Yes, she is. She's a native Polish speaker with five working languages and she's in the process of adding a sixth (Portuguese). One of the advantages of the digital age is that in our more recent moves I don't have to carry as many kilo-heavy multi-volume dictionaries up and down the stairs (though the earlier dicos still line our walls).
Re the expatriate subject of your last post: by chance today when reading an essay by Simon Leys (a writer I've discovered just very recently, and belatedly: he's the bee's knees), I came across this (translated) quote from Victor Hugo:
"I feel increasingly that exile is good.
It is as if, without their knowing it, the exiles were near some sort of sun: they mature quickly."
Leys is writing about Hugo in the particular context of the Bourbon restoration, when for personal safety Hugo had to drop everything and leave France for 20 years, for Belgium and the Isle of Guernsey.
Now, what I know about Hugo you can put in a thimble. I have received ideas about a romantic windbag and Les Misérables. I haven't read the work.
And people like us aren't really "exiles"--we've had the luxury of choices.
But that image of (perhaps!) being somehow near some sort of sun, to mature quickly, appeals to me, personally. Of course it might be self-serving hindsight, to assuage my doubts, but in my case I feel that in my 20s I had a lot more growing to do which I didn't fathom at the time--I was rather immature, and needed to catch up--so leaving the US, and what was safe and familiar, helped me.
This is all very well said, Jennifer. There are always trade-offs. I don't regret leaving the US but it's sometimes been tough, particularly in regard to family. I definitely hear you when you say you'll never belong to France (ah, the accent! don't I know it!) but it might happen that France will, in a manner, belong to you. Since moving to Brussels, I see better how the decades I spent there marked me. It sounds like you've lived a lot of places and by now, well, you would not be you, without those experiences.
You must have a brilliant wife! What an interesting job. My husband worked for the EU diplomatic service before Brexit ruined everything... he loved working for them!
Yes, she is. She's a native Polish speaker with five working languages and she's in the process of adding a sixth (Portuguese). One of the advantages of the digital age is that in our more recent moves I don't have to carry as many kilo-heavy multi-volume dictionaries up and down the stairs (though the earlier dicos still line our walls).
Re the expatriate subject of your last post: by chance today when reading an essay by Simon Leys (a writer I've discovered just very recently, and belatedly: he's the bee's knees), I came across this (translated) quote from Victor Hugo:
"I feel increasingly that exile is good.
It is as if, without their knowing it, the exiles were near some sort of sun: they mature quickly."
Leys is writing about Hugo in the particular context of the Bourbon restoration, when for personal safety Hugo had to drop everything and leave France for 20 years, for Belgium and the Isle of Guernsey.
Now, what I know about Hugo you can put in a thimble. I have received ideas about a romantic windbag and Les Misérables. I haven't read the work.
And people like us aren't really "exiles"--we've had the luxury of choices.
But that image of (perhaps!) being somehow near some sort of sun, to mature quickly, appeals to me, personally. Of course it might be self-serving hindsight, to assuage my doubts, but in my case I feel that in my 20s I had a lot more growing to do which I didn't fathom at the time--I was rather immature, and needed to catch up--so leaving the US, and what was safe and familiar, helped me.
This is all very well said, Jennifer. There are always trade-offs. I don't regret leaving the US but it's sometimes been tough, particularly in regard to family. I definitely hear you when you say you'll never belong to France (ah, the accent! don't I know it!) but it might happen that France will, in a manner, belong to you. Since moving to Brussels, I see better how the decades I spent there marked me. It sounds like you've lived a lot of places and by now, well, you would not be you, without those experiences.
Thank you, Charles. What brought you to Brussels?
My wife works here as a conference interpreter for the EU.
You must have a brilliant wife! What an interesting job. My husband worked for the EU diplomatic service before Brexit ruined everything... he loved working for them!