"I do not wish to imply that every person I meet is a potential enemy; that would be paranoia. What I mean is that one does not meet many friends in life. You have to do with the company of strangers. To be the very best of yourself, try to be loving, caring, generous, and at the same time know that all of this intensity might last only that one instant, and that the moment might never arise again." -Antonio d'Alfonso, from the intro of Gambling with Failure
And in other news...apparently there are not only divisions in the French language, but also divisions within the divisions. "J'ai parké ma car dans la ditch" (a sentence at which I laughed hysterically for a good two minutes), for example, is a perfectly acceptable phrase in certain parts of northern New Brunswick (Moncton) but not in other Acadien communities...
In other other news, I love Montréal. Not nearly as much as I love Sackville, but it's just one giant explosion of a city where you don't quite know what you're going to get from corner to corner. The highlight of the trip was finding myself on ice skates at the top of Mont Royal...and in my ongoing struggle with the French language, I think it improved after only a few days there.
Returning to Sackville, it was sort of weird to not be frantically stringing together French phrases in my head while standing in the check-out line. I had to buy new headphones because I somehow managed to lose mine and I'm standing in Jean Coutu pharmacy thinking, "Crap, how do I say 'Where are the headphones' in French?" when it dawned on me that I was back in an English speaking community...(Où sont les écouteurs?...I think).
I need to stop falling in love with places...while I suppose everyone has roots somewhere, I seem to have a strange and shallow root system in really random places, constantly finding other places to land myself...which sort of makes it seem like I don't have any.
Anyway.
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