Having grown up in Belgium, I have constantly been mixing languages during my daily routine. Belgium has 3 official languages (Dutch, German and French), and many Belgian children are required to study at least two of these in school.
Even on a daily basis, I had to switch from one language to another. Brussels (the capital of Belgium and where I grew up) in itself is bilingual. Everything in the center of the city is Francophone, and if you travel just 15 minutes to the suburbs you automatically have to switch into Flemish (dialect of Dutch). At first this was hard because I would start getting comfortable with speaking in one language, and then I would have to change to another one. But as I became more advanced in these languages, I started to notice that many people use words from each other in daily conversation. For example, many Flemish speakers use the word “merci-kes”, which comes from the French word “merci” or “thank you” in English. This relates back to Canagarajah’s article, where she is quoted saying (page 6) “languages are always in contact with and mutually influence each other”. This statement could not be truer for the Belgians.