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• Papersky and Rysmiel took me out to a Peruvian restaurant, where I had excellent onion soup (filling, as onion soup with proper cheese broiled on top always is) and grilled shrimp, and everyone else had other more-or-less Peruvian food, after we sorted out what things were by comparing the Spanish and French parts of the menu. It was easier to say "Solamente agua por favor" than to ask for a glass of water in French (the staff spoke no English). So there I was, in a bilingual nation, communicating in a third language. Ordering in Spanish wasn't weird--I do that at home sometimes--but it turned out that my Spanish was the best common language between any of us and anyone who worked there. So Papersky asked me to tell the waitress that the bathroom light was out. I took a moment, figured out how, and walked over and did so. The problem was that this left me in Spanish as a second language mode. Later in the meal, I was in the bathroom, someone knocked, and I answered in Spanish. Then I had to put my brain back into English mode, since none of the people I was dining with speak any Spanish: that's why I'd been translating in the first place.
• It took me three days to get comfortable enough on the Metro to slip into my native guide mode. I noticed this when I counted stations to our destination, Rysmiel looked vaguely confused about where we were, and I automatically said how far we had to go. Right. Rysmiel lives and works there, and takes the Metro to work, and I got to town three days ago. The Montreal Metro is nice and simple--four lines, standardized announcement format for the next station ("Station prochaine <station name>"), and they display bus and suburban rail connections on the sides of the car as you approach the station. Well, simple if you can get along in a sort of verbless rudimentary French, as I can.
• It took me three days to get comfortable enough on the Metro to slip into my native guide mode. I noticed this when I counted stations to our destination, Rysmiel looked vaguely confused about where we were, and I automatically said how far we had to go. Right. Rysmiel lives and works there, and takes the Metro to work, and I got to town three days ago. The Montreal Metro is nice and simple--four lines, standardized announcement format for the next station ("Station prochaine <station name>"), and they display bus and suburban rail connections on the sides of the car as you approach the station. Well, simple if you can get along in a sort of verbless rudimentary French, as I can.