on One of the hardest things in life that we have to learn to do is saying goodbye.
But this is not goodbye. As difficult it was (is) to express in words,
these people have helped me grow
into a better person than I’ve ever been.
on I have learnt on my trip that things never goes as planned. Never.
I pride myself on being meticulous with organisation, down to the details of arriving at a meeting place just a little bit late so that I am not the one left waiting (what a terrible person I am). I would visualise myself (literally) arriving in my destination, meeting my companions and either smashing out a chore or having the best night of our lives- almost to no avail. In fact, there’s always something that occurs that completely derails the entire evening, no matter how menial the distraction was.
The moment I recognised this, or rather admitted to myself its reality, is on one of our final nights in Montréal, when the 
clique I associated myself with made plans to explore the city in style. We were going to ride bixis around the famous Lachine Canal when, as fate had it, an accident occurred between one of our…um…acquaintances and a local cyclist. Personally, I think that idiot acquaintance of ours was stupid for not seeing the…ahem…moving on.
With some blood, short term memory loss, ambulances and all that gore, the rest of our day was shifted. We ended up being late to a dinner at McKibbin’s, which meant making other people wait for us. Which meant finishing our meals later than planned, which meant we were too late for a screening of the new Avengers…which led to one of our friends being stranded at the cinemas without anyone there with him. Let’s just say that the night ended with me walking out on my own friends in frustration, on some unsettled business like the elephant in the room.
However if none of this had happened, our friendship would have never been tested. And as over-compensating as that sounds, the relationships that I have made were only made stronger by the trials that we have all had to face together.
Now I can declare to myself that things don’t always work out as you want it, nor do stories end as fairy tales do. But that’s life. It’s raw, it’s directionless and as much as we refuse to admit it we can only go with the flow. And although I don’t have a five-year plan like some communist, I just have to learn to make the best of what I’ve got and to grow with the people around me.
Like a certain Mad-Eye(d) Moody once said, “Constant Vigilance!” And that I shall personify.
on First off the bat, the language barrier was definitely one of the biggest challenges I faced during this experience. Yes, I anticipated that there was the presence of the French in Montréal and I did my time learning it back in Melbourne (admittedly, with Duolingo). Also admittedly, I found the idea of learning a whole new language completely tedious, especially when the language called for a completely different enunciation skill set that I was used to.
Prior to Montréal, I’d been able to pass off my travels with languages that I had known for life; English and Tagalog. My initial thought before leaving Australia: Pffftt! Everyone speaks English. I only really need French if I wanted to impress locals. Though that was mostly the case, it wasn’t always. For some reason, I was the only one out of the people I knew who had come across Quebecor locals incapable of speaking English, and I’ve had to play the whole grunt and point routine.
What’s worse was that a majority of my roommates were French, and spring BBQs meant me standing in the corner, trying to pick up on the joke that had everybody laughing, screwing my brain really hard for the grammar that I had picked up in the 3-4 months of my elementary French course. Yet, this did not put me off wanting to learn.
Being the clueless person at the parties that I was only motivated me to persist in my language education and work further on my French even when I have returned to Australia. It has only made me realise how necessary language is in sorting out differences and making personal connections with strangers, and has given me a new passion to look forward to on my return home. I mean who knows…maybe once I am able to speak English, Tagalog and French, I can also pick up some Spanish lessons…
J’espère bien!