Day 67 - Hello. Hola. Salut. Ciao.

Since I am on sabbatical one might think that I haven't been using my brain as much, but it isn't so. In the last week and a half it has been particularly busy as I have been going from English to Spanish (from Spain), to French, to Italian - and will be going back to french soon. 

Even though the switch from Spanish to English is pretty automatic by now, the switches to Italian or french are not so much. Before the trip I really made the effort to get back some of my lost knowledge of the languages - which has served me well - but it is still a challenge. I have to think ahead of time what I am going to say, and when I find that I know 80% of what I want to say, but I am missing a key word, I have to think of a different way ... Or improvise. For instance, the other day we ran out of band-aids, and of course I don't know the italian word for it. So I went into the pharmacy and said (in Italian): "Good afternoon. I need to buy something, but I don't know the name in Italian. I need this" I then lifted Bella, and pointed at a band-aid she had on her feet. I was pretty proud of myself. At the restaurant couple days ago I must have sounded like I had a pretty good handle of the language, because our server started telling me a bunch of things about the meal. After she left Lionel asked me if I understood everything she said, but I told him I only caught about half - if that. 

Yesterday one of the neighbors stopped us to chat for a little while, starting with the question of what language do we speak. It was pretty cool to answer by giving him a list. Lionel and I sure make a good team around here.