If you can read this...

I'm sure that any city in Europe could begin to feel like home if I had a month or two to stay put and soak it all in, but, obviously, that hasn't been an option on my current trip.  Departing Paris after only a day and half left me unsatisfied, like a cliffhanger with no clear plans for a sequel.  I must confess, though, that stepping off the Eurostar in England provided an amazing relief for stress of which I wasn't even fully aware.  Seeing everything written in the language that comes naturally to my brain makes the world seem so simple.

Though I'm shy about speech, I can read enough French, Italian and Spanish to get around fairly well; but it didn't occur to me until now how much conscious effort I was spending on translation every day.    Is it possible that I could practice and study enough to feel this comfortable with other languages?  Thinking back to my early days in school, I feel really ripped off.  When I was a little child, and could have learned all this easily, I lived in a place where speaking only English was a matter of pride, where foreign language instruction was never an option prior to high school, and where those courses were a joke even when they became available.   Almost everything I know about any language other than American English is self-taught.  Children in many parts of the US are being cheated out of the opportunity to fully participate in the world by the way we approach education.  Of course, adults can acquire  new tongues, at least to some extent, but it's much more difficult when we have no foundation and no way to practice verbally.     I can't help worrying that "making America great again" is going to involve policies that only exacerbate this problem.

At any rate, it's time for me to quit my bitching and get some rest.  More from London when I've settled in bit.