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Solfrid Cristin TAC 2012 Team Sputnik | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6618 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes  Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 265 of 270 10 December 2012 at 5:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Now I've finally gotten around to catching up on your log after my 1,5 month long disappearance from HTLAL. Your travel stories are fascinating. I wish I were that adventurous. I guess I need to practice.
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| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 266 of 270 15 December 2012 at 5:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Brun Ugle : Why don't you start with a trip to Oslo? You would be most welcome to come and visit :-)
PARIS BRUSSEL DEC. 2012 My mom always used to say that I could go to the store to buy milk, and come back with enough material for a short story. Well you can just imagine what it is like after 4 days in Paris and Brussels, even if I just went there for some boring business meetings. Some are natural born killers, I am a natural born story teller, who had I been born in another time and another place would have been telling stories by the fire place to my extended family. On this particular trip, my most vivid impression was one of a déjà vu. After two days in Paris I went to the Gare du Nord to take the train to Brussels. The train was late, I was cold, and I was staring at the big board which listed all the times and tracks where the trains where leaving from, when I suddenly remembered the first time I had been standing at that exact spot, looking at that exact same board, being just as cold as I was now. I was 14 years old, and I was travelling on an international train on my own for the very first time. I was on my way home for Christmas, after having been 6 months in France and I felt very lost and very, very cold. There were enormous delays, because they had had 4 cm of snow (!) and there was no where to go, because there was not a proper waiting room, just the freezing station, and I did not have much money so I did not dare to go to a café. This time I smiled to myself thinking that at least now I could afford to go to a cafė, but since they kept pushing and pushing the time of departure I did not dear to leave the station, so in practise I was left at square one. You know how you sometimes feel your job bores you and is repetitive (having been almost in the same job for 20 years will do that to you) and then something happens and you feel you have the best job in the whole world? Well this week I felt that, even though most of what made me feel that way was not the work us such - more the circumstances around it. I am an international animal, and I have always had great connection with people from the Mediterranean, but lately I am getting it also with people from what we once used to call Eastern Europe (part of it is perhaps still called that?). From two of the meetings I was at I came back with business cards and invitations to visit Hungary, Croatia and Kazakhstan as well as India(obviously not any part of Europe:-) and one of the Russian representatives suggested that they make a visit for me to Lake Bakal since I did not get to see it properly when I took the Trans Siberian. The only invitation I accepted was to Hungary (since she was the only woman) but it was still nice. And what really put a big smile on my face was my Serbian colleague, who at the last meeting complimented me for my work, and at this meeting told me that I always made him feel happy and in a good mood whenever he saw my smile. Now when you just realised that you have gained 30 pounds over the last 18 months, and just discovered the two first grey hairs and feel fat and ugly, feedback like this does absolute wonders for your self esteem! The meeting I was at is actually two levels above my rank, it was at Director General's level, and this particular time we had the President of Brazil come and open our session. That is to put it mildly not an everyday occurrence for me, and it was quite fun to see the body guards scanning the room and her Chief of Staff, who was a woman in uniform. The President spoke only Portuguese, and I tried to listen to it in Russian, discovering that I understand about just as much - or as little - in both. For the first time it made sense to me what Iversen has said about understanding more about a technical subject than of everyday speech, if it is a subject which is known to you - in this case the railways. The whole meeting was translated into Russian, Farsi, Korean, Japanese and English, and I tried to follow it in Russian whenever the subject was not of great importance. Outside the meeting it was almost all in English apart from the Spaniards with whom I obviously spoke in Spanish and the four words of Russian I exchanged with the Russian delegate. I so want to come back and speak Russian to him next time! Otherwise I had an interesting conversation with a Senegalese taxi driver, who was highly surprised that I was not Tunisian or Algerian ( what is Russian doing to my French accent if that is what I sound like), and had the usual "same procedure as every year" at the hotel where they speak French to me until they see my last name, at which point they always switch to English. It has been really busy days, because in addition to attending four international meetings, and travelling between Oslo, Paris and Brussels, I have been extremely active on the TAC threads, read and received about 40 PMs and read a book I picked up at the Gare du Nord of almost 300 pages in French. The book was gripping. I do not know how many of you remember that in the Spring 2012 there was a guy in Toulouse in France, who shot 7 people. He was called the scooter murderer, and he shot three soldiers of Maghreb origin and three Jewish children and the rabbi who was the father of two of them. His real name was Mohamed Merah, and the book was written by his older brother who denounced the environment and upbringing they had received. The part that really struck a cord was that some time ago I read a book written by the older brother of an American serial killer and if you took out the ethnic an religious part, their upbringings and conditions were very similar. Abusive father who beat the living daylight out of his wife and children, a whole family living off crime, no love or nurturing in the family, multiple crimes before the actual killings started. Scary. On a somewhat brighter note, I managed to get a little multilingual conversation at the end of the meetings in Brussel. We always do English, then two of us spoke first in French and then in German, and in the end one of the guys present told us that he spoke Frisian, and was of course told to speak a little Frisian for us. I was delighted to hear that I could understand most of it! To top the trip off with another international event, I had made plans to meet the Italian polyglot Luca Lampariello in Brussels. We were both going to Paris and Brussels in roughly the same period, and we had figured out that we had a 90 minute slot if we met on the Gare Central in Brussels, and thought that would be just enough for lunch. And then of course there was bad weather and his bus was terribly late, and we ended up meeting for -exactly 4 minutes. We joked that this must have been the shortest polyglot meeting in the history of mankind, but agreed that he visit me in May, under somewhat less stressful circumstances. And then this morning I was back home, we had had 30 cm of snow and I had to fight my way through the snow to - of all things - the angel shop - to pick up some things for my sister. Life is full of contrasts :-) Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 15 December 2012 at 5:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4713 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 267 of 270 15 December 2012 at 6:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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I love reading your stories, Cristina! =)
It's cool that you met our President! Actually, you were probably closer to her than I'll ever be ahahaha and I'm sorry to hear that it didn't work out with Luca. Anyway, I'd love to have such opportunities to practice like you have... I'll probably have to move to Europe any time in the future (if my wife agrees =P). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 268 of 270 15 December 2012 at 6:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Fantastique! Prochaine fois que tu iras à Paris (ou Bruxelles, mais j'ai mes raisons pour
éviter cette ville pour l'instant), ou aux Pays-Bas (ou en Allemagne), dis-moi; c'est que deux heures (à peine) pour aller à Bruxelles et peut-être trois pour aller à Paris pour moi! Ce n'est pas si loin :) En plus, je trouve géniale que tu aies rencontré le Président de Brésil! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5393 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 269 of 270 15 December 2012 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Cristina, I love reading all your stories. For some bizarre, mysterious reason, my email box started sending all of my HTLAL mail (new post notices) to my spam box, and I was so busy it took me a few weeks to notice it! So I have just caught up on all your travels. :)
I am kind of glad you weren't born in another time, because we wouldn't all get to hear your stories, then. Of course, maybe we'll all be reading your books instead of reading about your adventures on HTLAL. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 270 of 270 30 December 2012 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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@fabriciocarraro: Thanks, and eventually moving to Europe sounds like a good idea.
@tarvos: I'll try to let you know the next time I am in the "neighbourhood". It would have been great to meet you in person! @Kerrie: thank you! I love telling them! AND SO THE YEAR ENDS.. This has been such an amazing TAC year, that I can hardly believe that it is coming to an end. I have given a detailed description of my goals for 2012 and which one of them I actually reached, so I will not repeat those, but you can find them at post 242 in this thread. After having seen another year pass, I would of course have liked to have gotten even further, particularly with my Russian, but I guess I will just have to be happy that with my very limited time, I have learned as much as I have. My love for Russian grows deeper for every year, and this year I have discovered that also the Russians are some of the most friendly and hospitable people there is. I must admit that when I started out studying Russian, I still had the same prejudices a lot of Westerners have, but after having met and become friends with some Russians I am amazed and impressed. So I am entering 2013 with joy and hope, and a strong motivation for bringing my Russian to a level where I can use it in more than just emergencies. I wish I could have just taken off to Russia and lived there for a few months, to get a real feel for the language, but between job, husband, two children and two cats, I think I'll just settle for studying it whenever I can - even if it is just in 5 minute chunks. I would like to thank those of you who have followed my log, and invite you to come with me to my new log CRISTINA'S 2013 MIR/SPARTA LOG I have appreciated your feed back and your comments, and I wish all of you every possible success in 2013. I would also like to send all my love to my team mates on Team Sputnik. It has been an amazing journey we have had together! . Three cheers for the new year and the new opportunities! A big hug to you all from Cristina Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 30 December 2012 at 4:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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