Travel and Language in Europe

Last Sunday we had a great playdate with Aidan's friend Ashay and his little sister (Liam’s age) by l’illa mall. Of course the mall was closed but the playground was one of the better ones I’ve seen since I’ve been here. The parents were incredibly nice and spoke wonderful English which was helpful. The mom also has been here for 9 years and knows all the kids and parents in the class (she’s the class mom) at Aidan’s school so I think she will be a good friend and resource as time goes on.  We got to talking and the subject of travel over the holidays came up since Semana Santa (Easter Week) was coming up quickly and we really wanted to go somewhere in addition to Valencia which we had already planned. 

She made a wonderful suggestion of DisneyLand Paris and as soon as we got home I jumped on the computer to look more into costs, reservations, flights, etc.  In the end, our Spanish ISP kept messing things up for me and it kept translating the website for me so Josh took over while I joined Aidan in an exciting game of SuperMario Wii (we're so close to beating it - we're on Bowser's final castle!!!).

So anyways, long story short, we're going to Paris - next week!!  We did have a little bump in the road where when I went to look thru our reservation I realized that Josh booked our flight for one week and our hotel for a different week.  So that took some time to fix (and money of course) but we're good to go for Easter weekend in Paris! 

This will be our first time travelling outside of Spain since our arrival here and it got me to thinking about language.  I've been spending a lot of my free time studying my Spanish here so that I can converse with others, express my needs, and in general communicate.  It's important to me that I know the language of the country I live in.  As Americans I find that the general public and I know this is a generalization, but they always say if you are going to live in the US then you should know the language.  I don't necessarily disagree with this.  You can't expect someone who lives in Spain to know English.  It's a bonus if they do but I can't expect nor do I expect for them to do so.  So I do my best to learn their language and hope that by the time I leave here I will be at the very least conversational if not fluent (I can only wish).  I know it will take time. 

So back to my thinking... I'm now going to Paris where guess what?  I don't speak French!  So it made me think about the fact up until we moved here to Spain, I had that entitled attitude that I have to say most other Americans have (sorry but it's true) where I figured that there would be enough people who speak English for me to get by - on vacation.  Let's just put it out there that I never believed that for living here - I knew I'd need to learn for long term abroad.  But for a vacation I always figured if I went somewhere, why would I stress about the language because you know, "everyone" speaks English, right??  So not true and a very narrow minded way of thinking of things. 
I'm very interested in seeing how travelling to Paris changes my perspective on language once again.  Will I be more introverted because I don't want to admit that I can't speak French when going into restaurants or stores?  Or will I be "that" tourist that just starts speaking English?  I would like to think that I would be more open minded and considerate than that entitled person, only how do I do that when I don't speak one word of French?  I know in Disney the employees will be multi-lingual but what about when we leave the park which we hope to do?  Definitely something to consider and I'm sure it will be a part of my posting next week - stay tuned!

Julie