Cannot think of a title yet
Sometimes I get the irrepressible urge to hop on a plane and fly to Seattle. Once again, I could be above ground and fly over downtown, see the Space Needle and Puget Sound like the last time I was there. See the trees. I miss the trees. They are high. They look like nothing we have here. I’d like to see Mount Rainier straight behind I-5 in the background. I’d like to see the road signs. Yield is so much nicer than “cédez le passage” and the idea of a four-way stop just would not work here at all. Too fair. Everybody would have a good reason to go first and force his way across the intersection regardless of anybody’s turn.
Yeah, I wish I could hop there once in a while, just clap my hands and I’m there, paying a little visit.
Many years ago, I don’t know what’s got into me, I decided I’d go live there a school year as an exchange student. I didn’t know anybody who had done that, just read an article in a magazine and thought it was something I was going to do. Crystal clear. There was no questioning about it. Come to think of it, that might have been the only thing I have ever been sure of in my entire life. Usually I hesitate about everything. I didn’t know what to expect really. It was not just a trip, it was not a language vacation where you go for a few weeks abroad and spend the entire time there doing stupid things with other kids who come from the same country. I wanted to go live in the USA and that seemed like the perfect opportunity. I didn’t especially think of school, school was a necessary evil in this adventure given my age.
In the meetings we had prior to our departure where we were invited to discuss the issues which puzzled us, my main area of concern was how I was going to put seventeen years’ worth of life into two suitcases.
Yeah, I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I’m talking of an era where hopping on a plane meant no contact with home besides letters in the mail and the occasional phone call (yep, expensive), no chitchat over the internet with friends back home. What is that, the internet?
Suddenly, my mother tongue was irrelevant because nobody understood it. Everything in everyday life was hazy, all the reference systems I was brought up in were not in use over there. Okay, you think Fahrenheit, I think Celsius, you think inches, I think centimeters, you think feet, I think meters, you think miles, I think kilometers, you think pounds, I think kilograms and so on, everything became hazy. Rulers were different, even paper sheets had a different size. You don’t care about those things when you take a trip somewhere, you start to wonder about it when you live there. Even doorknobs were tricky. They had those dead bolts, I think they are called, which are not unlocked unless you press them. Yep, perfect when you are not aware of that to lock yourself out.
School was another area of bewilderment. It was nothing like I had been accustomed to. Nothing. I was almost laughing to myself as I walked around in amazement.
My first hurdle was my locker. Very tricky to open when you are unfamiliar with that system. Feel very stupid turning the wheel very slowly to the right then to the left then to the right and the damn thing won’t open on your third attempt when everybody around does it without even looking.
Announcements in the morning. Very difficult to understand. Oh yeah, forgot to talk about the language barrier. Hmm, a headache for one month straight from listening really hard. Twenty-three years down the line, I’m still learning, I always will.
Teachers trying to pronounce my name. Failing. My name is pretty simple but there are r’s in it. Americans cannot twist their tongues around r’s. I learned how to spell it and then let them pronounce it any way they wanted. I actually like the way they say it.
So the language barrier, hmmm. It is tough. At first, whenever you want to talk, you cannot because forming sentences in your mind is unbelievably hard and there are words missing. When people talk to you, it’s difficult too because what they say becomes that incomprehensible noise in your ears and you have no idea what they mean. I had brought a tiny pocket dictionary and whenever I wanted to look up a word in it, it wasn’t there. I finally gave up on using it. I bought a regular dictionary and abandoned the idea of translating in my mind. Both languages co-exist now in my brain, each on their side. Of course, my French is much, much better than my English but sometimes it is the English word which springs to mind and seems to fit the situation better…
More to come on that subject if you’re interested.
*picture of the watercolour found in the Seattle Sketcher if I recall well.