Flashes of Panic

Two days in a row, now, I have overheard conversations in Russian on the bus. (Not the same people, either.) Yesterday I also overheard a discussion in an Asian language I couldn't place. (I can often guess at an Asian language based on ideograms, if it's printed, but I can't tell the spoken words apart terribly well.) Perhaps it's a cultural imperative (mine) about not talking to strangers, combined with the fact that foreign-language speakers in New England are more likely to know each other, but I feel like an English conversation on the bus is seldom heard.

This is not (necessarily) the result of a significant immigrant population in the area, either. Most of the conversees got off at UMass.

I probably notice this only because I grew up in such a culturally homogenous town. (I snicker to myself when residents around here talk about how diverse Amherst isn't. And Northampton principally features a fully-diverse spectrum of "European-Americans.") I do think there's something odd about spending five years in Pennsylvania but having to come back to New England to be exposed daily to the languages of the world, but I can't quite put a finger on it.