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14. A Language Adventure. My First Real Job Returning on my bicycle from a late night
bowl of onion soup at Les Halles, the produce market featured in the movie Irma La Douce,
I found a letter in my mailbox advising me that I had been accepted into the Canadian
Foreign Trade Service. A friend of mine had persuaded me to write the Foreign Service
exam at the Canadian Embassy some months earlier, and here I was now with a job!
This same friend and I had been planning to travel around the world on Honda motorcycles
if Honda would sponsor us. The Foreign Service opportunity looked more promising.
As wonderful as my stay in France was, I often felt homesick for Canada. Going abroad allowed
me to better understand and even to better appreciate my own home and original culture.
Learning another language and culture does not take away from the enjoyment of your own
background, it only intensifies it. Yet I was destined to live abroad for many
more years in Asia before finally settling down in Vancouver.