It's been three weeks since I've been in an English-majority country, and an odd silence has settled about my perception, to the point that I'm incredibly attuned to either English or Spanish or the five French phrases I've managed to get down so far. Our brains pick up the familiar. English is still spoken quite a bit here but a French immersion won't be difficult if I seek it out. It's serene--virtually all speech on the street fades into unintelligible background prattle and I speak so much less when in public than I do in native circumstances, just because I'm listening and deciphering that much more. Any communication is deliberate and self-conscious, language-as-tool rather than automatic.
With any luck, I'll pick up French quickly and be better able to move around the city without gestures or muffled Spanish (which works surprisingly well).
