Words spoken and unspoken

(...by Paul ...)
When I asked my French teacher how long it will take to learn French, his response was that your brain has to be ‘rewired’ – associations and connections need to work without thinking and that takes time. I was thrown for a loop last week when I had to go to Turin, Italy. As soon as I walked off the train the feeling was overwhelming – here we go again being in a foreign country full of strange sounds and not being able to communicate. I got in a taxi and told the guy one word “Novotel”. Fortunately he spoke a little bit of English and off we went. It was an interesting albeit broken conversation en route with each of us searching for words and thoughts that would make sense to the other.

The meeting at the plant the next day was quite a cacophony as there were people from Germany, Belgium, England, and Spain. It was really interesting listening to the Spanish guy speaking French. I can just imagine what he thinks of my French. English was the only language in common and needless to say I wasn’t disappointed when we decided to conduct the meeting in English.

It’s amazing when things from the past pop back up unexpectedly. During the plant tour the operator told me that his group was using a product I worked on several years ago in Houston. He really liked it. But then he made a strange comment about how the product worked that was the opposite of what we had seen. I didn’t say a word but he looked at me and said, “We need to talk after the tour.” I asked him what he meant and all he said was, “your eyes are speaking.”

It was a long ride home on the train. Turin is just a short hop over the Alps from Lyon but to fly there you have to go through Paris. I chose instead to take the TGV “fast train” which takes about 4 hours (the regular train takes over 7 hours). I was a beautiful ride through the mountains including a long tunnel that took 13 minutes to pass through. Plenty of time to study more vocabulary words.