Trip to Canada (1)

About a month ago, we took a vacation to Niagara Falls, Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City. Although it was little tiresome but we had a lot of fun.

Here are a couple of things about this trip.

1] There is Something Good About not Knowing French

Before we went on the trip, Daddy had taught Olivia a couple of French words and phrases  such as "bon jour" and "merci" and we encouraged her to use them 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 dropping a tape into the car radio on the way to work can be considered "attempted to learn". While listening to French can be an enjoyment, reading it without understanding it is a totally different feeling.

Driving from Montreal to Quebec City, we noticed that less and less people spoke English. I also felt the need to confirm with Daddy the meaning of some of the signs I saw on highway, especially when there was a detour as I was getting more and more... uncertain / clueless. It was like when you looked at the sign "Ouest", you said to  yourself: "Okay, West". A second later, you looked at it again, you went: "Ouest,it's west, right?" 

Because I only knew a couple of words for directions that I just learned from Daddy, the letters on the signs kinda just floated around. They didn't make much sense to me anymore, at least not right away as I had to drive and make out the signs at the same time. And those long words with hyphens made it worse. The names of some of the places we passed by were 20 or 30 letters long with hyphens. I felt dizzy just by looking at them.

For the first time in a long time, I felt the frustration of not being able to understand  a language, but I was glad I had my husband who could read some 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. 

As usual, Olivia and Evan fought over the number and color of crayons they had. Not only that, Evan also spilled his drink and totally destroyed Olivia's drawing paper (back side of the kid's menu) which made her very upset. Since we were the only customers in the restaurant, Daddy said to Olivia: "Why don't you go and ask the waitress to give you another sheet of paper to draw?"

Olivia went, but apparently she had some communication problems with the waitress who spoke no English. They didn't appear to understand each other just by talking. So Olivia pointed to the kid's menu and "Ah-ha" the waitress finally understood...well, not entirely, as Olivia returned to our table happily with three sheets of paper and a new cup of crayons.

"This is 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 just gave to me!"