en francais
For whatever reason, I was thinking this morning about the time, when I was 14, that I got lost in Montreal. I was with my friend Jessica and we were on a weeklong school trip with our French class. We had the afternoon as free time before we were to return to the hotel for some dinner theater group activity.
So, we wandered and wandered, poking into shops, feeling very cosmopolitan. When it came time to return to the hotel, we realized we had no idea where we were or how to get back. Crap.
"Ou est le Holiday Inn?"
"Quelle Holiday Inn?"
"Uhhh, je ne sais pas..."
It had not occurred to us, in our very cosmopolitan ways, that there was more than une Holiday Inn in Montreal. So, we did what any reasonable 14yo girls do, we figured out the Montreal subway system and tried the closest ones as indicated to us by patient Quebecois and understood by our limited French.
We made it back, but were woefully late. We thought, well, maybe we will not have to go to dinner theater, they have all left already. We were, instead, greeted by a completely hysterical French teacher who was already trying to figure out what to tell the police and our parents about how we had been kidnapped in French Canada. Taken by canoe and forced into a life of fur trading, naturally.
When I got home from that trip, my dad had thrown everything I owned into the garbage and my room was completely bare except for a bed sitting unmade in the middle of it.
So, we wandered and wandered, poking into shops, feeling very cosmopolitan. When it came time to return to the hotel, we realized we had no idea where we were or how to get back. Crap.
"Ou est le Holiday Inn?"
"Quelle Holiday Inn?"
"Uhhh, je ne sais pas..."
It had not occurred to us, in our very cosmopolitan ways, that there was more than une Holiday Inn in Montreal. So, we did what any reasonable 14yo girls do, we figured out the Montreal subway system and tried the closest ones as indicated to us by patient Quebecois and understood by our limited French.
We made it back, but were woefully late. We thought, well, maybe we will not have to go to dinner theater, they have all left already. We were, instead, greeted by a completely hysterical French teacher who was already trying to figure out what to tell the police and our parents about how we had been kidnapped in French Canada. Taken by canoe and forced into a life of fur trading, naturally.
When I got home from that trip, my dad had thrown everything I owned into the garbage and my room was completely bare except for a bed sitting unmade in the middle of it.