French, the letters on the signs kinda just floatedaround. They didn't make much sense to me anymore, especially when Ihad to drive and made out the signs at the same time. And those longwords with hiphens made it worse. The names of some of the places wepassed by were 20 or 30 letters long with hyphens. I felt dizzy just bylooking at them.
Forthe first time for a long time, I felt the frustration not being ableto understand a language but I was glad I had a husband who could readsome French:).
So, not surprisingly, when we stopped at a pizza hut on the way for lunch, Daddy had
to speak some French in order to get our orders straightened out.
Asusual, Olivia and Evan fought over the number and color of crayons theyhad. Not only that, Evan also spilled his drink and totally destroyedOlivia's drawing paper (back side
of the kid's menu) whichmade her very upset. Since we were the only customers in therestaurant, Daddy said to Olivia: "Why don't you go and ask thewaitress to give you
another sheet of paper to draw?"
Oliviawent, but apparently she had some communication problems with thewaitress. They didn't appear to understand each other just by talking.So Olivia pointed to the kid's menu and "Ah-ha" the waitress finallyunderstood...well, not entirely, as Olivia returned to our tablehappily with three sheets of paper and a new cup of crayons.
"Thisis awesome!" She said. "Mom,it's good I don't know how to speak French,I only want a new sheet of paper and look at how much stuff she justgave to me!"
