With The Families

So my parents came to visit me in Belgium. We've been very excited to see each other for a very long time but I was afraid (SO AFRAID!) that my translating between French and English and English and French would be so very awkward and difficult and the whole affair would just give me that horrible feeling of not fitting into my own skin.

It was a bit difficult at first. Anyone who's bilingual knows, switching back and forth between your two languages, when you're usually going on days of French with Skype calls in English (or Portuguese or Spanish or German, wherever my exchange friends are!), is actually quite difficult. You don't have that lightswitch installed in your head; it's more of a dimmer switch. Especially when you've been immersed so long that you're actually thinking in French when you're speaking it, it's very hard to switch on a dime. The first hour or so of me translating was clumsy because of that.

But that lightswitch, if you have a good grasp on the language, installs itself quite quickly. It's like an Apple software update: Wow. That went much quicker than I would have anticipated.

As it turns out, my families get along! I knew the mothers would get along swimmingly because mothers are mothers the world over. If they share the same daughter, you know they can be best friends no matter what.

It turns out the entire family gets along well! My dads get along and, I didn't know this, but my host dad speak really good English! He's got the same English that I had in French after a month or so, I'd say. He understands quite a lot and his speaking ability helps with the translating even more.

This whole thing, especially when eating dinners together, has been really good. For one, it's great for my birth parents to see that I have a family here, that sending me away let me find people who love me as much as they do. Belgian dinners can last for hours, so having all that time filled with delicious food and conversation has been really great.

It's also great that my birth parents get to see that I am actually fluent. When I was teaching myself sign language, my dad never really believed that I was fluent or close to it, until he saw me talking with the deaf teacher at my school, Mrs Lyles. For them to be in Belgium, for them to see me translating and talking and laughing, it really let them see how fluent I've become.

My parents and I are in Paris now. I've been playing translator at signs and restaurants and at the hotel. It's been wonderful and all the museums here in Paris are as amazing as they were the first time I saw them.

I'll post pictures and more when I finish this trip, but for now, this is all I've got.